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Macromedia Flash MX Audio Magic

The market for general Flash books is quite saturated, so it is not surprising that publishers and authors are experimenting with more focused titles. One such book is "Macromedia Flash MX Audio Magic" written by Brad Kozak, Eric E. Dolecki, Craig Swann, and Manuel Clement, published by New Riders.

Title: Macromedia Flash MX Audio Magic
Author: Brad Kozak, Eric E. Dolecki, Craig Swann, and Manuel Clement
Pages: 262
CD: yes
ISBN: 0-7357-1194-1
Publisher: New Riders

Considering that sound is a major component of any animation and greatly enhances the user experience, I was very interested in this title, because even the thicket of Flash books often treat sound as a secondary issue, devoting most of their page count to animation and ActionScript.

The authors are experienced Flash and multimedia developers with several years of practice, which shows in the selection and presentation of the material. As a result, with the help of the editors and technical reviewers, the readers are in for a real treat.

This 260+ page book is broken up into 15 chapters, each presenting one project. The chapters are grouped into 5 parts: Web Site Interface Design, Background Audio in Flash, Building and Controlling Sounds, Audio for Game Design, and Audio, video, and Flash.

The five chapters that make up the first part, are devoted to the issues of web site design that includes sound. The readers will learn a lot about using sound, sound file optimization, copyright, sound recording, sampling, editing, movie clips, and audio playback control. All audio recording and editing techniques are presented with Sonic Foundry software, included on the CD-ROM sold with the book.

Part 2 is devoted to the subject of creating, editing and using background sound in Flash, while part 3 focuses on other types of sounds, streaming MP3s. Part 4 focuses on a using sound in games created in Flash, but it also includes a very good chapter on finding music for your projects and avoiding copyright infringement. While the authors are not lawyers, and cannot give use legal advice, they show a clear picture of the copyright minefield and show ways of avoiding getting into trouble. This tips are as valuable as all handy snippets of ActionScript code that the book is generously sprinkled with.

Finally, part 5 presents two tutorials on working with video. Topics discussed here include video asset acquisition, extracting frames, movie fine-tuning, Sorenson codec, video control, QuickTime tracking, bandwidth and resource management.

I like the attention to detail, and bags of practical tips and scripts found in this book. Like any well-written book, this one too makes the reader want to read more books by the same authors. Now I want another book on Flash sound, something for intermediate and advanced users. Let's hope New Riders read this and bribe the authors to write another tome. Well done!

PS. All source files for projects and demo versions of the software described in this book are provided on the CD-ROM sold with this book. The book follows the landscape layout of other books in the "... Magic" series.
Get the book now from Amazon