Penny Gardner - FET 5622 - Semester 2, 2006

Music Box in Flash


Activity 4.5

Music Box, created using Flash. File size is 210Kb. It's a shame that opening the file within the same window results in the animation of the records being less effective (I think) than having it in a separate window.

Skills Gained

This part of the assignment was SO difficult! The sound controls are not perfect, but I think the problems are caused by the basic design, which I am loth to change. I built the background in Flash using an image from the Family Services Ottawa website for the central logo. I emailed them for permission to use it but did not receive a reply - if planning to use this publicly I would have to write to them or change the logo (or design an alternative myself). I created the record buttons using Flash and this is where the problems started, I think because they were all copies of the same button and are part of the motion tween as well as being buttons. I tried using an invisible button instead, but the problems still remained. So I wasn't able to give them an 'on', 'off' indicator as required. Instead, I solved the requirement to prevent tracks playing at the same time by giving each button an action: on(rollOver){stopAllSounds} and also added a 'stop the music' control with the same action.

The record movements were controlled using a grid as a guide (pulled down from the ruler bar). I used 'snap to grid' to position them and timed their movements to the movie frames, using motion tweening. The music clips were downloaded from the Flash Kit site and trimmed and optimised using WavePad.

I found ActionScript very difficult to understand and got confused between putting action on frames, on buttons and trying (not succeeding) to put them inside buttons. I think I may have ended up with buttons inside buttons, which I later realised is not good. With hindsight I should have sorted out the buttons first (as recommended in the course material) but got rather carried away with the design. I didn't like the look of any of the standard Flash buttons so haven't really any regrets, in the end.

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References

Family Services Ottawa (2006): Juke Box Mania accessed 17 November 2006. http://www.familyservicesottawa.org/english/4thannualfundraiser.html

Flash Kit (2006) A Flash Developer Resource Site: accessed 17 November 2996. http://www.flashkit.com/

WavePad Audio Editing Software, NCH Swift Sound, accessed 11 October 2006: http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/masters.html

 

Author: Penny Gardner
This page last updated on: October 11, 2006

 

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