tips for Flash Audio encoding

I finished my trailer and am trying to trouble-shoot the audio. It sounds great in my QT file, and when I convert thru FCP > Quicktime Conversion > Flash, I can get it to sound pretty great in a Flash timeline. When I send it to my Flash web guy and he publishes it to the web, it looks good, but the audio comes out crappy. Is there a better process to get good sound?

Encode Audio settings in FCP:
Audio MPEG Layer III (MP#) at 256kbps (stereo)

Flash Publish Audio Settings:
Raw, 44kHz, Stereo

Dual 2.5 Ghz G5, 5GB SDRAM, FCP 6.0.6, QT 7.6.2, OS 10.4.11

Flash projects use similar export dialogue to QTs. Before final export (make movie) from Flash, your web guru has a final say on jpg compression, physical dimensions, sound compression etc. Just ask him to crank up the bitrate and you're all set.

He did. The Flash Publish Audio Settings are his. And the highest: Raw. But they still sound crappy on my system. He says they sound great on his system, through Safari.

When I import my compressed FLV file to my own Flash timeline and do a "publish preview" with the same settings, it sounds great. I'm stumped. We're stumped.

We tried the posting the original source QT file through Safari and it sounds and looks great.


??

This going a bit OT since I am positive there is nothing wrong with your FLV. The problem is within the publish settings. Ask him to use MP3 audio with bitrate around 32-64. Using Flash as a media player for super audio CD -quality isn't such a good idea. Your system can't handle it.

32-64 kbps are low settings and sound terrible even on imported FLV to Flash on my system.

The publish audio settings are currently at their highest: Raw, 44kHz, Stereo. We've also tried the other settings. The MP3, 160 kbps sounds good too on Flash on my system.

Coming from him to my Safari is where the sound seems to fall apart.

Hi Dan,

Are you an experienced flash programmer or just learning how to use it? Need to know if you are familiar how Flash works and what the limitations are? Are you planning to run Flash in some kind of kiosk -mode locally? As said, I've never heard anyone using Flash as a high-quality media player and what you are writing is pointing to that direction.

Almost everything in Flash revolves around playback-optimization and bandwidth constrains. If you try to stream raw audio over the web you're in big trouble. Not going to happen since most webhosts limit the outgoing bandwidth for clients.

As far as I can tell, you have 2 potential problems: Your audio uses way too much bandwidth to play back smoothly and/or Safari's in-built Flash Player is unable to cope with your project. Once again, reducing audio bandwidth will most likely fix the problem.

No. I'm just learning how to do this. Thanks for your help.

I do want the best quality streaming for a trailer. And my Flash tech guy is trying to make it work for me.

I'm very interested in your comments, especially this one: "most webhosts limit the outgoing bandwidth for clients." If this is the case, then the source QuickTime video would also playback with poor sound quality, since it also is going through my same webhost. But it plays with excellent sound. So I'm going to rule that out. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The idea of Safari's built-in Flash player unable to handle it might be the problem. If that's true, is there a setting in Safari to optimize Flash performance?

I'm using Flash Player 9.

Dual 2.5 Ghz G5, 5GB SDRAM, FCP 6.0.6, QT 7.6.2, OS 10.4.11

No, your download speed does not affect QT quality. It just takes longer for it to download/buffer.

You really can't compare QT and Flash. They are two entirely different beasts: QT is a one trick pony designed to carry audio/video extremely well whereas Flash can do computational tasks, database querys, vector animation and stream A/V content (but not too well).

It will take way too much time to explain every possible cause for your problem so let's just troubleshoot:

- TRY different browser on your computer (Firefox, Opera etc)
- DOWNLOAD free Flash Media player, Run your FLV through that. Is the sound still crappy?
- ASK your web guru to kindly set audio to MP3 with reasonable compression instead of raw
- EXPLAIN what you consider as crappy audio? If YouTube -quality is way under Par you'll be better of with QT trailer. Flash is anything but ideal to deliver high quality A/V content.