Animation

Sound

Dialogue, music and effects play with your timeline in Phoenix, and are mixed into exported video.

Bring in sound

Import sounds with File › Import › Import to Library..., or drag sound files onto the window. Phoenix reads WAV, AIFF, MP3, FLAC and Ogg files. Each sound becomes a library item. File › Import › Import to Stage... (Ctrl+R), or dropping a sound file on the stage, also puts it on the current frame. File › Import › Import Animatic... brings in an animatic's audio tracks, each on a layer of its own; see Start from the animatic.

Put a sound on the timeline

1. Make a keyframe where the sound should start, ideally on a layer of its own.
2. On the Frame tab, under Sound, choose the sound from the Name list. You can also drag the sound from the library onto the stage to attach it to the current frame, or onto a frame in the timeline to put it on that layer at that frame.

The sound's waveform is drawn across the frames it plays over, which makes it easy to time animation to beats and syllables.

Sound settings

Sync

Stream locks the sound to the timeline: it plays only while the playhead moves through its frames, and scrubbing plays the bit under the playhead. Use it for dialogue and anything that has to stay in sync with the picture.
Event plays the whole sound from start to finish once triggered, independent of the timeline.
Start is like Event, but doesn't start the sound again if it is already playing.
Stop silences the chosen sound.

Repeat / Loop

Plays the sound a set number of times, or loops it.

Effect

Left Channel, Right Channel, Fade Left to Right, Fade Right to Left, Fade In and Fade Out, or Custom, a volume envelope of your own.

When you play the document in Phoenix, you hear the sounds on the scene's own timeline and those inside the movie clips on the stage, as each clip plays its own timeline. To hear only the scene's sounds, turn on View › Mute Movie Clip Sounds; Phoenix remembers the choice, and exports include movie clip sounds either way. Sounds inside graphic symbols and buttons stay silent, and sounds on hidden layers are left out of playback and exports.

To work in silence, choose View › Mute Sounds (Ctrl+Alt+M).

Edit Envelope

Click Edit... beside the Effect, or choose Custom, to shape the sound's volume. The waveform shows in two lanes, the left channel over the right, each with its volume as a line from silent at the bottom to full at the top:

• Click a lane to add a point there, up to eight. Drag a point to move it along the sound and to set that channel's volume.
• Drag a point well out of its lane to take it away.
• Drag the green and red bars on the ruler between the lanes to trim where the sound starts and stops.
• Zoom In and Zoom Out to work closely; Frames measures the ruler in frames instead of seconds; Play and Stop preview the sound as the frame will play it; Clear sets full volume throughout, untrimmed.

The envelope and trim are one step to undo, and are saved as FLA files keep them.

Split Audio

To cut a stream sound in two, for example to slip the second half of a line a few frames later, put the playhead inside its span on its layer and choose Modify › Timeline › Split Audio. A new keyframe starts there, playing the sound from that point on with the same settings and envelope, and the first keyframe stops where the second begins.

Exporting sound

File › Export › Export Movie... (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S) mixes every sound that plays, movie clip sounds included, into the video while Include sound is checked: as AAC in an H.264 MP4, or as uncompressed audio in a ProRes MOV. To export the mix on its own, choose the Sound (WAV) format. See Export Movie.

SWF movies carry the same mix as a soundtrack that streams with the frames, so it stays in step with the animation. File › Publish Settings... sets how it is compressed under SWF sound:

• MP3: the smallest, at a bit rate from 16 to 192 kbps. MP3 needs the encoder in Phoenix's ffmpeg; where it has none, the movie gets ADPCM instead and the status bar says so.
• ADPCM: quick and plain, at 2 to 5 bits a sample (more bits, truer sound, larger file).
• Raw: uncompressed, for the truest sound.
• None: a silent movie.

Each also has a sample rate (5.5, 11, 22 or 44 kHz; MP3 starts at 11) and can be stereo or mono. The settings apply to File › Publish, File › Export › Export SWF Movie... and SWF renders from the command line. Because the sounds are mixed into one soundtrack, a sound's own sync, envelope and loops play as they do in Phoenix.

Reference video

File › Import › Import Video... brings in live action or an animatic to animate over. Phoenix decodes the video into one still per frame on a locked guide layer, with the stills in a library folder, so it shows while you work but is never exported. You can choose to shrink the video to the stage width and to import its sound as a stream sound.

Most common video formats work, including MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV and WebM. Phoenix reads them with the copy of ffmpeg that comes with it, so nothing else needs to be installed.

An FLA file may hold video items of its own, embedded or linked, placed on the stage. Phoenix lists them in the library (double-click one for its size, frame rate and source), shows each placement as a frame with the video's name, and saves them unchanged; it does not play them.

Lip sync

Draw the mouth shapes as the frames of a graphic symbol, put an instance of it on a layer of its own, select it and choose Modify › Lip Sync....

• From a recording. Phoenix runs Rhubarb Lip Sync, a free program (MIT licensed) that listens to a WAV or Ogg recording of the line and works out the mouth shapes. Download it once and point Phoenix at rhubarb.exe; Phoenix remembers where it is. Typing the words spoken helps it get them right. Without Rhubarb, Phoenix listens itself: it opens the mouth wider as the voice gets louder, closes it between syllables, sets the teeth together for hissing sounds and rests it in the quiet. That is rougher than Rhubarb but needs nothing else.
• From a cue file. Load mouth shapes worked out before: Rhubarb's TSV output, or a Papagayo or Moho switch file (.dat).

Choose Read Mouth Shapes, then set the mouth chart: the frame of your mouth graphic each shape is drawn on (Rhubarb's shapes are A to H and X for rest; Papagayo's are its phoneme names). Key the Mouth clears the mouth layer over the line and puts a keyframe wherever the mouth changes, each showing its shape's frame as a single frame, starting on the frame you chose. The chart is kept with the mouth symbol for next time, and the whole step undoes at once.