Effects File format.

[ATNO/TW]

April 25th, 2008, 9:40 am

Been playing around with Adobe Audition this morning after watching a tutorial on creating your own sound effects. Turned out to be much easier than I imagined and like the idea of using my own effects.

My question is what file format to save it in - noting that the intended use will be for Flash sounds, rollovers, etc.

mp3PRO (.mp3) is an obvious choice, but I had no idea there were so many options for .wav files. My available choices for .wav are:

A/m-Law Wave
ACM Waveform
DVI/IMA ADPCM
Microsoft ADPCM
WINDOWS PCM

I know PCM is Pulse Code Modulation and ADPCM is Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation, but rather clueless which one of those to choose. I'm also wondering if anyone knows whether .wav or .mp3 would be better for Flash sound effects.

Thanks.

April 26th, 2008, 12:03 pm

well flash will take either file type. I would simply save the file however you see fit (reasonably high quality) and then let flash do the compression...

In flash double click the sound file in the library. You'll get a screen that offers individual compression options for that sound. Flash does a pretty good job and that way you don't have to worry about what's "best for flash"

April 26th, 2008, 7:01 pm

Windows PCM is a file format commonly used in DVD authoring - I'm assuming it's one of the better file formats as far as compression goes (or lack thereof).

[ATNO/TW]

April 28th, 2008, 8:14 am

I found this rather good article on mp3 vs wav
http://radiosound.co.nr.freehostia.com/ ... -audition/

I guess I can just experiment with the different codecs. They are just sound effects that are less than a second each, so I suppose I don't really expect to hear that much quality difference.

[ATNO/TW]

April 28th, 2008, 11:47 am

OK. I'm a dummy. Never thought of looking into the Audition Users Guide. Of course there's a nice description of each of the formats. It does indeed look like Windows PCM is probably the way to go.

mp3Pro

Quote:

The mp3PRO filter enables Adobe Audition to directly encode and decode .mp3 files. When you save a file to mp3 format, the audio is encoded and compressed according to the options you select. When you open an mp3 file, the audio converts into the uncompresed internal format of Adobe Audition. As a result, you can save an .mp3 file in any format.

A/mu-Law Wave

Quote:

The A-Law and nu-law WAV formats are common in telephony applications. These encoding formats compress the original 16-bit audio to 8-bit audio (for a 2:1 compression ratio) with a dynamic range of about 13 bits (78dB). While A-Law and mu-Law encoded waveforms have a higher signal to noise ratio than 8-bit PCM, they also have a bit more distortion than the original 16-bit audio. Still the quality is higher than you get with some 4-bit ADPCM formats.

ACM Waveform

Quote:

Microsoft ACM (Audio Compression Manager) is part of all 32-bit versions of Windows. Adobe Audition supports the ACM driver, which enables you to open and save files in a variety of formats other than those directly supported by Adobe Audition.

DVI/IMA ADPCM

Quote:

The International Multimedia Association (IMA) flavor of ADPCM compresses 16-bit data to 4bits/sample (4:1) by using a different (faster) method than Microsoft ADPCM. It has different distortion characteristics, which can produce either better r worse results depending on the sample being compressed. As with Microsoft ADPCM, use this format with 16-bit rather than 8-bit files. This compression scheme can be a good alternative to MPEG; it provides reasonably fast decoding of 4:1 compression, and it degrades sample quality only slightly.

Microsoft ADPCM

Quote:

The Microsoft ADPCM format provides 4:1 compression. Files saved in this format expand automatically to 16-bits when opened, regardless of their original resolution. For this reason use with 16 bit files rather than 8-bit files.

Windows PCM

Quote:

The Microsoft Windows PCM format supports both mono and stereo files at a variety of resolutions and sample rates. It follows the RIFF (Resource Information File Format) specification and allows for extra user-information to be embedded and saved with the file. The WAV format reproduces digital audio by using PCM (Pulse Code Modulation)--PCM doesn't require compression and is considered a lossless format.