Background music -- Help !!

[httpman]

Hello everyone there.

I have just added a background music on my website (texts are in french only - but the music have no borders!).

Well, what I like so much is that the music is *continuous*, with no break or re-start when walking from page to page. As one could expect, this is achieve using a frameset (I hate framesets, but for continuous music playing I have not found any other way to do it).

Here is my question : this background music is played thanks to a simple Flash file, but the music starts playing only when the mp3 file is fully loaded. Is there any way to force it to start playing when, let's say : 20% or 30% of the file is loaded ? Then the music could play WHILE the music ends loading, both at the same time.

Is it a dream ?
Any help is welcome !

Merci à chacun,

Jean-Pierre, from France

[smurphy430]

Set the Sync to "Stream" and at the 1st frame type 999 in the loop. Hopes this helps. I am haveing trouble with music in flash too.

Steve

[voodooboy]

The problem with streaming MP3 files is that the application adds frames for every loop time specified when it renders your movie. This makes your increases your file size by the amount of times you set it to loop. Might I suggest a splash page? If you have a splash page with a little copy, you could set the movie to load within the splash page. This way when the visitor enters the site the music should be completely or at least most the way loaded so the wait is not as long.

Streaming is great for voiceovers and such as the sound file moves in line with the animation. If you have no animation and are just using flash to play the music, then streaming is not the way to go.

[httpman]

Steve, Scott

Thanks a thousand times.
Using your advices, I have created a single loop in order to keep the .SWF size close to the MP3 file size. Therefore at the end of the scene, Flash automatically loops and then the music starts again.

Some problems will probably appear when the connexion speed is lower than the MP3 bitrate, I guess that one way to manage this issue is to cut the music in smaller loops, and make each part looping as long as the following one is not loaded. But this will take much more time to do, so your solution is really the best for me, at present.

Many thanks !

Jean-Pierre