Tip #8, Clipping and re-using Sounds

LM's sound handling can be both good and bad, depending on what you're trying to do. On the good side, unlike Flash it can clip off extra sound data you don't need. Let's say you bring in a three-second sound and decide you want only the first second's worth of audio, so you slide the end point of the object's lifetime back to 1 second; LM will export only 1 second's worth of data. (See Movie, below)
Play the SWF with the original sound file.
Play the SWF with the clipped sound file.
But what if you use the sound again later, but this time you use all three seconds? LM will store a second copy of the sound, meaning you now have a total of four seconds' worth of audio data in your SWF--not so good.
To get around this, you can try wrapping sounds in time-independent groups, then setting the end point of the TIGs so that the sound gets clipped where you want, but the entire sound is stored just once (see Figure 1).

One warning: because the Flash player doesn't synchronize event sounds and animation, setting the out points in this way might not clip the sounds exactly where you specified. Since this depends heavily on processor speed, frame rate, and other factors, you should test your SWF on various computers.
Wrap sound in TIG

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