Adobe Community: Use Imported MP3 quality not available

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1. Newsgroup_User,

Oct 28, 2006 10:21 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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ChrisRTA wrote:
> I am trying to avoid having flash recompress my MP3 audio when publishing. In
> the help menu, it says I should open the properties dialogue for the MP3 file
> in my library. Then I should select "MP3" from the dropdown menu. Then I
> should select "Use imported MP3 quality." However, when I select "MP3" from
> the dropdown menu, there is no use imported MP3 quality option. It only gives
> me compression options.

Use WAV format instead. You can give it MP3 compression upon export.

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Urami

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2. rafiqelmansy,

Oct 28, 2006 11:34 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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Hi,
You can disable the compression of your published sound from the Audio setting in the Publish Setting menu as following:
1- From the publish setting, open Audio Streaming or Audio Event setting dailog box
2- Choose Disable compression from the Compression drop-down menu

Hope this helps

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3. metrov,

Feb 21, 2007 3:40 PM in reply to rafiqelmansy

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I'm sorry, but neither of the provided solutions really work. I'm having the same problem as ChrisRTA -- the "Use Imported MP3 Quality' check box does not show up. I need this because my client demands that his MP3 sounds are not changed or re-compressed in any way.

'Disabling' compression for 'stream'] in publish settings still results in a lower [unacceptable] sound quality. I'm not sure why, but even playing with the different options in the Sound Properties window [like 'default', MP3, etc] it seems 'disabling' doesn't do anything. If I 'Disable' both Stream & Event, then the .swf publishes with no audio whatsover.

I've researched this issue on the web, and other people have had this problem. No solutions offered except someone suggested it might have something to do with how the MP3's have been created.

It would be nice if Adobe gave us some help on this. I've lost many hours trying to resolve.

Thanks

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4. Walter Elias,

Feb 21, 2007 6:46 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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I just tried this and here's the mystery!

When I import MP3 sounds that were originally 48 kbps and 128kbps bitrate, the "Use Imported MP3 Quality" check box DOES appear!

When I import MP3 sounds that were originally 56, 160, 192 and 320 kbps bitrate, the "Use Imported MP3 Quality" did not appear.

I failed high school algebra, so I am unable to come up with an equation to solve this. But it seems that there must be some number which the bitrate must be a multiple of, in order for Flash to enable imported MP3 quality export.

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5. ChrisRTA,

Feb 22, 2007 10:08 AM in reply to ChrisRTA

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Here's what I've found that is not necessarily obvious to someone who is not an audio engineer: An MP3 file can be compressed to whatever bitrate you want, but it still has a sample rate that is completely independent of the bitrate. As such, flash's "feature" that automatically resamples audio files to multiples of 11Khz extends to MP3 as well. If your MP3 file was not compressed at some multiple of 11Khz sample rate, the "use imported MP3 quality" box will not be available.

HOWEVER, while this helps some, it did not solve my overall problem, which is that I wanted flash to not touch my audio at all. It seems it is not possible to avoid having flash compress your audio at some point of the process. If someone from Adobe could verify that there is or is not a way to leave our audio untouched, that would be very helpful. (and if it's not possible, please include it in the next version!)

My eventual solution was just to go back to using wav files and have flash compress the MP3 audio. The quality is slightly worse than what my sound engineer had been able to provide, but it was a better result than what flash gave me when I used "use imported MP3 quality" on a properly created MP3 file. For whatever reason, flash recompressing the already processed file created ugly audio artifacts and generally negated the benefit of using a better quality file to begin with.

I hope my experience can help somebody!

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6. amay0_0,

Apr 4, 2007 4:13 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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I too have very good quality mp3 sound and have been frustrated because Flash won't use the imported mp3 quality - same problem as Chris. All my sound is 44 kHz 16 bit mono, all recorded at the same time and edited by me in the same way.

So the divisible by 11kHz that Chris suggests doesn't work for me. However, I do have one sound event that sounds excellent in my movie - it's even more noticeable because it's in the middle of muddy, tinny, degraded sound events (as I said, all recorded and processed the same). Here's the difference. For the degraded sound files, Flash thinks they are large files when they are not; for example, Flash says the size of sound event 1 is 230.7 kb, where the actual file size on disc is 24 kb. This huge file size discrepency is true of the other 10 degraded sound events I looked at. In all these cases, Flash doesn't ever display the "use imported mp3 quality" option.

In the one case of excellent sound, Flash automatically displays the "use imported mp3 quality" and it says that the sound size is 17.3 kb. The file on disk is 20 kb.

It looks as though Flash doesn't recognize all the other sound files as mp3 (although on disk they are all mp3) and is decompressing them only to compress them again and do a terrible job. So what is the solution to this problem (I need excellent sound for my application and I paid recording fees so that it would be good) and why doesn't Adobe say something about this?

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7. amay0_0,

Jul 23, 2007 2:02 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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I'm replying to my previous reply and the problem is solved. It turned out that my audio was recorded at 48000 Hz sample rate. The one mp3 sound clip that Flash handled properly was recorded at 44100 Hz. (I thought all my sound clips were 44kHz from looking at the Flash properties - this is not the place to look. Audacity gave me the true rate.) So ChrisRTA had it right.

When I convert my mp3 clips to 44100 Hz, Flash treats them as mp3 and they sound excellent in the swf file. I don't think Flash is recompressing them at any point.

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8. rafiqelmansy,

Jul 23, 2007 10:50 PM in reply to amay0_0

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Hi,
It is strange, but I am trying to think with you. I know that the best extension to use to get a good audio quality is to import the audio as .wav not .mp3, because Flash converts all the sounds to mp3. May be this is why the quality you get from the .wav files is better than the one you get form the mp3 files, even when the compression is disabled, Flash still convert the sound whatever its extension to mp3. So, it is like you convert an mp3 file intro an mp3 using a sound convert, mp3 is a compress

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9. Garrett_Albright,

Aug 8, 2007 3:17 PM in reply to ChrisRTA

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Okay, I've run into the same problem, and I think I've got this figured out. ChrisRTA was close, but the magic denominator is not 11 kHz, but exactly 11025 Hz (11.025 kHz). So, the MP3 must have a sample rate of 11025, 22050, or 44100 Hz. (33075 Hz would theoretically fit in this rule, but my MP3 encoder doesn't seem to support that frequency so I can't test it.)

It seems possible to work around this by using a loader to load the MP3 externally, but it plays back too quickly ("chipmunk-like") then.

This stipulation would not be so annoying if it were better documented.

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10. Garrett_Albright,

Aug 8, 2007 5:59 PM in reply to Garrett_Albright

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Okay, looks like I spoke too soon… Flash is now trying to re-encode some of my 44.1kHz MP3s as well. At first, I thought it was a stereo/mono thing, but further testing dispels that. So it looks like there's some factor in addition to the multiple-of-11025-Hz thing.

In addition, when I try to add *some* MP3s to the stage by drag-and-dropping, it fails silently and nothing ever shows up in the library.

Adobe, it looks like this aspect of the IDE could really use some work! At least tell us what the limitations are so we don't have to guess!

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11. DJ Gecko,

Flash Pro - General

Use Imported MP3 quality not available

Oct 27, 2006 11:31 AM

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