Director handles sounds as either internal or linked. You can determine whether a sound is internal or linked when you import it. Each type of sound has advantages for different situations.

Director stores all the sound data for an internal sound cast member in a movie or cast file and loads the sound completely into RAM before playing it. After an internal sound is loaded, it plays very quickly. This makes internal sound best for short sounds, such as beeps or clicks, that recur frequently in your movie. For the same reason, making a large sound file an internal sound isn’t a good choice because the sound might use too much memory.

Director doesn’t store sound data in a linked sound cast member. Instead, it keeps a reference to a sound file’s location and imports the sound data each time the sound begins playing. Because the sound is never entirely loaded into RAM, the movie uses memory more efficiently.

Because Director streams many sounds, it begins playing the sound while the rest of the sound continues to load from its source, whether on disk or over the Internet. This can dramatically improve the downloading performance of large sounds. Linked sounds are best for longer sounds such as voice-overs or nonrepeating music.

Director can stream the following sounds:

• QuickTime, Shockwave Audio, and MP3 sounds that are linked from a URL
• QuickTime, Shockwave Audio, MP3, AIFF, and WAV sounds that are linked to a local file

Director imports AIFF and WAV sounds (both compressed and uncompressed), AU, Shockwave Audio, and MP3. For best results, use sounds that have 8- or 16-bit depth and a sampling rate of 44.1, 22.050, or 11.025 kHz.

1. Select File > Import and select sound files to import.
2. Select a Media option:

   Standard Import makes all the selected sounds internal sound cast members.

   Link To External File makes all the selected sounds linked.

   Include Original Data for Editing lets you edit original sound files in Director.

3. Click Import.