When a sound file or video file is playing back while its data
is still being loaded, it is said to be
streaming
. External
sound files that are loaded from a remote server are often streamed
so that the user doesn’t have to wait for all the sound data to load
before listening to the sound.
The
SoundMixer.bufferTime
property represents
the number of milliseconds of sound data that Flash Player or AIR
should gather before letting the sound play. In other words, if
the
bufferTime
property is set to 5000, Flash Player
or AIR loads at least 5000 milliseconds worth of data from the sound
file before the sound begins to play. The default
SoundMixer.bufferTime
value is
1000.
Your application can override the global
SoundMixer.bufferTime
value
for an individual sound by explicitly specifying a new
bufferTime
value
when loading the sound. To override the default buffer time, first
create a new instance of the SoundLoaderContext class, set its
bufferTime
property,
and then pass it as a parameter to the
Sound.load()
method,
as shown below:
import flash.media.Sound;
import flash.media.SoundLoaderContext;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
var s:Sound = new Sound();
var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("bigSound.mp3");
var context:SoundLoaderContext = new SoundLoaderContext(8000, true);
s.load(req, context);
s.play();
As playback continues, Flash Player and AIR try to keep the sound
buffer at the same size or greater. If the sound data loads faster
than the playback speed, playback will continue without interruption.
However, if the data loading rate slows down because of network
limitations, the playhead could reach the end of the sound buffer.
If this happens, playback is suspended, though it automatically resumes
once more sound data has been loaded.
To find out if playback is suspended because Flash Player or
AIR is waiting for data to load, use the
Sound.isBuffering
property.
