You are here: Features > Audio > About Audio

About Audio

This feature is supported in DotNet Help, HTML Help, WebHelp, WebHelp Plus, WebHelp AIR, and WebHelp Mobile output.

You can insert Windows Media audio directly into your Flare topics or snippets. See Inserting Audio Files.

There are two ways to do this. First, you can use the Insert>Multimedia option. When you use this option, the audio is embedded into the topic or snippet. In addition, you can specify advanced settings, such as whether to include controls with the audio (e.g., Play, Pause), whether to automatically start the audio when the topic displays, and audio levels.

Second, you can use the Insert>Hyperlink option. When you use this option, the user must click the text link in order to open the audio. Also, you can choose to play the audio in another window.

Here is an example of an embedded WAV file.

Following are the audio file types supported.

.asf	.mp4	.wax	.
.au	.mpa	.wm	.
.mid	.mpeg	.wma	.
.midi	.mpg	.wmx	.
.mp3	.wav	.	.

Note: When you insert an audio file from outside your project (using the Insert>Multimedia option), a copy of the file is added to your project. The file is stored in the Content Explorer (Resources\Multimedia subfolder).

MULTIMEDIA NOT WORKING? Due to issues with Windows Media, these files will not work in the compiled output if the link from the topic to the media file has ../ at the beginning (to read the Microsoft KB article, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/819105). For example, let's say you have a topic at the root level of the Content Explorer and another topic that is in a folder you created. Suppose that each of these topics contains a link to a Windows Media file that is stored (by default) in the Resources/Multimedia folder in the Content Explorer. The file will work in the first topic but not in the second. The solution is to move either the topic or the multimedia file to fix the link. Therefore, you might decide to move the multimedia file into the folder where the topic is stored. Alternatively, you might move all topics that use multimedia into one folder. Then, you might place all multimedia files in that same folder or a subfolder within it.