# About audio

Captivate lets you add narration, music, step-by-step instructions, or almost any sound to your movies. You can use audio as critical direction, emphasis, or background effect. In general, sound can be as individual and flexible as any other movie component.

Audio can be used in Captivate movies in a variety of ways. For example, you can do the following:

- Add a background track that plays for the duration of the movie.

- Add sound to an individual slide.

- Add sound to a specific object, such as a caption, click box, highlight box, or button.

- Use all three of the above options in the same movie.

Captivate lets you record your own audio files (using some simple equipment) or import existing files. You can record audio files at the same time the movie is recorded, or you can add an audio file later. Imported files can be in WAV or MP3 format. (If you add a WAV file to a movie, Captivate automatically converts the file to MP3 format.)

Once audio has been added to a movie, you can adjust the timing of objects to fit the sound file precisely. Captivate also contains features that enable you to add silent periods to audio files and to normalize audio for all slides so the sound level is consistent.

Tip: Captivate contains a gallery that has buttons, sounds, and animations (in SWF format) for you to use in your projects. By default, the gallery is stored in the following location when you install Captivate: C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Captivate\Gallery.