Impossible to Sync Audio with Lips

Question

I understand that sound is measured in time and graphics in
frames, but the sound shouldn't start from the beginning when the
cursor is halfway into it. There must be a way around it.
I'm animating frame by frame with no vectors. I put a .wav
file in one of the sound channels and stretch it across the entire
animation (few thousand frames) for a scene. Then, no matter where
I am in the animation, when I press play the sound starts from the
beginning.
There is no way in hell I'll be able to sync lips with
dialogue by playing the entire scene from the beginning every time
just to see the sound synced with audio. I want to be able to play
the same fraction of a second (several frames) while animating and
KNOW WHERE IN THE SOUND I'M AT. I would have thought this expensive
program would at least display the spectrogram or something, much
less not play the audio from the beginning when I'm in the middle
of the sound sprite. I've prerecorded the entire sound score in one
Audacity file and exported it as a .wav to Director. I don't want
to use any other sound channels or ques, etc.
PLEASE HELP, and thank you.

Answer 1

Okay,
Since everyone's been kind enough to stick with me I'll try
to explain what I'm doing, but its a bit of a ramble.
I'm combining techniques of traditional animation with cutout
animation. I've created simple character designs on paper. I then
draw and color body parts on paper and create photoshop files of
each body part. Using the wand selection tool I relatively quickly
cut the drawing and make it a sort of "digital cutout" by creating
a photoshop the drawing I cut over a blank background layer. For
example if I want, say, a head to turn, I organized several of
these photoshop files (each a tween of the head turning) into a
folder and labeled the folder as a sequence for that particular
action (HEAD_TURN_LEFT). With this method I've created walk cycles,
heads squashing/stretching/turning/shaking, etc.
I asked a buddy of mine who was in charge of a computer
animation department at a local university, "Say I want a piece of
software that will act more as a cut-out studio than a vector
animation program. I want to be able to switch the body out every
time it turns or switch out several arms frame by frame for when I
want the character to raise its hand (instead of rotating a single
arm upward each frame). This is my nightmare hybrid of cutout / cel
techniques."
Basically he replied that I should look into director so I
decided to take my work over to someone who owns the program. No I
haven't made the mistake of blowing money on Director yet because
I'm only working with a test scene. I'm
in the process of testing director for my needs.
I was ecstatic to find that the sprite/cast member structure
of director truly seemed to suit my needs perfectly and, yes, too
perfectly. I rendered several .avi files and found that the final
product was what I was going for, which is a sort of early Mike
Judge look.
I decided that I could animate each shot of my scene as a
separate file in Director and edit them together with an editing
program. I chose to import a background and three characters to the
program and then add sound, preparing to animate to the sound. This
is where I finally ran into trouble and realized that I was
foolish....
I created the sound file in Audacity by mixing some 16 or 17
tracks into a stereo .wav file that I intended to import into
Director into one of the sound channels. When I imported the sound
it quickly became clear that this program not only won't bring in
the spectrogram, but also how the program merely knows to cue
sounds at specific frames but has nothing to do with synching an
entire single file.
I am now clear about the fact that the program is more
oriented for playing small amounts of footage, not scenes. That
would be fine because each file is just a short shot, but I'm not
intending to put sound to animation. Rather, I'm intending to put
animation to sound. The most tedious task will be lip sync, else
there'd be a way around it. So I've dead-ended. I mean, isn't there
at least a way to divide the sound into MANY single frame sprites?
THAT would solve everything.
Whew. Let me know if that makes any sense at all, and if not
I understand. The main point here is that even if I should have to
choose another piece of software, its going to need to use the same
sprite/member concept. Editing software won't solve the problem and
especially not after effects. One program is good for one thing,
and another is good for another, so if I could just put an end to
the issue by managing to stick with Director or a program very much
like it, that would be preferable. Thank you for falling victim to
this blabber.
Sincerely,
Darren