Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers ripping help? by Frozyn at 11:33 PM EDT on September 1, 2012
Right, so after scouring the internet and not finding this games soundtrack in its native format, I've decided to try and rip it myself.
Unfortunately, the files weren't in there. There were, however, some files that I'm sure might contain them: dvdimageA.dat and/or dvdimageB.dat there are also two files named dvdimageA.pos and dvdimageB.pos which I'm assuming probably references the files in the respective dat file.
Upon further research, I couldn't find any sort of tool to look through them, or any information on how to unpack such files. How do I go about unpacking/extracting the music from these files?
Snakemeat: That's for Crystal Chronicles, not Crystal Bearers (they're two different games, and Crystal Chronicles uses sequences, whereas Crystal Bearers uses streamed music). This is, apparently, a common mistake, as bxaimc kept telling me "That game is sequenced." Crystal Chronicles is, indeed, sequenced, but Crystal Bearers is not.
Frozyn: I've been trying to get it ripped for years. I've never posted on the board though, since I don't have the expertise to do it. I've been asking for help in the IRC chat room (irc.foreverchat.net #console_stream). The dvdimageA.dat and dvdimageB.dat *DO* contain the music, but when I sent the information to HCS, he couldn't find any filename information. He created an extractor, but it dumps the data purely based on the order it encounters it in. In other words, you get a file structure that looks like this:
dirA\ file001 file002 file003 file004
etc. No file extensions, no directory names, etc. It makes it very difficult to figure out which files are music, and which are (currently) useless to you. Worse, is that it's a dual-audio format (if I recall correctly). Meaning, one file is the left channel, and a *different* file is the right channel. I did pull a bunch of "suspicious" files together (their file size was large enough to possibly be streamed audio, but small enough for me to upload them), and sent them to HCS, and he was able to send back a working DSP file, so the format is "easily" (easily meaning that the format is known) playable, but first you need to figure out which files are actually the audio that needs to be played. I still have the extractor (somewhere) along with the extracted data, but I've stopped looking. Since I seemed to be the only one interested, and I obviously didn't have the expertise necessary to do the work, I figured it wasn't worth me pestering others to do the work for me, when they obviously weren't very interested in helping. In their defense, it's not exactly easy (as I said) because it's difficult to run through the 2+ GB of nameless data, to figure out which files are actually the useful ones. It makes it even more difficult because they don't have the data themselves (and I don't have the bandwidth to upload the dvdimageA and dvdimageB files, or their extracted contents).
So, what you're looking for *is* available (that is, information regarding ripping this game), but it's in the IRC chat log. I'll look for the extractor, and see if I can upload it/find a link to it. At the very least, that'd get you at least as far as I've gotten. Maybe you'll be able to get a little further with it than I did. Good luck ripping it! I've been wanting this game ripped for quite awhile. Mouser X over and out.
Thank you very much, Mouser X. I'm glad I am not the only one interested in this. I do not know very much about what I'm doing in this regard, but I know enough to try and figure it out. I took a look at it with Game Extractor, and sounds a bit similar as to the files type you were talking about (just file001, file 002, etc) Most of them had no data, but a few them did have larger chunks of data (one was ~90mb, another was 16 mb, etc.) So, an extractor would be fairly useful in sorting these all out. Thank you very much for your time!
[EDIT] Well, it turns out that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers is fully supported in VGMstream r992. Just give the extracted files a *.SCD extension. What this means, is that Dragon Quest 10 uses the same audio format as FFCC:CB. In other words, if I had been able to help more (and received more help), DQX would have been supported "out of the gate" as it were, over a year and a half ago.... So, for anyone interested in ripping FFCC:CB, I'd suggest looking at dvdimageB.dat (dvdimageA.dat gave me nothing useful), specifically "dir_12" (at least, assuming the extractor works the same as it did when I used it). So far, everything I've been listening to has come from dir_11 (movie sound, so lots of sound effects) and dir_12 (actual music). Thanks again HCS (and bxaimc) for the help in the chat.
I got on the chat, in an effort to find the extractor. Luckily HCS was online (I couldn't find it...), and he pointed me to the QuickBMS script he wrote (ffcccbpos00.bms). My extracted files are from Feb 2011, so I don't really remember how to use this.... But I've been told that QuickBMS has a GUI, and will ask for where the BMS script is. Just make sure that all the necessary files (*.pos, *.bms, dvdimageA.dat and dvdimageB.dat) are in the same directory, and it will apparently work from there. Just be sure you have them all in a location that you want the files dumped to (aka, create an empty directory, put the *.bms script, the *.POS and dvdimageA.dat and dvdimageB.dat files inside this new directory, and then run all the stuff). My extracted data (imageA+imageB) is 2.7334 GB in size, So be sure to have a lot of free space on your HDD (I need a new HDD...).
That *should* create poorly named directories (dir_1, dir_2, etc.) and files (file_1, file_2). Once you've done that, the hard part is figuring out which ones are audio files. If/when the logs to the chat are back online (HCS moved recently, so the logs went offline), I might, possibly, be able to find a way to make it slightly easier.... Since it's a known format, it might be possible to use VGMtoolbox to search for patterns within the files. If I recall correctly, bxaimc told me what to search for, and how to do it (and thus it should be in the logs), but either I couldn't get it to work (quite likely), or I didn't understand him, and didn't want to press for details. If that works (searching for the pattern), it should be able to find all the files that are actually audio files. From there, you'd "only" have to figure out which files pair up to each other (since I'm pretty sure it's a dual-audio format), and then decide on a file extension for them (one might already exist in VGMstream), and then get someone to make sure that VGMstream actually decodes the files correctly (and to fix it if they don't).
Again, you can see why I didn't want to pester people with this.... There's a lot that needs to be done to get it to work. Theoretically it could be as simple as adding the correct extension. The problem, then, is figuring out which extension they'd need. It could be much more difficult than that though. We won't know how much more difficult, until we know for sure what format they actually are. We can't figure that out, without know which files are actually audio. I can't figure that out, without someone telling me. And they can't figure it out without having the files to look at (and they have to look at a few different ones, since some of them aren't audio).
Anyway, good luck. Honestly, your best bet is to get in the chat room and ask there. Upload some files for people to look at. Hopefully you can get a little further than I did. I know it's rippable, but obviously it requires a lot of work, and a little more expertise than what I have. Maybe you've got what I don't. Mouser X over and out.