VGMTrans/BRSTM by MadMajor23 at 12:18 AM EST on November 11, 2024
I am trying to use VGMTrans (or really, any software that will allow me) to extract the music from Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth (Wiiware exclusive) and use that as its own soundfont within my DAW. I can't for the life of me figure this out. I've downloaded CV:TAR as a ROM, and its full OST as MP3's and BRSTM files. There are no converters I can find and I can't et anything to work...I think VGMTrans doesn't work for the BRSTM format. I know next to nothing about command prompts. Any tips would be appreciated.
VGMTrans works on sequenced files (essentially MIDI, IT, S3M, and stuff like that). The game you're after is using streamed files (essentially WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc.). Aka, what you're trying to do can't be done.
For clarity, how would you go about turning an MP3 file into a soundfont? To the best of my imagination, that would mean decoding the MP3 to a WAV file, and then cutting up the WAV file in an audio editor, to remove the excess sounds/music you don't want. This, of course, won't be completely successful, since none of the instruments are ever truly by themselves. You'll have to get creative. You'll probably have to build new samples altogether. The amount of work almost certainly wouldn't be worth it, and the results would almost certainly be something entirely different than the original instruments.
One thing *other* people have done, is to download soundfont libraries, and identify which instrument sets video game composers prefer to use. From there, they listen to the instrument samples, to identify which samples were used in which games. This is probably easier, than attempting to turn an MP3 *song* into a soundfont. See The VGM/Others Instrument Source Thread in this forum for what I mean in that regard.
Tl;Dr - You can't find any tools to do this, because it can't be done. You're attempting to pull sequence data, and instruments, from a pre-recorded file. It's like listening to the radio, and trying to "extract" a single specific note, with the correct instrument, from that radio broadcast.