Ripping SSX Blur by Jules at 8:47 PM EST on February 22, 2013
Hello,
I haven't been able to download manakoAT's torrent from the "The Official Streamed VGM Distribution Thread" which contains an SSX Blur game rip, so I figured I'd just rip the files myself. Unfortunately, I haven't been very successful so far.
The file system on the disc contains files named music.big and femusic.big, from which I managed to extract Track.mus and TrackFE.mus. I managed to chop these up into a few hundred files which seem to fit a few technical descriptions I came across. They are divided into chunks which all start with SCxl ids. The first chunk starts with SCHl and contains a format header starting with PT.
Well, I figured I wouldn't have to dive in this deep anyways, since it's already been ripped, so I guessed that vgmstream would already support them. From the VGM distribution thread, I got this line:
SSX Blur (2007)(EA Sports Big)[WII][Electronic Arts XA][EAM]
I guess that means the format is "Electronic Arts XA" and the file extension I need to give it for vgmstream to recognize the format is "EAM". Thing is, when I do that, I get four channels of what sounds like white noise with lots of silence at the end. Also, the metadata that vgmstream displays doesn't fit the metadata I extracted from the PT header by hand.
For example:
decoding Track2.eam sample rate 48000 Hz channels: 4 stream total samples: 7833280 (163.1933 seconds) encoding: Big Endian 16-bit PCM layout: flat (no layout) metadata from: Standard Nintendo DSP header samples to play: 7833280 (163.1933 seconds)
From what my specification says (which may very well be wrong, although it described the PT header format very accurately), the file should contain 1280000 samples, which, interestingly enough, is what I get if I give the file the extension ASF:
decoding Track2.asf sample rate 48000 Hz channels: 4 stream total samples: 1280000 (26.6667 seconds) encoding: Big Endian 16-bit PCM layout: flat (no layout) metadata from: Standard Nintendo DSP header samples to play: 1280000 (26.6667 seconds)
But unfortunately this also results in while noise, although with less silence at the end this time. I'm also somewhat puzzled about vgmstream telling me that the encoding is just 16-bit PCM, since the files are much too small for uncompressed PCM audio.
Unfortunately, I haven't found anything about the process involved in making the rip that's already out there, but maybe someone who knows what's going on can give me a pointer in the right direction. I can also upload sample files somewhere if that's needed.