I tagged and timed that already, I just haven't uploaded it (along with ~5-10 sets) because I'm trying to finish up a few things (modified volumes based on replay gain, retiming a few other sets so they can be replay gained accurately, and then updating the database file). Thanks for timing it though, it's nice to see people still interested in N64 music.
Oh well. I would do Turok 2 except for 2 things. In the River of Souls file (I think), it crashes Winamp at about 4 minutes. The other thing is some of the tracks are incredibly long (even just 1 loops), for example, Port of Adia is about 5:20 per loop, so a 2 loops would be just under 11 minutes possibly, and Oblivion is extremely long at just under 15 minutes (per loop), so 30 minutes with 2 loops. River of Souls if over 5 minutes, Primagen's Lightship IIRC is over 6 minutes long, there's another stage that's about 10 and another at around 11 minutes, again these are just one loop. Of course, the timing isn't really that bad. It's more a case of the crashing.
I recall that being a problem a while ago, I think I had contacted Josh W about it, and he put up a modified usf player that fixed that problem, but I don't remember where. I'll contact him about it and see if he can point me to it, and I'll put it up on usf.hcs64.com
OK, thanks. So, if I find any untimed and/or untagged rips, do I just e-mail them to hcs or what? And how should I send them? ZIP, RAR? Megaupload, or doesn't it matter (as long as you get it?)
I set up an ftp pointing to my current usf stuff, email me and I'll set up an account if you'd like to peruse through it and see what is already done. Also, with sets that you tag/time, send them to same email address.
if you'd be happy to time custom robo 2 i could pretty easily fill out the composers and titles for that and custom robo 1, since i've got the OST sitting here. i think custom robo 1 is already timed properly at least.
Are you talking to me or anyone, Lunar? Of course I've never played any Custom Robo games but it should be fairly obvious when a song loops. Also, the timed sets are usually set to 2 loops with a 5 or 10 second fade out, so I assume that's how you like them. What though, if a track is really long (like say 5+ minutes for each loop), though?
Personally, I say loop it twice, if possible, regardless of the length. Obviously, this does not hold true for everyone. I don't remember who it was, but they'd include a *.BAT file with their tags, so that you could use PSFpoint, and time it for one loop, or two, depending on which batch file you used. If you've timed it for one loop, timing it for two isn't much harder, and you could then create a batch file for those who want one, or two, loops.
Anyway, if it was me (it's not, obviously), I'd do two loops regardless of length. I like to listen to my songs. So what if it's long? As long as the song isn't 5 minutes of garbage, and then loops, for an additional 5 minutes of garbage, I don't see the problem. Mouser X over and out.
Mouser_X, that was someone42. (which has led me to try and do the same thing for sets that aren't tagged currently, and led me to make a tool to make the process of creating said batch files a bit quicker) also, for 10+ minute songs, I'd still time it to 2 loops (well 1 & 2 loops with batch files to do the retiming via psfpoint) with a 10 second fade.
Speaking of timing USFs, the Practice tune from Super Smash Bros actually has a single looping length of over 9 minutes, and loops for the 2nd time at 18:42
i usually go with 2 loops + 10 second fade, though 5 seconds is fine. as for custom robo 2, i haven't played it either. i was going to tag both custom robo sets properly but i just don't feel up to it right now. if no-one gets around to timing it i might eventually. dunno.
Well 2 loops + 10 seconds it is (personally anything shorter than a 5 second fade is too quick, and sounds like you're turning it down really quickly for some reason). I'll to T2:SOE
Well I've timed the first 12 tracks. The others are just too hard for me to actually determine WHEN the loop starts, especially since those tracks are likely to have VERY long intros with much shorter loops, like a full loop of 10 minutes, of which 6 minutes is a very long intro, meaning that the loop is only 4 minutes, and therefore 2 loops would be 14 minutes rather than 20 minutes. I'm not saying that's exactly correct but there's probably ones like that, since I cannot tell when any of the songs loop at all. And I should say that I'm using the most rediculous method of timing them, and that is by simply playing the files in Winamp, and setting the time in the file properties thingy (when you right click and select "View file info"), and that's probably not the most accurate.
The times I managed to get for 2 loops for the 1st 12 tracks in the game are: Intro - 0:30 Title - 1:36 Port of Adia - 10:06 Totem 1 - 5:00 River of Souls - 9:27 Totem 2 - 2:37 Adon Hub - 1:55 Save Game - 1:04 Death Marshes - 18:50 Sacred Feather - 0:47 Lair of the Blind Ones - 14:11 Blind One Boss - 3:53 Can anyone who has the ability to find where and when a song loops confirm whether these are correct? (I may be a couple of seconds out)
I'm either thinking I should let someone else time USFs because I just simply go by the method of listening to the track and just listening to when it's looped twice, and that's not exactly easy with games like Turok 2, but you've probably got some program that can automatically detect loop points and stuff, right?
for usfs, no, there isn't a program that times them automatically personally i export it to wave & use audition 3 to time them visually & then test that it loops correctly audibly
Sometimes if I'm too lazy to actually listen to the song, I'll use Audacity (is that what you meant, or is Audition a different program) and just see if I can see a pattern, but even that's pretty hard. Well I think one or 2 I may be able to do.
OK, so the only ones I can't find the loop (visually or audibly) are 13, 14, and 19 ("Intro to the Hive", "Hive of the Mantids" and Oblivion)
So far, (excluding the 10 second fade), the times I've gotten are: 1. Intro - 00:30 2. Title - 1:36 3. Port of Adia - 5:06 4. Totem 1 - 5:00 5. River of Souls - 9:27 6. Totem 2 - 2:37 7. Adon Hub - 1:55 8. Save Game - 1:04 9. Death Marshes - 18:50 10. Sacred Feather - 0:47 11. Lair of the Blind Ones - 14:11 12. Blind One Boss - 3:53 15. Mantid/Primagen Boss - 3:02 16. Oblivion's Lair - 0:56 17. Primagen's Lightship - 10:39 18. Mother Boss - 2:14
So, should I e-mail the set with what I've timed so far?
On the subject of timing rips, how do you time (or even do anything) to the seperate GBS files in an M3U playlist)? I made a playlist of the GBS rip of Donkey Kong Country. The one here only has 2 tracks.
EDIT: Wait, you can just do it with NotePad, right?
So, I was doing a little experiment to see just when the tunes in Game Boy Camera looped. What I did, was output each channel as a wave, then used Audacity to work out the rough length of the loop for each individual channel for a particular tune, and then worked out the LCM (lowest common multiple) of the lengths. For example, let's say one of the channels has a length of 6.40 seconds roughly, another has 8.56, another has 5.37, and the final one has a length of 7.45. The LCM of all 4 tracks would be 54792902.40, which is in seconds, and therefore, the loop length would roughly be 1.7 years. Unfortunately there is a bit of a flaw. For example, the accuracy of the loop length. If for example, one measures the same lengths but rounds them to the nearest 0.1 seconds, the LCM then becomes just 18576 seconds, or 5.15 hours, which is extremely shorter. The best way would be to zoom in on Audacity as small as you can go, and work out the precise length of each loop to the nearest 0.000001 seconds (microsecond). Never the less, for the first track (#2 in the GBS set) (the Title), it works out at about 39 seconds (for 1 loop). I then went to the next track that had an unusual rhythm which was #11 in the set. I worked out the length of each loop was unbelieveably long. After working out the LCM of the lengths, it apparently works out that a single loop (that is the time it takes for every part of the song to start at exactly the time) is as I said, unbelieveably long. I'm not saying about 20 minutes. I'm not even talking 5 weeks. I'm talking about 1.2 years. Literally. About 40 million seconds long. So, yeah, anyone think timing the GBCamera rip (as an M3U playlist) is a good idea? Probably not. There's probably some that are EVEN longer. Of course, it's impossible for them to NEVER loop since well, no matter what random numbers you think of, EVERY set of numbers has a lowest common multiple.
Though you are still correct, with a finite digital memory there are only so many states it can take, but it can be pretty incredibly vast. Imagine a track that does:
1. one note 2. a rest 3. two notes 4. a rest 5. three notes 6. a rest etc.
The loop length is limited only by the largest value you can count, and even with the scant memory of the GB, if you use it only for storing a the counters for this you're way beyond the lifetime of the universe (even if these are short notes and rests).
my suggestion is to use common sense and time them for appropriate lengths. if some do genuinely not loop for exceedingly long periods of time, go with a more reasonable 2 or 3 loops of one of the musical lines.
so, tagged/timed gameboy camera would still be plausible i think (and appreciated.)
Loopy. by Electric Keet at 11:02 PM EDT on March 22, 2010
I have to admit that I absolutely cannot stand two-loop timing. Every obscure-format plugin worth its weight in electrons allows the user to choose the number of times the tracks loop before fading. Why force it to double? Why bother to time them carefully but to twice the actual value? If you like loops, tell the player to loop it a second time, or a third, or a twelfth, or until the heat-death of the universe.
I'm especially annoyed by long, sprawling tracks (practically anything by Tim Follin) being timed to loop through twice. I mean, I love the music, but anything in excess of a minute and a half minutes long is probably the sort of thing that works better on only one loop, right? Sure, I can fix the tags myself, but it seems a little absurd to have to do that each time a revision to the set appears....
I'm sure I'm stepping on everyone's religion here. Two cents done.
i agree, it would make more sense to time just one loop and fade length separately. then define how many loops you want in the configurations of various different plugins. though most of them don't have that functionality. two loops+fade IS the best compromise we can use universally across all formats though, it's what's most frequently used on official OST releases and it's also what most people seem happy with.
so i do agree with you really. the only alternative i see is providing oneloop and twoloop batch files with each set, and that's extra work that probably no-one will bother over.
^sure you can. ^^except that for nsfs (and similar formats) looping doesn't work the way it works for streams. nsfs are "never ending"
edited 1:46 PM EDT March 29, 2010
edited 1:50 PM EDT March 29, 2010
NSF timing. by Electric Keet at 7:17 PM EDT on April 1, 2010
Well, the NSFe format has support for timing and playlists and all that. I edit that stuff in foobar2000 using GEP. Is there some reason that NSFe seems to be out of favour with so many folks here, or am I somehow delusional in picking up on that?
I love NSFe, but Knurek, and many others, do not. The biggest arguments against it, that I can recall, are:
*|* Lack of support. This isn't very true, at least, not anymore. It's supported by GME, and thus the in_mgme plugin, as wall as NotsoFatso, which originated the NSFe format, and foobar2000 through the foo_gep thing. I think that's based on GME though
*|* The players that do support it aren't very good. NotsoFatso has some very noticeable problems, compared to more modern NSF players. But again, GME supports NSFe, so there's some pretty good players out there that support the format.
*|* The format is flawed. When an NSFe is created, it's no longer an NSF. Due to the alteration, the format is changed (I don't know all the details, but yes, it's changed). As such, with the M3U lists, if an NSF set is updated, the tags/labels/times are available to the newly updated NSF. However, the NSFe, due to the alteration, can't transfer its information so easily. A tool could be constructed that would take care of this problem (similar to BATCH files for psfpoint, and the xSF format files), but no such tool currently exists. Thus, many (I don't know how many (more than half? Maybe, I don't know)) of the NSFe sets are in fact very old/outdated/bad rips. Their tag data can't be easily transferred to the new/fixed NSF files. And, due to the NSFs being new rips, the tags can't just simply be copied and pasted over to a new NSFe. Most likely, the tag data will have to be reordered to match the NSF's reordering of ripped tracks.
*|* NSFe tags aren't easily edited. Basically, M3U files are TXT files, and thus are very easy to edit. NSFe tags use a binary format (IIRC) and thus can't be edited in a text editor. This argument is in fact similar to the one above. If the tags could be transferred to the files more easily, then this argument would have less baring (I think).
However, I am not the right person to provide these arguments, because as I said, I like NSFe files. For my uses, they work great. Knurek (and perhaps anewuser?) would be better at telling you the faults of the NSFe format than I am. But, the reasons I listed are the reasons I can remember. I don't know if I did them justice, or if I explained them properly, but those are the ones I can recall.
To the best of my memory, the "strongest" reason of dislike for NSFe is the "format flaws". If a tool were created so that tags from one NSFe could easily be passed to a new NSF (creating an NSFe in the process), those flaws might be partially addressed.
But again, I'm certain Knurek has more to say about this than I. Personally, NSFe is supported by Rockbox, so I find it far more useful than the M3U playlists, which I simply can't use in Rockbox at all. But that's only one usage scenario. I have no doubt that others can come up with more, some in favor of M3U, and some in favor of NSFe.
Hope that helped explain at least a little of the NSFe dislike. Mouser X over and out.
Ah! This is where my ignorance of the format comes to play. I've only just now really looked at it, and... well, it seems that all we really need are good tools for exporting and importing the various chunks of the NSFe. I mean, cripes, I'd put something together myself if it weren't for the fact that 1) I'm busy as snot with stuff that isn't coding, and 2) I'm not really all that much a coder anyhow.