Volume Setting Batch Scripts by wrldwzrd89 at 3:24 PM EDT on May 30, 2005
I have set up an area in my web site for USF-related things. I've put up my set of volume-setting batch scripts for use with miniusf files and PSFPoint there. Here's the address: http://homepage.mac.com/wrldwzrd89/USF/index.html
I'm running the currently released USFs through Replaygain to get some useful volume values, thanks to Ru^3's winamp wrapper. The interesting thing is that it seems that 64th Note+Replaygain runs faster when I set 64th Note's priority lower.
Doh, I didn't have the database enabled, so all I have are the album gains I manually recorded, instead of the individual track gains. And I have no intention of doing this over again (takes forever and crashes occasionally). Just a few more to go (Star Fox and on through the alphabet) and I'll have a set of .bats up to normalize on a per-album basis.
How long, roughly, would you say it took? And, roughly, how bad were the crashes? Since my computer stays on while I'm at work, I'd be more than willing to help redo it. Sure, it might take some time, but for those with patience, who want a little more, it could be done.
Also, what are your system specs? They're probably better than mine, but I could certainly still try. I'm on WinXP pro, sp2 (I think), 2ghz CPU, 512mb RAM (I do use the page file though), and I do have Foobar2000 (the most recent version, since I last checked. I think it's like, 0.83, or something. And I know it's the full, special, or whatever. I don't settle for less than the best, especially when it's free).
At one time, I ran a whole slew of PSF, NSF (well, probalby not NSF, since I didn't know about NSFe at the time), and other such files through the replay gain. It took hours... I think I let it run while I went to bed. It's possible I still have those settings, somewhere, but I haven't a clue where...
Also, since I already have all the released sets (and I'm pretty sure most of them are even decompressed to folders already), I wouldn't have to worry about DLing them again (though I'm on DSL, so it would be your bandwidth I'd be concerned about. However as USFs tend to be fairly small (in comparison to a 500mb (or even 50mb) PSF2 set), I doubt that's a big concern).
The only thing I'd have to ask about is, how do I set it up to create batch files, how do I set it up to do auto replay-gain stuff, and other such important things (I haven't used Foobar2000 in a long, long time. I just update it occasionaly for the sake of having the most recent version, in case I do decide to use it, for some reason). As I asked before, how bad are the crashes? Are they bad enough that I'd have to restart the replay-gain process? Or, is there a way to save it as it goes so that I don't need to worry about that? Can I restart where it left off, if there is a crash? Will I have to restart my computer? Is there a way to set this up so that it doesn't actually add the data to my USF files, if I don't want it to (I like keeping them as close to original as I can. I like seeing all the old dates, and stuff). Of course, I could always just re-extract the unchanged files from the archives, I supppose.
I think that's all the questions/comments I have right now. As I said, I don't mind helping out. After all, my computer has a lot of dead time to use, so I might as well make it useful.
Anyway, thanks for the info. I probably won't be using the replay-gain stuff, but I would expect others to. It's actually pretty nice, from what I remember when I tried it. For that matter, since you've now put in the effort to create these batch files, are you considering adding replay-gain into 64th Note? That would an interesting feature... I sort of doubt it though.
Okay, now that's it. Mouser X over.
That's a lot of questions... by hcs at 1:07 AM EDT on July 17, 2005
My specs: 2.4 GHz Pentium IV 768 MB of fairly slow RAM XP
I only experienced two crashes throughout the whole procedure, both required manual intervention. One killed foobar, the other I had to confirm a 'continue anyway' type thing in foobar.
I don't know how to set the thing up to automagically scan through everything while still treating each USF set as an album, though since I've already done that you can probably get away with just adding all your USFs to a playlist and select "scan per-file track gain".
No changes are made to the files, for one thing the input wrapper doesn't know how to, for another foobar therefore doesn't either. The values are recorded to the foobar database (database.foo), assuming you have that feature enabled.
And for most purposes 64th Note does have replaygain support via the volume tag, as do most (all?) PSF formats.
Retrieving and using the gains may prove to be the biggest problem, namely because I don't know the format of database.foo. What I've been doing is manually reading the album gain values (right click, select replaygain->edit replaygain info (advanced) and converting them to multipliers (I'm using the 10^(gain/20) formula I saw in the replaygain documentation). I don't want to bother with each individual track like this. So you really shouldn't bother unless you have the patience to do that or write a method for reading database.foo and generating batch files. I know I don't.
Oh. No, I don't have any way to make a program that can read the database.foo and create a batch file.
I didn't realize it required that much manuel effort. Well then, I guess what you've done is the best we're going to get, because even if I had the patience to do all that, I don't have the time to.
As such, I must say, thanks for what you've done. I didn't realize it was such a big job. Sorry I couldn't help. Mouser X over and out.
There's one for each of the officially released sets. I double-checked the calculation I'm using so it all seems good. New Tetris gets a replaygain of -8.something without the adjustment, but it's only 0.08 after the volume fix is applied.
for reference (this is in a file in the archive, as well): Beetle Adventure Racing -2.93 dB Blast Corps -3.83 dB F-Zero X +0.16 dB Glover +2.48 dB Goldeneye +0.25 dB Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku -1.49 dB Goemon's Great Adventure -0.79 dB Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask -1.47 dB Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time +0.43 dB Magical Tetris Challenge -0.10 dB Mario Kart 64 -1.52 dB Mystical Ninja -1.96 dB Neon Genesis Evangelion +0.23 dB New Tetris -8.95 dB Ogre Battle 64 -0.78 dB Perfect Dark -2.71 dB Pilotwings 64 +1.73 dB Quest 64 +4.91 dB SS:SV +7.72 dB Star Fox 64 +0.14 dB Super Mario 64 -2.47 dB Super Smash Brothers +0.53 dB Tetrisphere -0.56 dB Wave Race -3.97 dB Wonder Project J2 +0.47 dB Zool -1.32 dB
This fixes the overall volume for the album, individual tracks may be too loud or soft. All sets should now sound more or less the same, volume-wise.
You'll need psfpoint.exe somewhere in your PATH for any of these batches to work, by the way.
something odd by hcs at 5:47 PM EDT on August 21, 2005
I just tried to scan Chopper Attack with foobar and it failed to work... I switched back to 6th Note v0.09 and it now works, so I guess I screwed up the interface somewhere. It plays, but replaygain doesn't work.