Guide to selfbooting 45000 LBA DATA/DATA images

[--=FamilyGuy=--]

Just to clarify, I meant AHX, not afs, AHX are highly compressed adx and can be even more compressed now with gamecube tools (sega games on GC use ahx and the quality is better fopr a lower bitrate, and someone I know amde a rip of SA2 using the GC files intead of the DC's one to save space)

Also, I think it would be easy to re-encode them all, simply extract hem all, then run like : ahxecoder *.ahx \encoded\*.ahx

Note: ahxencoder isn't a program which exist, it was just a exemple of how I actually often encode files in batch.

[Xiaopang]

hmm, that sounds like a very cool idea now. especially the part with abusing the newer gc-version, but where does shenmue use ahx-files? i only found afs

[--=FamilyGuy=--]

ROOT:\SCENE\02\STREAM\*.afs

Theses afs are full of ahx files.
They are certainly not the only ones, but they are the only I've found so far.
It's 173 MB it might be compressed better.

-=FG=-

[Xiaopang]

ah ok, i thought the afs-files extracted adx-files...i didn't work on shenmue for quite some time...btw, my free02.afs is 278MB. seems like you already have a downsized version o.O

[--=FamilyGuy=--]

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

ah ok, i thought the afs-files extracted adx-files...i didn't work on shenmue for quite some time...btw, my free02.afs is 278MB. seems like you already have a downsized version o.O

I don't talk about free02.afs, but a bunch of afs in ROOT:\SCENE\02\STREAM\

But I think they're blanked, most of them.

[Xiaopang]

damn you're right. i don't know where i had my head...anyway, i checked back at the size and all of my afs-files (except for free02.afs) are 110MB combined in size, so you still seem to already have a downsized version.

one idea that you didn't seem to think of yet is to lba-link duplicate files. that saves about 30MB on disc 2

[--=FamilyGuy=--]

I don't have acess to unmodded/unripped files from ShenmueII, maybe that's why my filesize don't fit yours, I also know that many used afs-shrink that remove some part of the footer of the afs files to save space.

But to be able to fit every language files, and every speech sound (even if downsampled), I think we would have to downsample de AHX files (no tools to do so exist, avaiable to public at least), link duplicated files and run afs-shrink & use 80+ min cdrs.

-=FamilyGuy=-

[Xiaopang]

here's what i'm gonna do:

i use darkfalz' afs compactor which saves about 70Mb per disc plus 30MB from the duplicate files and you are 100MB down without any loss of quality. i don't care for multilanguage files, because i play the game only in one language. if i have the space, i'll leave them though like in disc 1 and 4, but since i'm really short on space then why would i keep something unused like files for 3 other languages? anyway, killing of 3 languages gives me 13MB more space. i also planned on deleting or replacing the emulated games (harrier, afterburner and so on), because it's kinda dumb blowing your money on those games anyway. you only have to play them once to make them available in the main menu, so you can resort back to disc 1, where they all fit nicely, to play them. all in all you can save 122MB with this method while keeping full speech output and without downsampling them. that brings disc 2 (and most likely also disc 3) down to 847MB...enough to burn that game to a 99min disc and making it selfboot

if you don't have access to the unmodified source files what are you working with then? all rips that are floating around are downsized to 80min already. by the way, do you have afsshrink? it's totally impossible to find

[--=FamilyGuy=--]

I totally agree with emulated games deletion.

I'll look for afsshink when I'll be on my computer, I don't have acess to it right now.

I don't have the original ShenmueII files handy, but I'm just a rip aways of getting them, thus why I wanna understand clearly how to downsample it to keep my damned french files.

I still think htat to downsample AHX files would be the better thing to do.


Thank you!

[Darkfalz]

Originally Posted by Xzyx987X

The method for selfbooting has little to do with the quality of the finished rip, other than determining how easy it is to burn and which Dreamcast versions it's compatible with.

It's nothing about a "method for selfbooting", it's using the additional space available in the first session for the best possible fit, as well as preserving sort order. Also making sure I kept in the important info files in the FREE0x.AFS and ripping only minimal speech.

[Xiaopang]

@fanily guy: if it is possible to downsample the ahx-files without breaking their playability for the game, then i think i would definitely do that on some portions of the game, because it would be nice to keep the emu-games and the multilanguage files. all in all they only use 22MB, so downsizing the many speech files by that amount shouldn't be much of a problem.

still, some games are hard coded to use the audio files with a certain bitrate/samplerate/number of channels, so i'm excited to know if shenmue allows downsampling

[Darkfalz]

Ripping out the arcade games = blasphemy.

Echelon originally downsampled the ahx files in the Japanese Shenmue I speech, but whatever tools they used are not publically available. Perhaps as a previous poster said there's something in the Sega Gamecube SDK, but I've ever seen the tool.

Remember, these are highly compressed mono-speech files - probably not so much room for downsampling. All Shenmue music is MIDI format.

[Xiaopang]

Originally Posted by Darkfalz

Ripping out the arcade games = blasphemy.

lol they are already completely present on disc 1 and 4 and partially on the other two discs. so, not ripping out the arcade games if you're in need of space = waste of space

Originally Posted by Darkfalz

Remember, these are highly compressed mono-speech files - probably not so much room for downsampling.

i thought the same thing

[Darkfalz]

I've got 5 days off working coming up, planning to play through Shenmue II again Already played through Shenmue I with aid of walkthrough to make sure I got every cutscene and easter egg I need to replay Shenmue II to see stuff like the Fei Ming birthday. I might actually play my originals, hehe.

[Xiaopang]

uh...there's a birthday scene? wait, who's fei ming o.O? you should use your originals for the best experience