bitrate for dc audio

daleandjess · #1 03-07-2002, 15:28

can somebody please help me? i have a small problem, i want to know how to change the soundtrack in a dc game? i need a step by step on how to do it,.. if somebody would be so kind? please?

Wayne · #2 03-07-2002, 20:19

It all depends on the game you're referring to.

Some games use CDDA (CD Audio) tracks, others (most) use files of one format or another instead. These files, depending on the format, would have to be replaced with the songs you want, which have been converted to the correct format. Other people have done this, although I have not. Give details as to what game and perhaps someone here has changed the music on it and can tell you how it's done.

daleandjess · #3 03-07-2002, 20:38

it's unreal,.. it has an inject file and and unpack file. what i did was i got a few songs that i wanted to be on there,.. and i downsampled them to like extremely low quality,.. i think like 32 kbs with winamp(and converted them to wave files) i converted them to wav's because that's what the unpack file unpacked. i renamed them all appropriately,.. then i used the inject file to put them in the cdi image. when i played the game,.. the songs played, but they played like really fast, like,... "chipmunk fast"
what did i do wrong? thanks all

Wayne · #4 03-07-2002, 21:37

The files for CDDA must be exactly the same sample rate as the ones you've got in the original package. If they're CDDA tracks, and the original tracks play just fine on a regular CD player, you must make sure you **DO NOT** downsample your own files. They must be EXACTLY 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, Stereo.

Anything less than this (or more) will playback incorrectly. This is the standard REDBOOK CD-Audio requirement for audio data and you cannot change it unless you like the sound of David Seville's ALVIN, THEORORE and SIMON (the Chipmunks).

daleandjess · #5 03-07-2002, 21:43

i have another question for ya,.. um, has echelon's release of inreal been dummied at all? i can't figure out for the life of me how i'm going to fit all that on there? if there was a dummy file that i could pull out,.. then it would help with being able to fit music on there. any ideas? i looked myself and i didn't see any dummy files,.. then again,.. i usually have my head up my ass. so,.. again, thanks, and anyhelp would be appreciated,.. and WAYNE,.. YOU FUCKING RULE MAN!

daleandjess · #6 03-07-2002, 22:17

oh yeah,. what should the kbps be?

Megalexxx · #7 04-07-2002, 00:13

Finding a dummy file shouldn't be too difficult : look in the root dir of your game. It's most likely to be named "0Dummy...". It should be the very first file in your root and should contain the same hexa value (for example "00").

If I were you, I just would take N songs to replace Unreal's N songs. If they're too big, I would replace some of them by empty wav files (3 secondes blank songs).
Then I would follow Echelon's selfboot tutorial.

daleandjess · #8 04-07-2002, 01:21

but what kbps should the songs i encode be at?

Wayne · #9 04-07-2002, 06:53

If you're using standard CDDA tracks, you won't use MP3 files anyway, therefore "kbps" of the track is irrelevant. Your MP3 files will have to be converted to WAV files first, then they'll need to be up or downsampled to fit the criteria I listed above for CDDA files, then you can inject them into the image (or burn them using the Echelon tutorial).

As to not being able to fit all of them onto the disc, you will need to edit the WAV files to shorten them so they'll be about the same sizes as the original files. You can load the originals into a WAV editor and get their actual playback time, then just shorten the new songs so they have the same playback time. Depending on the editor software you're using, you can even clip the ends off the songs and FADE the remaining music so it sounds like a natural ending. Editing audio is somewhat of an art, so you may find it challenging to make it sound just right, but it can be done... For instance, about 10 years ago I took a .VOC file of a sound-snip of "Spock" saying "...the good of the many outweighs the good of the few". I changed it so it sounded like he said "...the good of the few outweighs the good of the many". This edit was particularly difficult because I didn't have any hightech editors (like CoolEdit), but rather a simple (ancient) VOC editor that came with my first Soundblaster card. None the less, it sounded quite believable.

Megalexxx · #10 04-07-2002, 10:18

Using Echelon's tutorial, you don't need to care about frequency or bitrate : as you burn your wav files as CDDA they should be automatically sampled the good way. So, there's "no common point" between the size of your wav files and the size it takes as CDDA. So, you should take the best quality you can.

As Wayne said, it's just a question of length.

Wayne · #11 04-07-2002, 12:31

Megalexx, you still have to make sure the WAV files are 44.1kHz, 16-bit, Stereo or you'll have "chipmunks" for music. The files have to be CDDA "REDBOOK" compliant or they won't sound right. If you took a 22kHz or 11kHz sampled .WAV file and tried to inject it into a CD Audio image (which is what the first part of a Dreamcast image is if it uses CDDA tracks), you would get very VERY fast music.

daleandjess · #12 04-07-2002, 13:27

alright,.. so i got my music selected,.. but the problem is that once i turn them into wav files at that bitrate,.. i can't all of them on the game disc because it's 670 megs of music,.. and the game is like solid 300 megs,.. and nothing will overburn that much on a normal 700 meg cd,.. so my question is,.. is there away to not use the cdda(i guess) so that i could sample the music at any bitrate i want?(so that all songs fit onto the disc with the game) and if not, what is a good xp compatible music editing (simple to use) program?

Wayne · #13 04-07-2002, 15:10

If the game is a CDDA type game (using CD audio tracks), you MUST use the CDDA format. You will have to choose what parts of the songs to remove so you can shorten their lengths sufficiently to fit them onto the disc. Compare the byte total of your songs to the byte total of the original songs. Pare away whatever pieces of each song you can do without, such as extra verses, choruses, etc. Remember, you're probably not going to hear the entire song during the game *ANYWAY*, since it will likely switch to another song at some point while playing. Just be sure you fade out the resulting edited songs and if it sounds OK to you, it'll work just fine in the game.

The other option is to do as Megalexxx said, and delete a few of the songs and replace them with small SILENT .wav files, each lasting only about three or four seconds.

Megalexxx · #14 05-07-2002, 02:43

Wayne, I agree with you for the bitrate, but I'm almost sure that burning (not injecting) a wav file to an audio CD would be just fine. I think most of burning tools handle that and correct the bitrate for you.

Daleandjess : I'm sure you don't spend hours on screens like menu, so you don't need to put a 20 minutes song here. Compare the wav files you extracted with the one you hear in the game, then respect the order to replace the good songs by yours.
It should work fine.

Have you tried Cool Edit ? It's really great, but I don't know if it works under XP.

daleandjess · #15 05-07-2002, 05:35

hey yoose guys,.. i would just like to say i'm sorry for asking the same question that every stupid newbie seems to ask,.. i would like to apologize for being a pain in the ass. but i would also like to say thanks though. just thought i should let you guys know. that and when i'm done,.. if i can do thin correctly,.. i'm going to write a tutuorial on how to do this. that way we won't have this problem anymore.