[Tutorial] Covarr's New FF7Music Tutorial

[DLPB_]

As I said, it is *Impossible* to change MP3 to PSF.  PSF are more like a midi file.  They are justa  collection of instruments and instructions being used by a plugin which emulates the sound programming of the playstation.

[Torazo]

Quite frankly I don't know how FF7Music is implemented but I do know that there is some buffer time (less than a second) when looping a track. There are many ways to counteract this, but they all entail editing the source code for FF7Music (or completely making a new version).

BTW Torazo, a lot of your questions have already been addressed in this thread.

Also, a .psf file is just a music file that was ripped from a PSX disc and re-encoded into the .psf format (by someone?), so you're half correct in stating that it was made by sony. The initial encoding was devised by sony and burned onto CD's, but the .psf file itself was made by someone who ripped them from those CD's.

That thread helped me little, that is why I asked my own questions. If a question is not answered the way someone is looking for, then the question is not answered for them. I still needed more clarification regarding the few questions that I asked that were addressed.

As for the PSF files, I was talking about before it was ever ripped off of a CD. The person that ripped it just happened to call it PSF to help clarify what it was. It was originally placed on a PSX CD as a music file, which we now call a PSF today because of that ripper.

As I said, it is *Impossible* to change MP3 to PSF.  PSF are more like a midi file.  They are justa  collection of instruments and instructions being used by a plugin which emulates the sound programming of the playstation.

I highly doubt it is "Impossible"... They are stored as data on a computer just like mp3's. If you can change a psf into an mp3, it is possible to reverse that process, the only thing is, is that it might take a different program per mp3 to psf conversion.


These are completely off-topic though.

Does anybody know of a free program that can cut mp3's to the millisecond? I am looking around and I will be checking out Audacity. Audacity works. Only thing is, you cannot specifically tell it from what millisecond to start at.

[obesebear]

Does anybody know of a free program that can cut mp3's to the millisecond? I am looking around and I will be checking out Audacity. Audacity works. Only thing is, you cannot specifically tell it from what millisecond to start at.

Yes it can.  You need to zoom in on the track.  It can cut down to nanoseconds almost

[Aali]

Sony didn't create .psf files and there is no way you can recreate a .psf file from an mp3, it would be like trying to recreate a game from a recording of it.

You see, .psf is just a handy modular format for PSX machine code. The actual music player was ripped from the game, not just the samples or whatever.

[Torazo]

Yes it can.  You need to zoom in on the track.  It can cut down to nanoseconds almost

I was meaning the ability to tell it a specific number to go to rather than placing a line.

Sony didn't create .psf files and there is no way you can recreate a .psf file from an mp3, it would be like trying to recreate a game from a recording of it.

You see, .psf is just a handy modular format for PSX machine code. The actual music player was ripped from the game, not just the samples or whatever.

Who created the original PSF files for use on a Sony Playstation CD? I am not meaning the person who created the PSF file (Niel Corlett), I am talking about the origin that started it... Also, how were PSF's originally created?

The Music Player you would be talking about would be... FF7Music?

[DLPB_]

probably Minoru Akao (although the specification was created by others at Sony, obviously)

It is just as Aali said, a proprietary like Midi file for PSX (with differences, that is just an analogy).  Instruments that get played at certain times.  If you search the PSX discs all you find is the instruments and the voices for Sephiroth one winged angel

[Harruzame]

@Torazo


You say you want to cut it to a millisecond?... one question though...

Is your PC capable enough to do that?...Because according to the site of Audacity it largely depends on the PC's speed to be able to determine exact timing of a single Mp3..Does it mean it needs amiable speed to endure countless times of reverse/forwarding of a song? And be able to tackle 100+ songs at once too?

I think that should be considered because thats how lags where found out in the first place...

Correct me if I'm wrong though...Coz I'm also just as curious as to the capability of this wonderful program....

[Torazo]

I just tested it on Audacity and I don't seem to have any problems. I even tried going as far zoomed as possible and still no problems. I just wanted to get it as close as possible to a certain sound ending and I have done it on Windows Movie Maker on a worse computer.

I have no clue as to what you mean by "countless times of reverse/forwarding of a song" seeing as I am only playing the song forward from the point in which I place the line at in Audacity. As for 100+ songs at once, I am only playing 1 single song. Haven't tried playing multiple songs at once, if it can.

My main goal was to eliminate delays when mp3's changed over while using FF7Music... This is one way of making that gap smaller.

[Aali]

Who created the original PSF files for use on a Sony Playstation CD? I am not meaning the person who created the PSF file (Niel Corlett), I am talking about the origin that started it... Also, how were PSF's originally created?

The Music Player you would be talking about would be... FF7Music?

There are no .psf files on a PSX CD, .psf's are created by extracting the SPU code from a game and it's associated data.
I'm talking about the actual music player from the original game. That's what's contained in the psflib for FF7, along with the samples.
Highly experimental (.psf player for winamp) is just a stripped-down PSX emulator with just the CPU, RAM and SPU.

[Harruzame]

Ah ...Thats it you want to be as seamless as possible right?...well consider this...FFVII music is an outside source program to be exact right?

So by knowing this It means were practically using two programs at once.(Main Game and outside program) so would you think that might be the cause of your distress?

You cannot actually 100% emulate the songs timing on every Mp3 it needs to play. If you observe how FFVII Music works you'll see how it firsts plays the midi then finds its counterpart mp3.. So by actually doin that, it causes it to delay a bit ( mere 1 sec I noticed just now). But with using Audacity to cut the intervals..You can shorten it further and thats it.

Everything cannot be too perfect or else we wouldn't have APPLE or IBM or LINUX to begin with..

You're already playing it aren't ya? Some of the hard core gamers out there even consider buyin new PC's or install new parts just to play this Game..( Think of the dough they spent...Man. I wish I was Gates... )

So be content with it for now...But hey..I'm just tryin to help you out..No harm here..Peace out!

[DLPB_]

What about using Wave files with FF7music?  Would this work (with winamp inwave)

For sure it would be faster and accurate if possible (although larger disk space....much larger)

[Covarr]

What about using Wave files with FF7music?  Would this work (with winamp inwave)

For sure it would be faster and accurate if possible (although larger disk space....much larger)

The music in CD-quality WAV would take up even more space than the movies do, well over 2GB. I don't care how much of a performance gain there is, it's hardly worth the tradeoff in my opinion.

[Harruzame]

You're right about that Covarr-senpai...hehe

I only play this game using a laptop and to put a 2gb worth of music..might as well go with the MP3's. The PSF are the only option after this...

Although I would like that kind of "seamless-ness" I guess I'm better off finding new songs that fit..for example..Nahatma's Music Mod...It composes of mp3 remixes coming from different sources lke the OST, AC, CC, Voices of The Lifestream and many more. Thats where I get my solution to the Fanfare lag I got once..Instead of a lag a voice prompt is replaced to the lag...well sort of...then an upbeat version of FANFARE.MP3 plays... sounds cool though.

Hope ya try it ..Its posted right here in this forum..

[titeguy3]

Not to mention converting mp3 to wav is a lossy, time consuming process. I'm not even actually sure that it would eliminate the (>1 second) lag. Although if you want to test it out, Seifer, tell me how it works out.

If you can change a psf into an mp3, it is possible to reverse that process, the only thing is, is that it might take a different program per mp3 to psf conversion.

Postulate: If an entity can be changed from one state to another, an entity of the second state can be changed to the first.
Rebuttal: Even though a live person can be made dead, a dead person cannot be brought back to life.
More applicable rebuttal: Even though Midi and PSF tracks can be recorded and encoded as mp3, mp3's cannot be converted to MIDI or PSF.

There are so many reasons why that can't be done. Check out an explanation of how MIDI format music works, read it thoroughly, then just keep in mind that PSF files work in some vaguely similar manner. Sorry if this is coming off as egotistical, it's just a peeve of mine when people state things that I can prove wrong... sometimes people do it just to mess with me  .

But yeah, I'm not really sure why you need something to cut to an exact millisecond.... I'm pretty sure Audacity has a feature to do that, it's just tucked away somewhere, but quite frankly, if you zoom in far enough, then just cut the line wherever it seems to stop being horizontal, you'll get it to within the millisecond. Anything more than that isn't practical since there's already a <1 second delay that will be there regardless of how close you cut the track, so .002 ms more won't really be noticeable.

[Torazo]

Not to mention converting mp3 to wav is a lossy, time consuming process. I'm not even actually sure that it would eliminate the (>1 second) lag. Although if you want to test it out, Seifer, tell me how it works out.

If you can change a psf into an mp3, it is possible to reverse that process, the only thing is, is that it might take a different program per mp3 to psf conversion.

Postulate: If an entity can be changed from one state to another, an entity of the second state can be changed to the first.
Rebuttal: Even though a live person can be made dead, a dead person cannot be brought back to life.
More applicable rebuttal: Even though Midi and PSF tracks can be recorded and encoded as mp3, mp3's cannot be converted to MIDI or PSF.

There are so many reasons why that can't be done. Check out an explanation of how MIDI format music works, read it thoroughly, then just keep in mind that PSF files work in some vaguely similar manner. Sorry if this is coming off as egotistical, it's just a peeve of mine when people state things that I can prove wrong... sometimes people do it just to mess with me  .

But yeah, I'm not really sure why you need something to cut to an exact millisecond.... I'm pretty sure Audacity has a feature to do that, it's just tucked away somewhere, but quite frankly, if you zoom in far enough, then just cut the line wherever it seems to stop being horizontal, you'll get it to within the millisecond. Anything more than that isn't practical since there's already a <1 second delay that will be there regardless of how close you cut the track, so .002 ms more won't really be noticeable.

You cannot compare life and death to this because they just do not match.

So basically, a device would need to be able to read an mp3 and be able to turn it into event message signals or a device would have to be able to listen to the audio and mp3 creates and digitize it as event message signals... How is that impossible? It was done before, not from mp3's, but instruments and other things, and those can also be heard from an mp3 through your speakers, yet you guys say it is impossible.

If you still think it is impossible, try to think on what would be needed to make it possible. I already stated something that would be needed to make it possible, which means the possibility exists. Sure, it would probably be extremely difficult to make, but that doesn't make it impossible.

I don't want to argue this any further.

[Harruzame]

Yup..It would be nice if there was an existing program that " times " the songs accurately. Making the delays unnoticeable..But that could mean a more powerful program or even less at that...AIya!  The possibilities are endless in this one... 

Hopefully Ficedula makes another one of this babies...since FFVII MUSic Program could be considered final...But hey theres always room for improvement..Right?


Jyane!

[DLPB_]

Not to mention converting mp3 to wav is a lossy, time consuming process.

It is actually *very fast* and there is no noticible drop in quality at all.   The decoder is going to a LOSSLESS format (uncompressed wave file @ 44100 Hz/16bit).

If you could get hold of the game OST Cd's, you would have total quality.

But the problem is, it takes so much space.  If you are desperate for accuracy and no lag with any set up, it is your option....

[titeguy3]

I could have this backwards but I recall the last time I tried that wav to mp3 was quick and mp3 to wav was slow.

EVEN IF you wrote a program that recognized notes and instruments and recomposed them into a midi type file, the way it sounds would vary based upon the playback drivers. It wouldn't be the same. not even close. You'd be converting music to notes. I'm saying a conversion is impossible because they aren't the same thing. MP3's are audio files, MIDIs and PSF's are basically digital notesheets. You can't convert oranges to carrots.

[DLPB_]

I could have this backwards but I recall the last time I tried that wav to mp3 was quick and mp3 to wav was slow.

I would use the word slower   But it wouldn't take long at all of them to wav

[titeguy3]

Go for it, see how it sounds. I'm curious. Grab Switch Audio Convertor if you don't have one already.

[DLPB_]

I use adobe audition   It will sound exact like the MP3.  Won't tell the difference.  But I use PSF anyway for music

[titeguy3]

Boo, I love the way high quality MP3's sound. I've even got two soundtracks.... FFT's remastered album and a personally customized remixed soundtrack.

[DLPB_]

Yeah I have been using peoples remixes too from this other sites.  Been placing them in ready for my story walk through.

Like here >>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvshhfV7FKg

[Torazo]

I could have this backwards but I recall the last time I tried that wav to mp3 was quick and mp3 to wav was slow.

EVEN IF you wrote a program that recognized notes and instruments and recomposed them into a midi type file, the way it sounds would vary based upon the playback drivers. It wouldn't be the same. not even close. You'd be converting music to notes. I'm saying a conversion is impossible because they aren't the same thing. MP3's are audio files, MIDIs and PSF's are basically digital notesheets. You can't convert oranges to carrots.

First off, of course the program would start off making it sound different, but that is where "Trial and Error" comes into play. That is how ALL programs come into play. After a lot of adjustments, I am certain someone could get it to sound pretty much identical. It's like how Instruments were originally used to create Midi's and PSF's. Those instruments probably sounded pretty identical to the playback of a midi or psf based off of how many sounds the midis and psfs could make. Imagine if those Instrument sounds actually came from an mp3 or another audio file and were modified into a midi/psf the same type of way an instrument was and the program used to convert those audio files actually made the midi/psf sound like the audio file used.

Data does not need to be the same thing in order to be converted into another format... Programs convert data the way they were programmed to. It is a completely different concept than your oranges and carrots.

[sl1982]

Wouldnt it be alot easier to code the music player to loop back to a specific time index in the mp3 so that it sounded like it was continuous?