The "Eight" Program... how do I rip the MIDI's?

[Dry Ice CO2]

I use Jenova*Birth to rip MIDIs from the FF7 LGP files, but I can't rip them from FF8 with Eight!

I know I lose the instruments and stuff, but here's what I did for FF7. FF7 can either use a Soundfont/Wavetable compatible sound card, but for those who don't have that, the Yamaha XG SoftSynthesizer is provided. With Jenova*Birth, I just rip the MID files from the XG.LGP file, and play them with the XG Player, and everything's fine!

So if there's XG enhanced MIDIs for FF7, there should also be XG enhanced MIDIs for FF8, since FF8 also comes with the SoftSyntheziser. I just was wondering where these MIDIs are kept, since they're nowhere to be found when using Eight. If I play them in the XG Player, they *should* play just as well as they do in the game, if I'm not mistaken.

I found some SGT files in the "FINAL FANTASY VIIIDatadstream" directory, but I have no clue as to what they are. Are these the MIDIs?

Anyway, please help me.
- Dry Ice CO2

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

listen
if u wanna play the SGTs go get the ff8 midi player or use ficedulas winamp plug in.
theres little chance of converting them to midis. cos the instrument info and volume info are embedded into the sgts (cos they r designed for direct music, not winMM).

[Sukaeto]

There are a few XG MIDI's for FF8, but they usually aren't as good as the GM ones (even using the Yamaha Synth.)

You may notice that some of the SGTs appear to have the same name.  (such as battle2-s.sgt and battle2-xg.sgt.  There are numbers at the beginning of the names, but I'm not what they are and I can't check right now.)

The ones ending in 'xg' are the XG MIDIs.

BTW: You can also use Dag's FF8 Configurator to listen to the SGTs, if you have it.

About the FF7 MIDIs, I'm not sure I follow what you mean by losing the instruments when you extract the MIDI's.  They always work fine for me.

Just make sure if you use the AWE MIDIs that FF7.sf2 is loaded into Bank 1, NOT the Synth Bank.

The General MIDIs, in all their mediocre glory, will work with pretty much any synthesizer (even crappy FM Synthesizers *shudders*).

The Yamaha MIDIs work with pretty much any Synth, but they'll sound like crap and you'll get some really freaky effects (i.e. A synth bass playing in place of the reverse symbol in the Opening Mission music.), unless you use a Yamaha XG Synthesizer.

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

Essentially correct.

Dry Ice CO2: I'd suggest trying out the midis from ygm.lgp with the Yamaha SoftSynth. I think you'll find that in most cases they sound better than XG (well, seeing as how the YGM midis are the ones optimized for the SoftSynth...).