Project2612 ripping tutorial
This tutorial will show you how to create a VGM package like the ones available at Project2612. We have devised our own formatting and quality standards to assure the finest collection of Mega Drive/Genesis music on the Internet, and to get your set included in our website you will have to follow our guidelines.
If there's anything you feel was left unexplained, or if you feel you need more help on any aspect of the ripping process, please contact us in the VGMRips chatroom. It is also strongly advised that you make a post in the Offical Pack WIP topic on the forum and tell us what game(s) you're working on, so we can avoid other people working on the same project as you simultaneously. The topic will list which sets are currently in progress.
Contents
Getting Started
You will need to download the programs you will use. They are:
- BlastEm; all new Genesis/Mega Drive VGM logs must be recorded using it. You should use the most recent nightly or release (final) version. The nightly builds are usually very stable, so there's not much reason to fear them.
- You will need a music player which can play VGM logs and create wave files from them. Three options are:
- VGMPlay
- Winamp full version, which includes the disk writer plugin.
- XMPlay, which can natively dump WAV files.
- If using Winamp/XMPlay, you will also need the VGM Input plugin to play VGMs. Download the VGM Plugin.
- You will need the latest VGM Tools to trim and tag files. VGMTool and VGMToolbox can also be used for GUI-based tagging.
- You will need a sound editor to find trim and loop points. Some options, mostly freeware:
- To properly optimise files, you will need to have OptVGM, which comes packaged with the VGM Tools above. Using it and vgm_cmp is the last thing you'll ever do with the VGM files.
Once you know you have these ready, proceed to the next step, the logging.
Logging
Once you have everything at hand, it's time to log a few VGMs. First, have a look at BlastEm's wiki page to learn how to set the VGM paths to places you can find them. It's a must, because otherwise the VGM logs will land in a confusing place (your root user folder).
Once your paths are set, open BlastEm and load the ROM image of the game you'd like to rip. (You might like to take a minute and test your settings by making test logs and screenshots with the m and p shortcut keys.)
Proceed to the place where the song you're going to rip is going to play (sound test, game level, etc), try to make sure the game is silent, and then start logging. You can do this by pressing the shortcut key, M. By default, BlastEm will dump a log-in-progress in your User folder, with a name like blastem_20211117_160122.vgm.
You can rename this log while logging it; use names that will give you all the information you'll need later on tagging, like level name, number, part, boss names, etc. If you're logging from the sound test, this is a convenient place to record sound test numbers (which can be dynamically written into file comments if you're an expert with .bats and use vgm_tag). If you're having to log from gameplay, this way you won't have to play the game again. (Of course, if you really like the game that won't be much of an issue ;P)
Once you're logging, make the song play, either by entering an area, starting the level, pressing pause, playing it through the sound test, etc. Once you've recorded enough (a bit over two or even three loops is the best), hit M again to stop logging.
Do this with all the songs in the game you can find, and don't forget to include game over and death tunes as well. Once you think you have all the songs logged, proceed to the next part, the trimming.
Important notes, tips and tricks
- Make sure your log gets the start of the song (a second-long silence buffer to start is the best) until a couple of loops, plus a bit more. This way you'll have plenty of data to work with on trimming.
- After you've begun each log (unless using the most recent BlastEm nightly), you might want to speed up the logging process by increasing the emulator speed in BlastEm. Just press + to increase and - to decrease. It's safe and quick. You can see how many FPS you're getting in the BlastEm title bar. 600 FPS = 10 times faster on American\Japanese country mode, 12 times faster on European country mode.
- Make sure you're logging at the right emulation speed. European games run at 50 Hz, while Japanese and American ones run at 60 Hz. As mentioned, the music of certain games is meant to run at 50hz and not 60hz. These should be ripped at the correct clock rate or you'll get songs playing too fast or too slow. BlastEm should detect the region automatically, but if you need to you can change the Default Region from the "System" menu in BlastEm's Settings - or force BlastEm to only emulate one region with a command line switch.
- Although the default Audio options should generally not be touched for pack consistency, there are Gain options that might be useful if the song is too quiet.
- Sound effects are also logged, so make sure none play while you're logging the VGM.
- If the game has a sound test, use it. In-game rips are always discouraged. Some games have cheat codes that enable secret sound tests, so a little research is always a good idea.
- In addition, certain games give you the option to disable sound effects entirely, and this is very useful too.
- Some games, when paused, play the music normally. You can take advantage of this by pausing before any sound effect gets a chance to play. Be careful: some games do play the song when paused, but with a volume reduction. You don't want that.
- Sometimes you can get the song to play in a different part of the game, where sound effects don't happen.
- If the game uses GEMS, you can try to use GemsScan and gems2rom to get a playable jukebox to record from instead. (Note that you might have to set song tempoes manually, as for Garfield: caught in the Act.)
- If everything fails, you can try to hack the game using BlastEm's debugger. See that emulator's page on this Wiki for details.
- If you couldn't get a hack yourself, just meet us on IRC or the Forums and we'll see what we can do about it.
- There is a slowdown bug affecting certain Genesis songs on certain Genesis hardware (for instance, the title screen and first level music for EarthWorm Jim). This is a bug that doesn't affect other Genesis models. At current, I don't know the preferred BlastEm Model setting for recording such songs as they were intended to be played.
If you have experience with your game on real hardware, you may note some sound differences. Note that BlastEm defaults to emulating a Model 1 VA3 Genesis, which may be different from your model. Emulation of other models may not be fine-tuned yet, and Model 2 emulation isn't currently available.
If in doubt, and your model is a 1 VA3, it's best to confirm BlastEm is really to blame before filing a bug report. The best way is to use VGM_PLAY on a Mega Everdrive to test your strange-sounding VGM; rather than the original program, you should use the 16-bit Audiophile Project's version of VGM_PLAY to ensure best possible accuracy. (Although there are some flaws there too, it's better than nothing. Alternatively, just use the game!
Using BlastEm's Debugger to Play SMPS Songs
Recent builds of BlastEm have improved the debugger and made it easier to use. It's also simpler to rip certain games. If your game uses an SMPS sound driver, making any song play whenever you want could be as simple as:
z80 set [$1C09] 150
"But wait!" you say: "When I tried that, it just made the game go silent." That fact does mean the command is working. (If it didn't work for this game, the music would continue.) The issue is, the numbers you need to input don't necessarily match anything sensible (such as the in-game sound test or ValleyBell's research notes).
Here's my suggested workflow:
- Songs in SMPS engines usually begin at 129 (hex 0x81). It's not impossible that lower numbers could have songs(?), but your best bet is to start here.
- If you are trying to find unused songs or 129 isn't the first song; bouncing between the debugger and BlastEm windows is a pain in the ass, so use the
framescommand to see if you've yielded music or sound. (Some songs may take more than 60 frames to start, so beware.) - Once you've found where the music/sound numbers are, you can either record as you go or find all the right numbers first.
- For recording:
- Use
z80 set [$1C09] 0to stop all sound. (This resets the sound engine, so you don't need to worry about pollution from what was playing before.) - Use
frames 60to advance one second in an NTSC game (50 for Pal). This ensures the silence takes. - Begin logging with
bindup ui.vgm_log. - Use the same
framescommand again to make the buffer. - Use
z80 set [$1C09]with the desired song number.
- Use
This can get tedious. But fortunately, you can menu-click on the title bar of the debugger to access Edit->Paste. When you paste a number of lines inside, the debugger will execute each command in order. (It's like a crude .bat file for the debugger.)
When ready to record:
z80 set [$1C09] 0 frames 60 bindup ui.vgm_log frames 60 z80 set [$1C09] ## continue
(The empty line is on purpose.) Just replace ## with the number you want each time.
You can do the same with an in-game sound test, if you want the buffer before recording to be more consistent (but beware that there'll still be a difference between frames; for tracks beginning with silence, you might still want to confirm the true beginning). This will involve using binddown and bindup for the correct buttons.
Trimming
This is the most important and the hardest part of the whole process. There are three types of tools to help you find loop points: vgmlpfnd, vgm2txt, and VGM -> WAV file conversion. If you choose (or use, along with other methods) the last one, you should already be familiar with your sound editor to do this step properly and quickly. If you still have no experience with it, it's suggested you try out the everyday tasks in that last link until you're comfortable with performing them.
vgmlpfnd can help you find loops (sometimes), but you also have to find the proper start points of each VGM too. Sometimes, as with Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, using vgm2txt to find a good cutoff can be tricky or confusing; the TXT shows that commands are still running leading up to the start (or after the end in an unlooped song). You should still be able to determine a good song start in that case, but things may call for examining a WAV.
Because of length (and general applicability to all VGM-supported systems), vgm2txt has its own walkthrough page and the method for finding trim points using .wav files has a walkthrough linked in the starting paragraph of this section. You'll find a much more comprehensive explanation on those pages than can fit here without making for one enormous tutorial!
Trimming with vgm_trim
vgm_trim is a command line tool. You can simply drag (from within the folder) and drop VGMs on it, and input the numbers needed as it prompts. But if you have all the trimming points written down, it's easier to make a trim.bat file with lines like:
vgm_tag "Spliffyfop.vgm" 2986 40440 626409
for each track. This also keeps a handy log of the trim points, just in case something goes wrong.
In order, the numbers are the Start Sample, Loop Beginning, and End Sample. None of these will be zero for a song that loops. For a song that doesn't loop, use 0 for the Loop Beginning.
Once the files are trimmed, it's time to check if everything is sounding good. Open the file in VGMPlay or Winamp. Pay special attention at the start, loop and ending points.
Here's an excellent hint to help you with checking your trim and loops: configure VGMPlay's .ini/the VGM input plugin to loop 1 time and fade for 60000 milliseconds (that is, 60 seconds). Since the fade is not added to the song length, you can find it easier by just moving the trackbar to just before the end and let the song finish. (For VGMPlay, use the right arrow to seek forward if this doesn't funkify playback.) When the song reaches the end with these settings, it will loop with a fade of one minute; you'll have plenty of time to check if everything sounds right, and the trackbar position/playback percentage jumping to the start will let you know the exact moment where the song looped.
(For VGMPlay, you can specify config options (each one with -c) on the command line, so your normal playback settings can stay intact. To do as suggested above, use VGMPlay -c General.MaxLoops=1 -c General.FadeTime=60000 file.vgm.)
If after all this everything sounds good, then congratulations!
If not, something went wrong and you'll have to change your edit points to try again. Sometimes songs sound a bit off or weird, or a note gets cut or hangs. Moving the edit points around by the same few samples (commands willing) will usually avoid this. Keep trying, there's always a valid place! If you're having trouble finding an edit point at the exact place the song loops, you may try it in a different place, in a position later in the song where the sound wave drops to a quick silence, or perhaps just before a drum hit, etc. Anything easier to deal with is fine.
Keep in mind that, as long as it sounds right and it doesn't have excessive information, the trimming is good.
Once you think you've got the trimming correctly, you'll proceed onto tagging. If you trim before you tag, you'll probably want all songs trimmed and good before you start that.
Tagging & Naming
With files trimmed correctly, it's time to tag them. Tagging files means filling up the VGM metadata information (called GD3), such as game name, original composer, release date, track title etc. It is also vital to get this as right and accurate as possible.
A common way to start tagging the songs is simply playing the game. Chances are you don't know who composed the soundtrack, so beating the game will not only make you aware of which song plays where, but will ultimately give you the game credits. So go ahead, load the game and have fun!
On the other hand, if you logged the songs during gameplay and followed the excellent naming advice I gave earlier, you're pretty much ready by now.
Tagging VGMs (featuring VGMTool)
VGM Tool is still perfectly acceptable for tagging your files. When you drop a file without GD3 tags on it, it will keep whatever information the last file you dropped had in there. This is very handy because most tags in a soundtrack are constant (game name, composer, release date, system, author, etc).
Load the first file and fill in all the basic information. Always try to fill in as much information as possible, so if you know the game had a Japanese release, don't be lazy and try Googling/Searxing up to find the Japanese name! (This wiki also has [Databases|a list of Databases] you can try.)
To tag with Japanese characters, copy and paste the Japanese text to the "Paste Unicode as HTML NCRs" editbox and hit this button. It will convert the Unicode data to numeric character reference codes (&#x____;), which you can use in the edit fields without big problems.
Anyway, here's the standard formatting for each field:
Game title
This should be the complete game title with correct spelling, capitalization and everything else. Be sure you get this correctly. Examples:
"Ghouls 'n Ghosts", not "Ghouls & Ghosts" or "Ghouls 'n' Ghosts" "Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball", not only "Sonic Spinball" "Quack Shot", not "Quackshot" "Aero the Acro-Bat", not "Aero the Acrobat" or "Aero The Acro-Bat" "Ren & Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention"
So, don't be shy and be bold. Always use the correct characters and give justice to title and capitalization rules from the English language.
For Japanese titles, you can try looking at the Game Music Composer List and even Wikipedia. The Databases page is full of information repositories. Google/Searx is also an obvious option, as mentioned before.
Composer
This should be found in the game credits. You might discover that more than one person is mentioned - usually composer and sequencer - and if so, you should include them too. There are also certain games with official soundtrack releases; you might even get a per-track credit on these. If that's the case, make sure to credit properly in each individual track.
But to make it simple: just be sure to give credit where its due. Some games don't have credits at all, but a little bit of research can reveal who composed the score. There are no credits on either Populous or Ghouls 'n Ghosts, but the information on those titles was easily available on the Internet. So again, don't be lazy, look it up.
Once again, Game Music Composer List is a good source of Japanese authors. Note that some Japanese folks have romanized nicknames, sometimes with some special characters like μ or ². Be sure to include these properly as well.
System name
This should be "Sega Mega Drive / Genesis". Don't type that out, just select it from the drop down menu and VGM Tool will do you the favour of tagging the Japanese name for it as well. You're done with this one.
vgm_tag -System:SMD filename.vgm to get the same result. In VGMToolbox, you have to set both names manually; the right Japanese name for Mega Drive / Genesis is at the very bottom of the drop-down list.Date
This is the year the game came out. Usually this information can be retrieved from the game itself; just look around for copyright tags. Precise release dates are welcome and preferred. In any case, only year is good enough if that's all you got.
The date format
In older packs that haven't been touched up, there's a little discrepancy in date format, with the US Team (Dimitri and Dark_Pulse) using the US standard MM/DD/YYYY format, and with non-US people using DD/MM/YYYY or even YYYY-MM-DD.
YYYY-MM-DD is the format decided on. If you're updating any sets and you notice the date uses slashes or has the Month and Day reversed, do fix them up and add dashes.
Track title
Always use the track title if supplied in the game or official soundtrack. If not, use the level name if supplied. If the game doesn't give you that either, you might get lucky looking for information from the official game manual. But if you really don't find anything at all, just don't make anything up! "Level 1" is good enough as a last resort.
It is not recommended to use long titles either, so keep it simple. Adding both level number and level name on the track title might be a good idea if the title isn't in the game (ie. Ghouls 'n Ghosts), but it just looks silly if it does (ie. the Sonic games).
To make it easier to remember, here's the preference order described above:
official track titles > official level names > generic "Level #" name
Japanese track names are even harder to find, but it is possible, especially in the case of an official soundtrack release.
Notes
Write any notes about the particular track here. This space is not for your personal review of the track or anything of the sort; leave that for the readme file later. The notes field is for information like "A remixed version of the original theme" or "An adaptation of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata". If there are sound test numbers, or names from it that you didn't use, these are welcome additions for records' sake.
Chances are you'll end up leaving this blank.
File creator
This is where you give yourself credit for the file. Keep it simple and clear, please. Don't abuse size or act "1337". We'd hate to see stuff like that. Your name and/or nickname is enough (ie. Dark Pulse, DJSW, DukeNukem).
Once you've written everything down, click on Update GD3. VGMTool will write the info into the file and let you know when it's done. After this, just drop the next file and, like mentioned before, all fields will be maintained because the file has no GD3 tag. Change only the fields necessary and update the file. Proceed with this until everything's tagged.
Easy, huh? But you're not entirely done yet!
Naming
Files are almost ready now, so it's about time you give them proper names. Our naming convention for VGM/VGZs is:
## Track Title.vgz
Where "##" is the playlist number of the track.
Everything else should be named for the short game name. By "short game name", we mean the complete game name is discouraged. For example:
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball -> Sonic Spinball Ren and Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention -> Stimpy's Invention Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters -> Lethal Enforcers II Ristar - The Shooting Star -> Ristar Tiny Toon Adventures: Acme All Stars -> Acme All Stars
It's pretty much intuitive. Just keep it simple and straightforward and you'll be fine.
Once the VGM files are properly renamed, there are two ways you can easily create a .m3u playlist of them. It will ultimately need to be named with the short game name you just used (i.e., "Sonic Spinball.m3u"). Also, name a text file the same way (i.e., "Sonic Spinball.txt").
Making a playlist (Command line/.bat)
You can create a reusable .bat file to be run in an appropriately-named folder (or just rename the playlist after it's written). If you're comfortable with the command line, you can also run the playlist-creation line inside the folder.
.bat form:
for %%* in (.) do dir /b /on *.vg* > "%%~n*.m3u"
Command line form:
for %* in (.) do dir /b /on *.vg* > "%~n*.m3u"
This line uses a loop (for/in) to get the current folder path ((.), placed in %%*), which is the quickest (only?) way to get it here. Then (do) it uses the dir command to list all VGM/VGZ filenames in (>) a .m3u file named with the folder's name.
Making a playlist (Winamp)
If you prefer to use Winamp, load them in Winamp's playlist and sort them in order of track number. (Winamp can do this for you with Misc (in the Playlist window) > Sort > by filename.) Save the playlist (in the Playlist window, click on List Opts > Save List or press Ctrl+S) with the short name.
Finally, you just have to clean up the tag cache on the Winamp playlist file. (The advantage of the command line/.bat is not having to worry about this.) Open the .m3u file in Notepad and remove all lines starting with #. This way the playlist will contain only the file names and nothing else.
The screenshot(s)
At the very least, there'll be one screenshot of the game's title screen in your pack. Sometimes different regions of the game have different title screens, an example being Castle of Illusion; we'd like those included. If your pack includes the game's beta songs, if any (ideal for smaller numbers of different/changed tracks), you should include screenshots of the beta's title screen as well - if it's different, of course.
Remove scanlines from the screenshot, but as with the VGM logs, be careful not to remove blank space that's part of the image. The correct resolution should be either of 320x224 or 256x224 (for NTSC), or 320x240 or 256x240 (for PAL).
Name your single screenshot with the short name as above (i.e., "Sonic Spinball.png"), or name each of them with the right short name as well as the region letter in parentheses (i.e., "Castle of Illusion (U).png" and "Fushigi no Oshiro Daibouken (J).png").
Now, use any of FileOptimizer, ImageOptim, or Trimage, or an equivalent to compress all the screenshots as small as possible. All these batch compressors run many compressing programs for you; they should include PNGOut in them, but get better results than PNGOut alone.
Writing the readme file
All our packages include a .txt file with some basic information on the soundtrack. Here is the VGMRips template:
***********************************************
* VGM music package *
* http://vgmrips.net/ *
***********************************************
Game name: Complete game name
System: Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
Music hardware: [[YM2612]], [[SEGA VDP PSG]]
Music author: Composer name(s)
Game developer: Game developer(s)
Game publisher: Game publisher(s)
Game release date: ####-##-## (Region Letter(s))
Package created by: Your name and\or nickname
Package version: Package version
Song list, in approximate game order:
Song name Length:
Total Loop
Track information from dropping
a playlist on vgm_stat
Notes:
Add personal notes and remarks here.
<-------------- 48 characters ---------------->
If possible, try to keep text wrapped at this
48 characters width. This way everything looks
pretty and aligned :)
Package history:
[In case of any, add the change log here, with
recent versions at the bottom. Example:]
1.00 2014-06-19 Ananab: Initial release.
1.01 2016-03-18 Yournameplease: Fixed hanging
note in "Track name"
1.10 2022-04-30 Dr. Robotnik: Added Japanese
game name to GD3
(if it's the first release, don't include this
section at all)
For each line in the header (above the song list), if the info needs to be wrapped, indent the new lines flush with the left-hand side of the start of the entry. Some examples:
Game developer: Eggman Enterprises
Unlimited
Game release date: 1988-10-26 (J) /
2015-04-20 (U)
Here's how you should edit the text file:
- Game name
- Complete English title. This should be the same as the one used in the VGMs.
- System
- If the game was ONLY released in a certain region, reduce the name there to "Sega Mega Drive" or "Sega Genesis" as appropriate.
- If the music had to be ripped at 50hz, use only "Sega Mega Drive" to reflect that.
- Otherwise, leave the line as shown above.
- Music hardware
- The two listed are common to most Genesis games, but double-check the chips. In Winamp they can be found in the File Info window; VGMPlay always displays the used chips (along with the core it's using to emulate them in parentheses). The VDP PSG is just given as "Sega PSG". If you spot any differences besides that or the ordering of the hardware, make this section match what you see.
- Music author
- Original composer(s) name(s) as placed in the equivalent English tag.
- Game developer
- The company or companies that developed the game. This information usually can be found from the game itself from the several logo screens usually included.
- Game publisher
- The company or companies that published the game. This too may often be learned from the intro screens. The publisher may be different in different regions. In that case, mark them with region letters like with the release date.
- Package created by
- the name(s) of everyone who worked on the gathering of songs for this package. Usually just you
- Package version
- 1.00 for first release of a complete music dump. < 1.00 for incomplete releases. > 1.00 for updates and fixes. It's best to use smaller numbers like 1.02 for smaller updates, and save bigger ones like 2.00 or 3.00 for massive updates, like a total [R(er)ipping for the Out-of-Element Contributor|rerip].
- Notes
- Write any personal remarks or notes on the soundtrack and\or individual tracks here. If you don't have anything to say, then just put a hyphen there.
- Updates
- In case you update the package, add the change log here. Example:
Package history: 1.00 2014-06-19 Ananab: Initial release. 1.01 2016-03-18 Yournameplease: Fixed hanging note in "Track name" 1.10 2022-04-30 Dr. Robotnik: Added Japanese game name to GD3
And at last, there's the track list. All tracks should be included in this list, and they must be ordered properly, that is, approximately the game order. To retrieve this information, use the playlist with vgm_stat; it will take care of numbering and proper line breaks for you. For Ghouls 'n Ghosts, it would look something like this:
Song list, in approximate game order:
Song name Length:
Total Loop
01 Main Theme 0:12 -
02 Menu 0:01 -
03 Options 1:46 -
04 Level Start 0:03 -
05 Level 1, The Hill of Torture 1:35 1:20
06 Level 1 Boss (Shielder) 0:32 0:27
07 Level 2, The Village of Decay
and Destruction 0:57 0:56
08 Level 2 Boss (Cerberus) 0:47 0:20
09 Level 3, Baron Rankle's Tower 1:16 1:16
10 Level 3 Boss (Gassuto) 0:44 0:44
...
Notice that TAB characters are NOT used. Padding is done with spaces only.
And you're done! All you have to do now is optimise the files, zip them up and send it to us.
Optimising
Time for the optimisation, but first, a little background on this.
"A few months ago we decided to start Project2612 because we love Mega Drive/Genesis soundtracks, and because there wasn't a good place to find quality soundtracks anywhere. (And let's face it, GYMs suck!) There were plenty of GYM files out there, but they were big, inaccurate, didn't support loop or tags and just sounded terrible. There was no quality control or standard either. The only decent format for storing YM2612 data was VGM, but its good accuracy and no optimisation made files extremely large.
"Regardless of that, Project2612 was started, and soon had a big collection of soundtracks, some over 20 MB in size. (Pulseman, formerly the biggest set, was 29.6 MB!) Size had always been an issue and was holding the VGM popularity down, but it was all we had. But then some nice folks, namely blargg, came around with an idea to solve this, proposing a few changes on the format that would optimise file sizes tremendously.
"A couple of weeks of actual work resulted on the updated VGM format, 1.50, which now supports PCM sample banks. This new optimised version of the format was able to reduce file sizes tremendously, sometimes with over 75% of size reduction. This certainly removed the only barrier against VGM ruling as THE Mega Drive/Genesis music format, and all this is thanks to the following optimisation process you're going to use. :)"
The above refers to the program OptVGM. After this tutorial was first written in the days when dinosaurs were still getting rocks chucked at them by caveman ninjas, another compressing tool has been created: vgm_cmp. This compressor is lossy, and files it's used on will no longer work with vgm_trim. (A good thing, then, you'll only be using it on the trimmed files.) vgm_cmp must be used after optvgm, or you won't get optimum results.
You should already have both compressing tools, because you've already used vgm_trim. Copy them to the same directory as the VGMs. There's a handy batch (.BAT) file you can create which will use the tools in the correct order for you:
for %%f in (*_trimmed.vgm) do optvgm "%%f" "%%~nf.vgz" & vgm_cmp "%%~nf.vgz" & gzip.exe "%%~nf_optimized.vgm" & ren "%%~nf_optimized.vgm.gz" "%%~nf_optimized.vgz"
If you'd like to know brief details:
- For each VGM file with "_trimmed" at the end of the filename,
- run optvgm on it (with output file set to "[filename].vgz")
- then (
&) run vgm_cmp on that (producing "[filename]_optimized.vgm") - then run gzip on that (producing "[filename]_optimized.vgm.gz")
- and finally, ren(ame) that to "[filename]_optimized.vgz".
You may not already have gzip.exe. In that case, you can
- just remove everything beyond the second
"%%~nf.vgz"and send in the results. The VGMs will be properly GZipped during the finishing process after pack acceptance and before pack posting. That's the simplest option, but if you really want to do it yourself, then - get a copy of GZip,
- change the "gzip.exe" part to use 7z gzipping instead (it should just be
7z a -tgzipif 7z is installed/pathed properly, - or do the first option but then use VGMToolbox's gzip compressor, under "Compression Tools". But beware! VGMToolbox won't rename the files to use .vgz for you, so you must do it yourself.
(Either way, your final results will always end with "_trimmed_optimized", VGM or VGZ.)
With the VGM files optimised, you can delete the copies of the optimizers. Now you should make it so all your final optimized files are the only vgms/vgzs inside their folder, and run vgm_name there to clean up all the suffix gunk.
Once that's done, all you have to do now is pack the files up.
Packing & Uploading
With your VGM files trimmed, tagged, named and optimised, all you need now is to pack the files together as a soundtrack pack. Just compress all the files in a .zip file named with the short version of the game name. To make things easier for us, change spaces to underscores and remove any special characters from the filename (such as ').
To get your (new) pack added to the site, you can make a thread for your pack on the Submissions board. Updates to any packs should go in the Pack Update Topic. If the pack is small enough, you can upload it directly there as you post. Otherwise, it is recommended to upload the .zip to a site like Dropbox or MEGA.nz and include a link in your thread/post.
Further Notes
- We do not guarantee your pack will be accepted and included on the website at all, and there's a chance we request you to completely redo the pack. This will depend solely on the quality of your work.
- You don't always have to rip, trim and tag everything yourself. You might find someone in the chatroom that's willing to do part of the process for you.
- And again, if you have any questions or if you need any help, just join our IRC.
External Links
- Old Game Music Composer List at archive.org
- Old project2612 tutorial (outdated)
