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Feb 2, 2014, 06:15 AM
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Thanks for the links! So the correct file format actually is .psm?

I'd like to clarify the process...

- original Sonic music is for Genesis in VGM format
- Instead of that, Swag can use a MIDI version of those songs
- Those .MID files can be converted to .S3M directly
- Those .S3M files can be converted to .PSM

And jj1 uses PSM, so there must be a program for MS DOS that can convert between .s3m and .psm, since the soundtrack was unofficially released in .s3m format.

I see what you mean, from there it's just about making a list of the Sonic worlds you made levels for, and pick a good .MID song for each different world, and hopefully the music corresponds with the world it's from. ⌒.⌒

I haven't tried yet but overall, it seems like if convert.exe won't work, it might be easiest to convert from .s3m to .mod to .psm, in order to reduce errors. At that point, according to my sources JJ1MOD can convert .mod to .psm.

If the .s3m files won't work entirely, .mid files can be converted to .mod, in my opinion.

...EDIT:

By the way, Convert.exe doesn't run on Windows 8. It's obviously a program made to run in MS-DOS, not Windows, if Epic used it to make JJ1.

Furthermore, JJ1MOD doesn't work for 64-bit machines, which mine is... I might have to use DOS-Box.

Changelog:

Wow, I had no idea Epic actually made a full-fledged module conversion and cleanup program for MS-DOS back in the '90s... They should sell this software.

Too bad the file size of my .s3m file is too big to be made into a .MOD file, lol. I made a valid .PSM file out of a .MOD, but it is only like 5 seconds long XD

The sample I used is too big for .MOD file format. I used a single sample of the whole song from Green Hill Zone, a sample which I edited before putting into a module.

You're right, SwaG will need to use a different remix than the one I posted to Soundcloud, unless JJ1MOD can do better in terms of loading a large file. Right now I'm trying it, but it's taking a while to convert. I've had music file renders take literally about an hour just for ~5 minutes of audio output, so I don't expect it to be much different for this test.

****, if .s3m could only encode .ogg files instead of .wav files, this would be SOOOO much ****ing faster.

I can't say whether JJ1 would be able to use a music file that's bigger than its own filesize, but anyway, I'm just testing conversion with OpenMPT right now. I'm not going to worry about testing with JJ1 until there's actually a significance to choosing the right song for a given level.

Anyway, if there's a compilation of the Sonic soundtrack in MIDI format, which can easily be made into small .MOD files, then they can become .PSM files which should work in JJ1.

Update: As for a progress report, my conversion from .s3m to .psm in JJ1MOD totally failed. As expected, it said in the J2O page that it didn't work.

-> The next step of my process is to convert some of those MIDI files you posted into .MOD files, then convert them into .PSM files with Convert.exe.

By the way, JJ1 songs are only 4-channels as far as I know. It's nearly impossible to reduce the number of channels from any song without essentially fully remastering them. These MIDI files will need a complete overhaul before they're properly converted to a 4-channel .MOD. Instead, I'd sooner convert to 32-channel .MOD and check whether that's supported by JJ1 or not :d

mid2s3m can't convert more than 8 channels either.

I have made a .MOD file out of son1hill.mid, but it's SOO messed up right now, haha.

In order to ACTUALLY correct this, I would have to tune EVERY single one of these virtual instruments, and they would still sound like crap since MIDI playback by the Windows synthesizer is literally a joke, so it would be faster to just replace them all. And the filesize is already twice as big as any JJ1 song, so I can't guarantee these MIDI files can be converted to .PSM.

It's really more likely that I could just make new 4-track .MOD files for whatever levels you choose, convert them later to .PSM, and stick to a 150-kb limit for all JJ1-related music.

Otherwise, there's no use trying to convert a 12-channel .MID file into a 4-channel .PSM file. It just won't happen without a true upgrade to Windows' MIDI synthesizer.

However, if there are some 4-channel .MID files on the site you posted, in theory they could eventually be converted to .PSM. They just need to have every instrument re-tuned in the process, in order for them to not be broken in terms of pitch.

Look, in other words... For troubleshooting purposes:

- 12-channel MIDI songs can't be converted to 4-channel .PSM files.
The reason for this is that 12-channels allows (12 people playing 1 instrument each in 1 song) and 4-channels allows (4 people playing 1 instrument each in 1 song). It's like trying to make 4 groups of 3 people read 1 page of sheet music per group, lol.

- Converting .MID to .MOD in Open Modplug Tracker detunes all of the instruments. It's like virtually loading a bunch of guitars onto a rocketship, sending them to Mars and asking how much air pressure is on the guitar strings once a computer astronaut plays the guitar in a Martian atmosphere. They're obviously not going to immediately sound correct, haha.

For the purposes of SwaG:

- The limit for JJ1-based music is about 100-150 kb in a single .PSM file. (I haven't actually tested this in JJ1, but I have been able to make a 4-channel .PSM song that plays in OpenMPT.)
- So far, I haven't found any sheet music for Sonic songs that can be converted and opened in JJ1. JJ1 has a strict limit of 4 channels for a song, and only accepts .PSM files with a certain filename that determines what order the songs are in compared to each JJ1 world.

-> My plan right now is to just start from scratch, make a 4-channel .MOD file that covers a given Sonic level based on any Sonic world music, convert it to .PSM with convert.exe, check to see that its filesize is under ~150 kb to fit in with JJ1, then to apply it to a JJ1 world, rename it to, for example, song0.PSM in order to play, say, Green Hill Zone music in the Diamondus world.

- What this would require is a list of Sonic worlds that are levels that will be in SwaG, so that the music choice can be appropriate for the level, since it would be cool if the levels had the music from the old worlds in Sonic, just a new version of the same song.

...

While I'm at it, there's a strict limit to the file size of an appropriate .PSM file.
This limit is about ~100 kb.
A simplistic method of reducing the file size of a .PSM file would be:

1. Before you convert to .PSM, edit your file as a .MOD.
2. Change the samples your .MOD file uses. They have to be .WAV file format samples.
3. Reduce the bitrate of each of the .WAV files you're using in the song.
4. Reapply the .WAV samples to the .MOD file in OpenMPT.
5. Convert the .MOD again to .PSM.

Last edited by KRSplatinum; Feb 2, 2014 at 10:07 AM.