SDK: UMX Question

[ShadowRunner]

Danke's DXMS tutorial suggests you need to add slots to your file so that the song isn't cut off.

I think it suggests adding 64 or 100, but what I've noticed, that's more than is necessary for a song of 2-4 minutes.

I'm wondering, does adding slots mean added meggage?

If so, then is there a relationship between slots and time that allows you to look at a song length and know exactly how many slots to add?

If you don't add any slots at all, the umx is extremely short, about less than one minute.

[[FGS]Chees]

I'm no expert obviously!On DX UMX audio anyway. And haven't had time to play about with UMX files and editing them, yet found myself using 200+ slots for a 2 min audio track just so it would cover the length of the track after all done, converted and the rest, all audio files were at about 2/3mb size, and the download time for new players to join Chins server with music on at this size was ridiculously long. I think a good person to ask would be ZXC Karky as he will know about UMX. if not he will point you to a person that does know. Chindemo will no doubt know as well...Chindemo whats your opinion

[chin.democ.]

To be honest Chees I'm not a fan of custom packages I will avoid custom music/textures/sounds as much as possible, I did convert a track to umx some years ago using sound forge but I cannot remember the process, sorry. There must be guides on Alpha's knowledge base somewhere.

[[FGS]Chees]

Np Chin.
I've followed that guide with the same results. I think the tempo and bps (beats per second) has a big influence on the outcome. Standard DX music has slow tempered beats so may confuse UED with faster paced audio then again what doesn't confuse UED Tbh I'm not fond on creating custom music.
Shadow try ask Karky.

[Poor]

Um Karky is a woman, not a guy and I don't think she knows anything about modding.

[[FGS]Chees]

Um didn't know that! She/He might know someone who does know the answer. He/She helped me out back in the days so might help Shadow. Just a suggestion.

[ShadowRunner]

Thanks for your help ppl. I've never heard of Forge, Danke's tutorial suggest Wavepad and Modplug player and tracker. The process being, convert to mp3 to wav first, then convert to .it file. Then import the .it file into SDK and save as umx.

Some musicians supply DX music as an .it file already, but apparently they are massive, about 17mb. For single player it isn't an issue of course.

I'm not a fan either of extra packages, but it's necessary to know/use them. Sooner or later you will need custom textures etc.

[~DJ~]

No, I don't think cutting extra slots would do any good.. since by 'extra' obviously they're empty. Nothing big would happen.. however if you cut the song in half.. it will lower the size.. but that's kinda stupid..?

The thing is.. the WAV file is big already when it is converted, there is no difference in file sizes of .wav and .it.
The only thing to compress the output/last file is that to have a compressed .wav file being converted to .it

If you want to compress a .wav file, upload it here probably. I'll try my best to compress it and have a good quality state.

[ShadowRunner]

Cheers DJ. I must have misread the tutorial, I never used to cut songs off by accident, but I've done it with this one.
There's several versions, one is 2 mins, one is longer about 5 mins. I'm wondering if 5 mins is going to be way too big.
Anyway I have a couple of other urgent SDK things to do, but I'll send you the song as soon as I can.

[Mastakilla]

Yeah I remember converting audio to wav first and the endresult being a 10, even 20mb+ audio file. Not realistic to use for a DX map

[Poor]

If you convert the wav from stereo to mono it will split the file size in half.

[Mastakilla]

I didn't know that at the time, mind you when I tried this it was like 08

Would still be quite alot, though
I guess there are more things to compress the size

[~][FGS][Nobody~]

Thanks for your help ppl. I've never heard of Forge, Danke's tutorial suggest Wavepad and Modplug player and tracker. The process being, convert to mp3 to wav first, then convert to .it file. Then import the .it file into SDK and save as umx.

Some musicians supply DX music as an .it file already, but apparently they are massive, about 17mb. For single player it isn't an issue of course.

I'm not a fan either of extra packages, but it's necessary to know/use them. Sooner or later you will need custom textures etc.

Basically DeusEx uses tracker module files and a Tracker to generate music out of it.

A module file consists of a bunch of samples. Those are the base for the music that's played. The music is composed out of the samples.
Apart of the samples, a module file contains the composition itself. It can be imagined as a sheet of music that defines which notes are played.
In this case the notes are represented by the samples.
Since samples are re-used and just transposed, the file size can be much smaller than a wave file.
Thus, it's DX's way of reducing filesize.

However, this technique makes it hard to use conventional stream music files as DeusEx Music.
What we're doing is declaring a wave stream as one big sample and saving it into a module file.
So that module file consists of one big sample and a composition of one note.
This works in some way but that's not how it was intended to be used. Best example is that the length of a sample is limited. (At least from what the DX Tracker says)
Also the file is pretty big by the wave stream.

Unfortunately we have no other choice but doing it that way, if there's just an mp3 or wav file available and no corresponding native module file like IT or XM.
In order to perform that nevertheless, a program needed to be developed that's able to "listen" to the wave stream, followed my figuring out the instruments that were used on the one hand and re-composing the sheet of music that was initially composed on the other hand.
So yeah, those are utopian thoughts these days yet.
It would be easier to add mp3 support to DX.

[ShadowRunner]

Thanks for the information.

MP3 import into DX would be fantastic.

[~DJ~]

It would be easier to add mp3 support to DX.

OMG WHY DFON'T YOU DO IT ARLREADY THEN?!?!!!