Help Wanted!

[berelinde]

I seem to be hitting every conceivable snag in editing a sound file.

 

Would some kindly person please extract and convert BG2's CHAPT04A.WAV to ordinary WAV, OGG, or any other Windows-readable format?

 

I would be most grateful.

[Miloch]

It should work if you have NI and acm2wav in your game folder (or did you overwrite the sound somehow?).

 

Is there some reason I can't attach stuff here?

[Ardanis]

http://rapidshare.de/files/47394607/chapt04a.rar.html

[berelinde]

Thanks much! I'll download it when I get home from work.

[berelinde]

Thank you very much! I was able to edit out the first phrase without having it sound too abrupt.

 

I've got to do another text screen for the chapter transition, but I've done this before, and it isn't too difficult. If Cuv is still around, thanks for the great tutorial.

 

Thanks very much for your help!

[Guest Guest]

Could we have a listen to your edited version, berelinde? Oh, and is the audio quality the same as in the unmodded game (I mean, is it possible to extract the original version, edit it, and keep the audio quality 100%)?

[berelinde]

No, unfortunately, the sound quality does diminish somewhat during the decompression from ACM, compression to OGG, and extraction into the game. Though I just had a listen to the original sound again in NI, and I've got to say that Ardanis did a phenomenal job, since the quality of that clip has got to be the worst in the game. I thought it was just the process used to extract the file, but the clip is full of hisses and pops even when I listen to it with NI. It's in the WAV folder, CHAPT04A.WAV, if you don't believe me.

 

I know, some of you don't want sound at all, if it isn't recording studio quality. I can attach both a copy of the edited file and a random voiced line so you can see for yourselves. The best I can do is make sound optional.

audio.rar

[Guest Guest]

Thanks for the explanation, berelinde. I'll have a listen to that audio.rar when I get a chance.

 

Forgive my stupidity of all things technical, but can't you just copy the original version (so it's an exact copy of the file) and edit that? Wouldn't that keep the audio quality the same as the original? I mean, all you're doing is chopping the first part off, right?

[berelinde]

The problem is that the sound files are recorded in a format most computers can't read without additional software. They're highly compressed. In order to edit the file, I'd have to first decompress the file and convert it to a format my computer can read.

 

Every time you compress or decompress a file, the sound quality degrades. Optimally, I'd have decompressed the file on my own computer, edited it, and recompressed it to OGG, which would have preserved slightly more of the original quality, such as it is. I have to qualify that, since the original recording for that line is truly dire. However, my Vista laptop doesn't seem to want to let me convert the sounds using ACM2WAV, so I've got to get other people to do it for me.

[Guest Guest]

Where is the "random voiced line" from audio.rar from? Is it from the unmodded game or something you created?

 

Your edited version of CHAPT04A.WAV sounds okay to me. I'm curious, though: if compressing or decompressing a file degrades the sound quality, why are you recompressing to OGG? If you leave your edited file as an uncompressed WAV, won't the game be able to play it?

 

Hey, I'm really not trying to make life differcult for you here, rather just trying to understand the whole process and find out if there's a different way of doing things that makes the quality the best it can possibly be. I suppose ideally we'd sort out how to get things working on your Vista laptop.

[berelinde]

Ah, good. I'm glad the CHAPT04A is OK. The "random line" is a line I recorded last night for the Alteratives mod. It offers different ways to get to Spellhold.

 

I'm compressing to OGG because WAV files are very large and they'd make the download too big. OGG gives you about an 8:1 compression ratio. If the original WAV file is 3200 KB, the compressed file will be 400 KB. That makes a huge difference, especially to people with dial-up connections.

 

There's supposed to be a program that will convert WAV files to ACM files, as I see from Jarno's post, but the link to it is dead. But then, if there was such a beast, modders would have been using it instead of OGG, which is really a bit of a pain in the butt. There's an added complication in that the game says they're WAV files, but they're really something else entirely with WAV extensions. I don't know if changing the extension on ACM files to WAV would work, but probability says no.

 

Anyway, we've all been using OGG files for quite some time. Tashia uses MP3 files, but there's licensing issues with MP3 converters that I don't feel like dealing with. OGG is open-source software, so using it in mods is perfectly legit. Also, I use Audacity, an open-source sound editing program, and that handles OGG files with ease, but requires auxiliary programs to deal with MP3 files. In other words, it's too much of a headache for me to deal with. I'll be sticking with OGG.

 

But yeah, I wouldn't mind having the ability to convert files without having to ask somebody else to do it for me.

[Ardanis]

Though I just had a listen to the original sound again in NI, and I've got to say that Ardanis did a phenomenal job, since the quality of that clip has got to be the worst in the game. I thought it was just the process used to extract the file, but the clip is full of hisses and pops even when I listen to it with NI.

I did nothing, really. I only put acm2wav.exe (who claims to be related to Fallout, perhaps both games use the same format?) near to NI, run that clip to extract it and then had Audacity to compress it into ogg.

[Guest Guest]

Could you perhaps offer two versions: one with OGG (for dialup) and one with WAV (for everyone else)? Or offer the WAV for download as an "addon" or something. I'd really appreciate it if you did, since that would allow people to get the highest quality possible if they like. And I'm only thinking about this with regard to the single chapter 4 file, as it seems like it needs all the help it can get regarding audio quality. OGG is clearly fine for everything else, as evidenced by the great quality of b!ast_26.ogg.

 

Oh, speaking of b!ast_26.ogg, there seems to be a slight click or similar after "captain". No biggie, but I'd thought I'd mention it considering that we're talking about audio quality. Other than that, it sounds perfect.

 

Hopefully someone will be able to offer some advice as to how you can get things working on Vista.

[berelinde]

Hmm. That's what I tried to do, but I kept getting "not a valid format" error messages. I know it worked on the XP desktop, because I've done it before, but it doesn't want to work with the Vista one. And I know better than to have any of my gaming programs in the 'Program Files' directory, too. Oh well.

 

Anyway, the file you sent is fine! The game sound itself is a little noisy, but that's BioWare's fault, not yours or mine. I'm sure I'm only noticing because I've got the volume turned up to max for editing purposes.

[Miloch]

There's supposed to be a program that will convert WAV files to ACM files, as I see from Jarno's post, but the link to it is dead. But then, if there was such a beast, modders would have been using it instead of OGG, which is really a bit of a pain in the butt. There's an added complication in that the game says they're WAV files, but they're really something else entirely with WAV extensions. I don't know if changing the extension on ACM files to WAV would work, but probability says no.

You have to Extract and Convert the game's .wav files rather than just Extract, which I'm sure you know. Otherwise they will technically be wavc/acm (wavc is just acm with an extra header, I believe) rather than wav. Windows will not recognise the former, regardless of version (maybe there is a Media Player codec, but I've never come across one).

 

I'm pretty sure you can convert back and forth also with DLTCEP, as we discussed in that thread and the one linked from it a while back. I looked into calling its code or using WeiDU to do the conversion en masse, but it's probably beyond my expertise. IIRC, there is code in Bearwere's Tweaks that can convert a .wavc file natively and trim a piece off it without even bothering with converting it (in with these components). That routine may have had issues and possibly never made it into the prime-time mod, but primarily when it came to mod-added sounds IIRC, so it should be ok for a known game clip.

 

MP3 and ogg are both lossy - the main virtue of the latter is that it is open source, though it is also probably of somewhat better quality than mp3.