Progress?

[Meira]

Out of interest, if you are no longer waiting for the voicing, does this mean that the release will be sped up somewhat?  I don't want to rush what is so obviously excellent work but it'd be nice to be able to download it before going home to a dial-up connection . . .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't think it's safe to say anything more than that it's done when it's done. I said once that time to the release date would probably be counted in months rather than years... Too bad that was almost year and a half ago.

 

The recent progress made in for the music has made me optimistic, though.

[Domi]

Cheers to that! BTW, any chance of you guys putting out a voice editing tutorial of some kind? That's one thing, I find, I cannot find

[Darios]

Cheers to that! BTW, any chance of you guys putting out a voice editing tutorial of some kind? That's one thing, I find, I cannot find

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmmm... That's an idea, although I can't really say I have any extra time as of now. I'm also not sure what exactly would people be interested in. Recording (tips on equipment and avoiding sources of noise), postprocessing (noise removal, leveling, effects), packaging (sample rate conversion, compression) and coding (adding music with WeiDU, etc.) come to mind. I'm not making any promises though, and it is something that has to go to the "when I have extra time" category. So I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Domi]

I can speak only for myself, but I feel that post-processing is something that is not covered anywhere, while there is sufficient info on recording itself/coding/packaging.

[BigRob]

I second that, some tips on post-processing would be great. Anything else you put into it would be good, but that's something I've wrestled with and lost to whenever I try it.

[Darios]

I second that, some tips on post-processing would be great. Anything else you put into it would be good, but that's something I've wrestled with and lost to whenever I try it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmm... I was just thinking, whether a Q & A type thing with some common problems in audio clips (I'm thinking mostly voicing here) with suggestions and tricks for preventing/fixing them would be a good format for the tutorial?

 

E.g. "My voice clips are noisy, what can I do?", followed by a rundown of most common sources of noise, ways to avoid them in the recording phase, and for those who cannot influence the recording stage itself, how to fix/salvage noisy voicing and make it presentable.

 

Other topics could include clicks, pops and other miscellaneous artifacts in voice clips, ways to make the clips louder without adding too much noise, and matching voicing volume to Bioware standards. Any other problems/situations you have encountered that you could use help with? I'm by no means an expert in audio editing, but having found some tricks especially useful for voicing, I would be glad to help modders and voice actors to make better-sounding mods (provided that I can find the time some day).

[Domi]

That would be great, though, again, we do have references to how to record well, but I find that most voicework I get will need post-processing, and post-processing is one thing that does not have extensive reference material. Noise removal and volumes are the two most common issues, yep.

 

The couple of thing that you did not name, and I was wondering about were:

 

-different ways of altering the original voice, ie if I wanted to make the tembre lower, higher, booming etc. Is there freeware that helps with it, and which edits it does well?

 

-also is there a way to apply the same edit to all the files without working with every single one manually?

[Meira]

Hey,

 

Looks like we are going to be able to have Amber's music theme to loop during the entire talk regardless if the said talk is a short or a long one. Unlike to the Bioware's romance themes that play only once and are always the same length... Yay! (Too bad if you'll hate the theme, though... )

[Darios]

And not only that, but to always end in a controlled manner within about 20 seconds (at the latest, usually sooner) after the talk ends.

 

It looks as if both the Bioware NPC themes and the music engine were originally designed with this in mind, but in the end they ran out of time and never implemented this, having the music just as a single chunk which played once (which really doesnät make any sense in light of the .mus file format and what it allows). Also the themes themselves conveniently consist of 4 separate sections, each having its own beginning and ending, as if they were meant to be chopped into sections and combined into looped structures, enabling the music to play for the duration of the talk but not much longer, just as we are trying to get Amber's theme to do. I'm thrilled at the prospect of this actually being possible.

[BigRob]

Very cool, really handy for maintaining atmosphere... as long as you've got the talent to build a theme like that.

[Kulyok]

It looks as if both the Bioware NPC themes and the music engine were originally designed with this in mind, but in the end they ran out of time and never implemented this, having the music just as a single chunk which played once (which really doesnät make any sense in light of the .mus file format and what it allows).

 

That's cool, but - you mean that Amber will use a .mus file? Does it mean it'll take an extra slot in the songlist, and thus will be incompatible with many other mods?

[Meira]

That's cool, but - you mean that Amber will use a .mus file? Does it mean it'll take an extra slot in the songlist, and thus will be incompatible with many other mods?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, we do use one slot, but since I believe there are 17 free slots, you'd have to have several (NPC) mods installed for this to become a problem. I looked around a bit for how many slots they use, and for example Tashia uses one and Chloe three. The Longer Road use more, but not all, IIRC, and so on.

 

I'm under the impression that most newer NPC mods that use a set length, non-looping theme music use the blank.mus at slot 0 workaround and thus are not competing of the same songlist slots. I'm not certain which (larger?) mods hog all the slots, but I'll try to complete a list of them before release.

 

Also, Amber adds the songlist entry dynamically into first free slot; ie. if the slot 84 is already taken she'll take the next one, and so forth. I haven't yet tested what happens if all slots are already taken, though.

 

I agree that if we were using a songlist slot for a simple mus-file similar to Aerie's for example it would be unnecessary.

 

MXAERIE
1
A   @TAG END  

 

We are attempting a much more complex thing, however:

 

MXM#AM
9
A                   @TAG Z
B1                  @TAG ZE
B2                  @TAG Z
C                   @TAG ZC
D                   @TAG ZD
E1                  @TAG ZE
B2                  @TAG Z
C                   @TAG ZC
D   mxm#am B1       @TAG ZD

 

Meaning that A is the intro and then the music will proceed playing down that list looping back to B1 from the second time it has played D. Each part is approximately from 5 to 20 seconds long. Depending on when the talk ends, the music will end with one of the four ending variations (Z, ZC, ZD, ZE) allowing the music die down gracefully.