| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
ImaCarrot
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 2687
|
 Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:27 am Post subject: Concert Mode Tutorial |
 |
|
---------------------------------------------------------
Concert Mode Tutorial
Written by: ImaCarrot
Date Added: 01-19-2007
---------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
--------------------------
I've started to get quite a few inquiries as to how I created my version of Concert Mode in Guitar Hero 2 with the subtext that my brief explanation wasn't enough. This doc will hopefully detail my process a little better, and we can hopefully start to see more people play their own concerts.
Programs Utilized
------------------------------------
*GH2RIP.EXE DOWNLOAD*
*GH2Rip.exe - WParam's utility that can extract the separate channels of a .VGS. Scroll down to the bottom of the thread to find the download as well as instructions on its use.
*Guitar Hero Explorer (GHEX) - For creating the .VGS as well as import/export of game files.
*MFAudio - Used to create .wav files out of the .BIN files that GH2Rip.exe gives you.
*Midi Sequencer - I use Midi Maestro, the majority of people here use Anvil Studio. This tutorial will show Midi Maestro, though the techniques shown can be applied to any midi sequencer.
*Waveform Editor - I use Vegas Video to do all of my audio editing, I doubt anyone else here does, most people probably use Audacity. -Note that my version of Vegas is much earlier than the current one, so it may look different. -Also note that it may not be possible to work with the waveforms in Audacity like I do in this tutorial, I don't know for sure since I don't use that program.
*Any of the tools needed to get the song playable in game as detailed in Sottle's guide.
Pick Your Songs
---------------------------------
You need to first decide what songs you want to include in your concert mode and how many. I decided on the last five songs in the game for the sake of simplicity. Really you could combine together any number of songs you want, but it increases the complexity and the amount of the work that you need to do. If this is your first time creating a concert mode, start with no more than five songs, trust me.
Extract
---------------
Now you need to rip the .VGS and .MID of the songs you want from your copy of Guitar Hero 2 (or the first game if you really want to), you can use Game Extractor or GHEX to do this, I used Game Extractor since GHEX didn't support extraction when I first did this. I think it would be easier to use GHEX now. Follow the instructions for ripping files to your hard disk using GHEX on the GHEX main page.
Tip: Rip the songs to the same directory that you extracted GH2Rip.exe to, that makes it easier to rip the songs using the command prompt.
Ripping and converting the songs directly from your disc is more difficult than just downloading a torrent with the Guitar Hero 2 soundtrack already in .mp3 form, but it is also more reliable. I first tried to just use .mp3's of the songs that I had on my computer that were supposedly ripped from the game, but they didn't not sync up with the midi's when I first put them in.
Tip: Rename the .VGS tracks you ripped to something shorter so it's easier to type the names into the command prompt. Be sure to keep the .VGS file extension.
Convert
----------------
Now that you have the .VGS files of the songs you want, you need to extract the separate channels so you can remix them together with the other songs you want. This is where we use WParam's GH2Rip utility.
Tip: Before you extract the separate channels, create a separate folder for each song in the directory that you have the GH2Rip .exe utility in. This will help to reduce clutter.
Open cmd.exe in windows (Start Menu > Run > type in cmd and press enter). This tutorial will assume that you know the basics of running programs through cmd.exe and will not explain how to do things like browse to a directory.
Browse to the directory that you extracted GH2Rip.exe and the .vgs files of your songs. Run the split operation on your first song (example: | Code: | | gh2rip.exe -split freebird.vgs |
). Wait a few minutes until the operation finishes and the command prompt goes back to waiting for you to enter something. This will give you a .BIN file for each channel in the .vgs, Free Bird only has four for example, some songs have as many as six.
Tip: Put these .bin files in the separate song directory you created earlier to help minimize the clutter.
The filename of the .bin file it gives you tells you important information. Example: 'freebird.vgs-0-32250.bin'.
The red colored text is the name of the file that you fed into the utility. The blue colored text is the channel number of this particular .bin file. The green colored text is the sample rate of the particular .bin file.
Important: The sample rate is often different from song to song and even from channel to channel within a single song! If you input the wrong sample rate into MFAudio when converting a .bin to .wav, the resulting .wav will sound either too fast or too slow (depending on the number you entered).
Tip: Here's what each channel number actually means to Guitar Hero.
| Riff wrote: | GH1:
Stream 0: Band, left channel
Stream 1: Band, right channel
Stream 2: Lead guitar, left channel
Stream 3: Lead guitar, right channel
GH2:
Stream 0: Band, left channel
Stream 1: Band, right channel
Stream 2: Lead guitar, left channel
Stream 3: Lead guitar, right channel
Stream 4: Coop guitar, left channel
Stream 5: Coop guitar, right channel |
You need to do this for all of the songs you want to put into concert mode.
Once you have the separate .bin files for all of the channels of all of the songs you want (it'll be a lot of files depending on how many songs you want), you need to convert those to .wav.
Open up MFAudio.
Click 'Open' and double click on one of the .bin files that GH2Rip.exe gave you. Here are the settings to use;
| Code: | Output Audio File: WAV - Microsoft RIFF - Uncompressed PCM
Frequency: Match the sample rate of your .bin file
Samples: Leave as is
Channels: 1 (mono) |
Finally, 'SaveAs' as the file name you want and the directory you want.
Tip: I saved the .wav in the same song directory that the .bin files are in to keep everything organized. I also made sure that the file name had the channel number in it, example: 'freebird0.wav'.
You need to do this process for every single .bin file that you have! It will take awhile depending on how many .bin files you have.
Note: I noticed every so often that during the conversion process from .bin to .wav, MFAudio would get to about 99% and then just hang. Looking at the file it was creating in Explorer, I could see that the file size was still increasing to something much larger than it should be (I let it get to about 2 gigs before canceling it once). This means that something is wrong with the .bin file (as far as I can tell). I just re-ripped the .bin files using GH2Rip.exe again and it usually cleared up the problem.
Now that you have a .wav file for every single channel for all of the songs you've chosen, it's time to mix them into a single song. Now there are two options for how you go about doing this, the easy way and the not so easy way. The easy way involves mixing all of the channels together into a single .wav that you then convert into a .vgs. This option doesn't take as long as the other option, but you lose the effect of the guitar muting out of the song when you miss a note in game (just like most of the custom songs).
The not so easy way has you mixing each channel with the channels of the same number from each song. So freebird0.wav, beast0.wav, and misirlou0.wav... etc, all get mixed together into one .wav file. You do this for all of the channels, you'll end up with as many .wav files as the most channels one of your songs had, most likely six. This method has the obvious advantage over the other one in that the guitar part will mute when you miss a note, just like the real songs in the game. This is also the method I used in my concert mode and the method that will be detailed here.
In your waveform editor of choice, mine is Vegas, import all of the separate channels for your first song to its own track at the start of the timeline. This way each channel has its own track, in Vegas, you can mute any track you want and it won't get exported, this makes it easier to export a .wav file for a single channel from multiple songs.
Now give yourself a little bit of time at the end of the first song before the next song starts. I gave myself a ten second break in-between each song; you can give whatever amount of pause you want.
Tip: If you give an even number for a pause and use the same number each time, it will be easier to sync the midi notes later.
On your timeline after your designated pause, start importing all of the channels to their own separate tracks for your next song. You can either put the channels for each song in its own track, or keep each channel for each song together in one track. I choose to put each channel in its own track for the sake of control.
Do this for each of the songs that you have chosen; it may take awhile. Each channel in a song should be the exact same length, if one is shorter or longer, than you entered in the wrong sample rate when converting the .bin to a .wav.
Zoomed out view of all of my channels arranged and ready for export.
You need to export a .wav file for each channel of your finished 'song'. Here are the export settings I used in Vegas.
| Code: | Format: PCM uncompressed (that's a .wav file)
Sample Rate: 44,100
Bit Depth: 16
Channels: Mono |
Tip: Export an .mp3 of the concert mode cong in its entirety, you can use this in conjunction with your midi sequencer to help sync the notes to the music.
You can now create your .vgs using GHEX, please follow the instructions katamakel has written to do that.
Midi Sequencer
-------------------------------
Now it's time to merge all of the notes from each midi together into one super midi. Common sense should be enough tell most of you how to do this; there are a couple of pitfalls that should probably be documented though.
Midi Maestro has a nice feature called 'Import Tracks', it will import all of the tracks from a midi, even if the track name is the same as one currently in the midi you are importing to.
Open up your first song's midi and save it as 'concert_mode.mid' or something. Then move the timeline to the time that is exactly how many seconds of pause you put in-between your songs. This is where it's handy to know exactly how much time you have between the songs and to keep it a whole number; it makes the sync process easier. You may not be able to move the timeline far enough to import the tracks on the time you want, you'll have to just import the tracks where you can and then move them all manually to the correct time.
Tip: It's much easier to uniformly move all of the notes and events in a track in the Clips & Cues view in Midi Maestro.
Note: Importing tracks will NOT import tempo changes; it will just extend the last tempo change to the end of the timeline created by the new tracks. You will need to open up the original midi that you just imported the tracks from and copy all of the tempo changes. Then open up your concert mode midi and paste the tempo changes into the correct spot. The time that you paste the tempo changes at should be the same start as the song. I do not know if this is possible using Anvil Studio, this is what I did using Midi Maestro.
Another tripping spot in this is the fact that the Guitar Hero midis often don't use the exact same track layout. They all have PART GUITAR (or T1GEMS) as the first track, but BAND BASS, BAND DRUMS and BAND SINGER may be in different orderings.
Tip: Take a look at the track layout for all of the songs you've chosen for concert mode before you start importing them all to one midi. Note how they differ and make a plan of attack before you go to fix them as they come up. For example, if two songs have a layout like so,
| Code: | PART GUITAR
PART BASS
BAND BASS
BAND DRUMS
BAND SINGER |
and one song has this layout,
| Code: | PART GUITAR
PART BASS
BAND DRUMS
BAND BASS
BAND SINGER |
then it will obviously be faster to change the one song that is different to match the other two as opposed to the two songs to match the one.
When you want to change the track order of a song, just select the track name in the track list and drag it to the spot in the list you want it to be. Do this after you imported the new tracks and before you begin to merge tracks.
This brings me to actually merging tracks. When you import tracks, it more or less makes a double off all of the tracks but with different notes. Obviously the game won't recognize this correctly, so you need to take the notes from the tracks you just imported and merge them with the corresponding concert mode tracks. Using Clips & Cues view is an easy way to uniformly move all of the notes in a track.
Tip: Rename your concert mode tracks slightly so you can differentiate them from any imported tracks. Something like PART GUITAR1 will work just fine.
When you merge the EVENTS tracks together into one, you have to be sure to go into Events View and delete all of the excess [end] events that will be at the end of each song. All you need is the final [end] event.
There isn't much more I can say about merging the notes into one midi, if you've done any homebrew songs then it shouldn't really be a problem for you.
Conclusion
----------------------
Hopefully the above information is clear and concise enough to not really be too confusing, I will try to add more pictures if it will help explain things better. All that's left to do is to follow Sottle's guide to put the song into the game.
There is a chance that with large concert sets (I'm thinking maybe 20+ songs), that the resulting .vgs file will be so large that it will push the final dvd size past the single layer limit of 4.7GB. If someone were crazy enough to make a concert set large enough to encounter this problem, the solution could be as simple as creating a small dummy .vgs to use as a replacement for the rest of the normal songs in the game. Doing this would make the final dvd size smaller, allowing you more room for your concert mode song. That is just speculation on my part however, I'm not crazy enough to try that so I'm not sure if it would work that way or not.
Last edited by ImaCarrot on Sun Jul 06, 2008 1:01 am; edited 4 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
katamakel 
Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 1467
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
Wow, very nice tutorial, and I use Vegas a lot too 
I can confirm that replacing a bunch of .vgs files with dummy shorter ones work.
My custom song image is currently ~800MiB only, but beware of the song list preview hang though!
_________________
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ruippeixotog
Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 220
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:58 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Mine is 375MB, I replaced extra videos with dummies too :P I only left Shout at the Devil and Mother, because of song list preview. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hotoke
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 298
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:54 am Post subject: |
|
|
My .bin's don't seem to work at MFAudio... they freeze at 99%. I did everything exactly as I should, and I even redid the process 2 times but nothing.
I'm making a concert with FTK > Push Push (Lady Lightning) > Trogdor > The Light That Blinds > Six.
Do you know what might be happening? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ImaCarrot
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 2687
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
None of the .bin files will work?
Try inputing the correct settings into the top fields after you open the song and press the play button to listen to the song. Listen to it for a moment to make sure it sounds right, then input all of the correct settings into the fields at the bottom and try exporting the file as a .wav again.
I'l run some tests soon to try and nail down what exactly causes that problem. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hotoke
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 298
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ok, now the .bin's worked but I've got another problem. XD
How do I export separate audio channels in Vegas? (I don't know how to do it in Audacity either, so don't tell me "do it in Audacity" =p) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
katamakel
Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 1467
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Just mute the channels you don't want and render.
_________________
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ImaCarrot
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 2687
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| katamakel wrote: | | Just mute the channels you don't want and render. |
FTW
Glad you got the .bin files to work, was it by entering the information in the top section too? Please elaborate on your fix so I can put it in the tutorial. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Hotoke
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Posts: 298
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| ImaCarrot1 wrote: | | katamakel wrote: | | Just mute the channels you don't want and render. |
FTW
Glad you got the .bin files to work, was it by entering the information in the top section too? Please elaborate on your fix so I can put it in the tutorial. |
Exactly.
Thanks for the help katamakel but I've given up on this. Maybe in some distant day your precious words will be worthy for me.
(whoa that was beautiful) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thewhyan
Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 323
Location: NYC, NY
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I think this should be stickied.
It's not getting enough attention it ought to get. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Riz
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 2011
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:45 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ya, my bad. Stickied.
Riz.
_________________
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thewhyan
Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 323
Location: NYC, NY
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Riz wrote: | Ya, my bad. Stickied.
Riz. |
Thanks Riz. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ruippeixotog
Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 220
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Uhh... Riz, not that it is very important now, but isn't there some sticky topics, like Score Keeper, gh-utils and VGSPlayer, that are outdated and should be "unstickied"? The fact that there is too much stickies maybe is the reason why some newbies don't give the proper attention to them. Maybe a link at the Custom Song FAQ to them would be a better option. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Riz
Joined: 06 Jun 2006
Posts: 2011
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 12:04 am Post subject: |
|
|
[derail]
Spreadsheet... not my baby 
gh-utils... the thing about them is that they're pure java, so are usable for people who can't use GHex for whatever reason.
VGSPlayer... is still a hugely popular utility for GH1 players, and I wouldn't be surprised if he eventually releases a GH2 compatible version.
So, despite the apparently clutter, they can all stay.
[/derail]
Riz.
_________________
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Volangelus
Joined: 05 Feb 2007
Posts: 2
|
| Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:49 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forgive me for begin teh noob and it was only a matter of time before anyone asked this but - any chance of a bit of help on the cmd.exe?  i'm fine with all the rest of the process and have been porting songs in for a while, i was just never very good at the command prompting and a result of which i cant get the damned thing to work :'( |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Copyright © 2006-2025 ScoreHero, LLC
|
Powered by phpBB
|
![Inbox [ Login ]](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_message.gif){kind=icon}
Inbox [ Login ]
Search
Memberlist
Profile
Log in
