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vgm2mid Messed Up Drum Track

Technical discussion about the VGM format, and all the software you need to handle VGM files.

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vgm2mid Messed Up Drum Track

Post by Vahkiti »

Alright, so I was wondering if you guys could give me some insight on a little problem I've been having with vgm2mid. Everything seems to work fine except the drum track, which seems to have SOME semblance of the original drums in there, but has multiple rows of extra garbage notes jumbled throughout it. If it weren't such a mess, I'd just bite the bullet and edit it manually, but I don't know where to begin with this.

If it helps at all, the VGM I'm trying to convert came from Sonic 3. (Genesis) Any help you guys could offer would be much appreciated, as I'm trying to use this for a project I'm currently working on.

EDIT: if it helps, here's what the drum track looks like in FLStudio:

Image
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Post by ValleyBell »

I'm afraid there is no way to get better results.
The issue with YM2612 drums is, that they are PCM based. Due to how this works, VGMs only contain the streamed WAVE data for them.
vgm2mid converts all the separate PCM samples (like "samples in a WAVE file", not "sound samples") into MIDI notes (with a small filter though), so with some luck you can find a few notes that are only used by certain samples and filter the rest out.
The only other possibility would be to omit them entirely.

If you want songs from the Sonic series, you can alternatively use smps2mid.
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Post by Vahkiti »

Given a little more observation, I seem to have found that the main drum line is actually still here, it's just drowned out by all the very small garbage notes littering the track. if I had a filter for FLStudio to delete notes below a certain length, I might actually still be able to salvage this.

As for smps2mid, I have looked into this, though not quite as much as VGM conversion. This is mainly because my project involves ripping from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and from what I gather, that's either very unstable, or in the case of Sonic & Knuckles alone, doesn't work at all.

Worst case scenario, for most tracks, I've decided to use the drum track from the midis included in the Sonic & Knuckles Collection for PC. It's not as accurate as I might like, but it's better than nothing for those that I can apply it to.

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Post by ValleyBell »

The tracks in S3 and S3K are mostly identical, except for some jingles and the credits. Flying Battery 1 and Sky Sancturary had a tiny bugfix IIRC.
I'd probably just rip from S3 where possible. (I know that S3K support is pretty bad, that's because of the compressed sound driver.)
The advantage of smps2mid is clean notes (regarding tempo and pitch bends) and proper instrument changes, of course.

If you're using S&K PC Collection tracks, use the FM versions. They're usually a bit closer to the original songs than the GM arrangements. The best example is Mushroom Hill 1.
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Post by Vahkiti »

Would it make any difference if I ripped from Sonic 3 Complete? I know it's a romhack, but Idk, maybe they did something with the sounds. I'm basically using these as a base for a remix album, so I kinda need ALL the level themes from both games. However the main thing I'm worried about right now is the credits. I kind of want a functional midi of the ending from the Sonic 3C 0517 prototype, which has no parallel in the Sonic & Knuckles Collection. (As far as I know)

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Post by ValleyBell »

Yes. The song table offsets are hardcoded into the program, so S3 Complete doesn't work.
I can see if I can make you an archive with all songs converted though.
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Post by Vahkiti »

Other than that one from the prototype, I should be able to handle it. I'm just playing around with the program now, and it seems to be doing alright. :)

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Post by Vahkiti »

Er.. it seems I might need a hand after all. I got it to load up the prototype rom just fine, but it refuses to extract the last track, (what I assume to be the credits) It does the same thing using a standard Sonic 3 rom as well. Says the number of FM or PSG tracks are invalid.
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