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A useful idea for trimming

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

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A useful idea for trimming

Post by vampirefrog »

I've been using a combination of vgmlpfnd and a DAW or wave file editor for fining proper loops for some GEMS games, and I thought it would be very useful to visualize the loops found by vgmlpfnd superimposed on the wave graphic. I did a bit of research and here is what I have found.

The WAV file format supports a "cue " chunk which can contain cue points and loops. This is very useful indeed, however, I've found only a few softwares that can read and display these:
Reaper can display them correctly, but I haven't figured out how to select them.
Sony Sound Forge supports them very well, allows selection as well.
Sony ACID Pro 7.0 also supports them, but only in the 'Clip Properties' window.
Sony Vegas Pro 12.0 also supports them, in the 'Trimmer'.
Sony Acid Xpress 7.0a also supports them, similarly to Acid Pro, and it is for free. This is the best so far.
AVS Audio Editor (not free) also supports them.
Cool Edit Pro supports them.
Adobe Audition supports them.
Audacity does not support them.
Wavosaur seems to have partial or incomplete support.
GoldWave seems the same as Wavosaur.
Nero WaveEditor does not support them.

As a long time ACID Pro user, I'd choose that, but ACID Xpress 7.0a is also a good option, and is free. You can download it from here: http://dspcdn.sonycreativesoftware.com/ ... ess70a.exe
It will ask for registration, and send it to their servers, but that's ok, you can fill in bogus values if you're paranoid about this stuff.

The second option, and the cheapest, is to convert the output of vgmlpfnd to Audacity Label files, and import those into Audacity. This is what I'll try to implement first, but the downsides are that it might lose some accuracy, and Audacity is kinda lame IMO.

Later we'll have to find a way to insert a cue chunk into a wave file and try to open it in Sound Forge or ACID softwares.

But anyway, these should help trimming.

Post by vampirefrog »

So I'm thinking of modifying vgmlpfnd and vgmplay as follows:

add an option to vgmlpfnd to output in a particular format, i am thinking one loop per line, each line has starting sample, end sample and a label which we generate.

second, add an option to vgmplay to include this info in the WAV file it outputs when using -LogSound:1
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