Epic Tutorials On Editing Sounds In HaloPC

[Philly]

Bcnipod is supposedely doing research into it. Maybe the next release of Eschaton will sort this problem out? Like with cubemaps?

[WaeV]

Well, this is what I've found from working on the main menu music problem, though I still haven't gotten the music to play for longer than five seconds. Perhaps this will help someone else out there solve the problem.

When the track is saved, it's the whole song as an ogg file, but most programs either can't open it or can only read the first 5 seconds or so. I used Quintessential player to play and convert.

Quintessential player also tells you the bitrate, hertz, and mono or stereo. For the extracted track, it was 85kbps, 44khz, and stereo.

Ogg Converter has options for 44khz and stereo when converting from mp3 to ogg, but the closest options for bitrate are 64 and 96. The way to get the 85 bitrate that the extracted file has, I found, is to set the bitrate to 96, then check the variable bitrate box below. Set the variability to between 64 and 96 and convert away. While this doesn't solve the 5 second problem, it fixed the speed and quality of the 5 seconds that did play.

I think that the way to fix this would be to upload the song in wav chunks, but the problem is that while HMT exports the chunks in wavs, it only allows importing of oggs, which results in an immediate exception error. Older tutorials I have found all seem to say that chunks are the way to go, so perhaps an older version of HMT will work?



Also, here's the sole other tutorial I found on editing main menu music:

Tutorial By Xiion

Ok first things first. you will need these items: Halo pc, Rad Video tools, and OGG converter.
Ogg Converter <<that is ogg converter.
Rad Video tools <<that is the rad video tools download site.

ok first thigns first. install it. then go to start, all programs or programs, click bink and smacker, go to rad video tools. open it. ok. go to C:/program files/Microsoft Games/Halo.
You should see bungie.bik. goto mix in sounds (should be right by a button that says bink it. next. you will see at the top page, 2 boxes. the first one is here you put in sound. the second one is the files name. go to the first box, click browse. go to my documents, my music (or wherever you put your music files.) and double click on a sound file, anyone you want. now, to the right of the 2 boxes from where you see teh browse boxes, you should see somestuff that say batch, and mix. Click the mix button. wait for it to finish. click play right by the done button and watch
the opening. im working on a import your own opening movie tut right now so i hope this helps everyone!

EDIT: If you want to edit main menu music, you have to save the sound file in HMT if you can find it. then you gotta convert it to a .wav file even though it is one. after that, you make it a bink file, and put in music, then convert back to a .wav file, and import the track over the main menu music in HMT.

Also, PM me if you need help with anything.

Now, for ogg converter. Open up HMT V3.5.
2.)Open up UI.map
3.) go to (snd!)Sounds
4.)go to tile1 and go to the first file at the bottom and hit save track not save chunk.
5.) open up Ogg converter, go to mpeg or mp3.
6.)click add files... go to any music file you would like, and double click it.
now there should be a checkbox next to the file you jsut double clicked, check it so it is now a black box.
7.)click next and go to .ogg.
8.) additional option, if you want it to loop, than save it as .wav
9.)after it is done, go back to hmtv3.5 and go to import track if it is .ogg or if it is .wav than go to import chunk and put it in for the numbers by sliding the bar a number at a time and importing for each number.
that should help! i hope this tut saves everyone and makes some good mods! I am Xiion, and i figured this all by myself!

[conure]

The main problem with hmt and sounds is the fact it doesn't have a proper sound tag structure defined.

It acts like it is a child of the main that contains the sound info, when in fact its a *second* child.

Example
Hmt sees sound tag info like this

Main
-Sound reflexive
--Info about sound

Were in fact it is like this

Main
-Sound reflexive
--Sound reflexive
---Info about sound

Also i am fairly confident alt will have some sound option based on the fact he was doing research into it.

[Philly]

Also, I am fairly confident Alt will have some sound option based on the fact he was doing research into it.

I knew it.

[bcnipod]

Well, this is what I've found from working on the main menu music problem, though I still haven't gotten the music to play for longer than five seconds. Perhaps this will help someone else out there solve the problem.

The reason being is because every bit of music is done in little bits. Each of these bits has a skip fraction that dictates how often it will be played in the game. This gives the game more dynamic and original, sounds and ambience. Each of the snd! tags if you look at the values in a dependancy swapper will see a whole bunch of the same thing. This is because these are the different bits of the song. When you inject the song file for the UI, it will only play the 5 seconds because you only altered the first of the bits of music.

Mystery Solved.

In order for the UI to play a new continuous song, you either need to make a new tag with Darwin or Tool, or you need to figure out how to make the song be split into the exact number of pieces for it to be used by the sound tag that is in-place already. So basically when you inject your song file into the UI, yes it does get injected, but after that 5 seconds, it goes to the next via a skip fraction. After that you will not hear it again because the UI song never reloops back to that first intro piece. Hope this helps you.

[WaeV]

What's strange is how it goes silent once the first 5 seconds is over.

It seems as though importing chunks is the only problem left, thanks guys.

[Philly]

News flash: Importing chunks doesn't work! Have a nice day!

[bcnipod]

What's strange is how it goes silent once the first 5 seconds is over.

It seems as though importing chunks is the only problem left, thanks guys.

because the new sound is not synced up with the old sound.

[WaeV]

Hey Pepsi, you seem to visit the forums every once in a while, have any insight on how to replace the main menu music? I assume you had gotten it to work before you wrote the tutorial.

[developer]

I will tell you instead of him.
Okay, the music files can be found it the UI.map under the names monks... you know that already, if im not wrong.

Okay , so the introducing song CANT be replaced because of some other type of encryption. Me and silentsniper gave it a week of trying and trying, but still no good result as we wanted. As he said "wait 15 seconds and your song will begin to play". You can edit the other parts of the UI song, but not the main one. So if you want to make it a good type just do this - take the beginning out with the dependency swapper and place your sound in the other parts of the music. Then wait 15 seconds or if so and then u will hear your song playing.

Also I got an idea how to fix the timing but im pretty lazy to try it : Just mess some more with the sound timings in conure's script editing thingy.

[bcnipod]

I will tell you instead of him.
Okay, the music files can be found it the UI.map under the names monks... you know that already, if im not wrong.

Okay , so the introducing song CANT be replaced because of some other type of encryption.

"yeah, no"

Me and silentsniper gave it a week of trying and trying, but still no good result as we wanted. As he said "wait 15 seconds and your song will begin to play". You can edit the other parts of the UI song, but not the main one. So if you want to make it a good type just do this - take the beginning out with the dependency swapper and place your sound in the other parts of the music. Then wait 15 seconds or if so and then u will hear your song playing.

why are you using the dependancy swapper?

Also I got an idea how to fix the timing but im pretty lazy to try it : Just mess some more with the sound timings in conure's script editing thingy.

maybe.

[Pepsi]

Hey Pepsi, you seem to visit the forums every once in a while, have any insight on how to replace the main menu music? I assume you had gotten it to work before you wrote the tutorial.

Actually I just brought the tut here from somewhere else. As for my dealings with sound ive had some of it play, some not, screeching noises and so forth. I actually gave up on adding a whole new track to the UI itself cause it was causing me to much stress but did manage to use sony sound forge to make some nice ambient sounds for maps tho.

I know at one point andrew_b was working on making me a custom ui on the CE side and bringing it to PC via harbinger but it never got finished. If i had to try it i would investigate doing it that way for now until a better program is open for sound tags/importing.

So try making a custom ui in CE. then just convert your ui to PC via harbinger and see how that goes. i dont know if that process was fully explored or not so its worth giving it a go i guess.

[WaeV]

@developer:

The reason you have to wait 15 seconds is because [lsnd]sound\music\title1\title1 references different snd! tags, none of which are called "monks". The problem is injecting my custom file.
You can use a dependency swapper as you said to remove the 15 second intro bit, but I still don't know how to inject more than 5 seconds of the song.

@ Pepsi:

Ok, thanks.

[developer]

Oh, sorry. there is title1\in tag, click on it and you will see the monks1b_title sound in the right side of hmt.
You can't replace the in sound, because it's been encrypted somehow as I said. The way you can make your song play is from the looping sounds, which you can find in the tag "sound\music\title1\loops". In that tag you will see three different sounds... if you want to add your song, just add it into one or three of them, but before injecting make sure that you cut out anything, so it's as the same size as before[ might be even lower].

Just remember, if it's not the same size or smaller and if it's not saved in the correct format you won't get it. These 2 rules go along with every other song. The rest you need to know is on the first page in the first post.

[bcnipod]

RAWR! There is not any encryption on the sound files. This is a fact I will will post more when I get on my computer including the into music files. You want to look at my posts in an hmt topic with WaeV about sounds developer.

Developer, you may want to look at these:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rygf2jyxmjt

[DeadHamster]

Why is it that HMT, originally being designed as a sound tool for halo, doesn't do sounds correctly?

And yes, that was it's original purpose, and if you don't want to believe it, you can even look at the logo.

[bcnipod]

Encryption, my foot tag.

[WaeV]

heh.

Hey, what about rebuilding the map with a different music file? I know there's the option to batch extract with audio, but it always fails for me.

[DeadHamster]

Encryption, my foot tag.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING.

THE FOOT TAG IS A LIE.

<insert propaganda here>