How can I convert say a midi into a ogg(a hassle free way please) ?

[Zoltor]

Now I know why everyone is having music issues, no midi support, really? The only formats RPG maker VX Ace supports is wave, MP 3, and ogg(the first two do nothing but eat space, and I'm assuming ogg is some obscure format, that pretty much no one has ever heard of).

Developers, is there any reason as to why you chose ogg over midi?

Sigh well anyway, how can I easily convert a midi into a ogg file?

 

[BigEd781]

I'm assuming ogg is some obscure format, that pretty much no one has ever heard of).

You assume incorrectly, and comparing OGG to MIDI is silly.

https://www.google.com/search?q=midi+to+ogg+converter&oq=midi+to+ogg+converter&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.6397j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8

 

[Shaz]

I've moved this thread to Program and Utility Discussion. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.


If you'd searched, you'd have found a few suggestions for programs that would let you convert audio formats


btw - just because YOU haven't heard of it, doesn't mean nobody else has. OGG is one of the most popular music formats for game development because it produces a much smaller file and allows easy looping, among other things.

 

[Zoltor]

Thanks for the link.

Yea sigh, midi is higher quality(I wonder how much it would butcher the most perfect, and complex midi ever made, I guess I'll be finding out soon enough, oh well)..

 

[Vassim74]

Thanks for the link.

Yea sigh, midi is higher quality(I wonder how much it would butcher the most perfect, and complex midi ever made, I guess I'll be finding out soon enough, oh well)..

Pretty sure you got that backwards. Midi sounds really different on different computers, and I often find some of them a bit hard to listen to because of that. Not to mention the fact that sometimes certain sounds won't play either on certain computers.

Anyway, I actually found a really interesting online converter a long time ago that'll convert your midis to mp3 by using sound fonts. Then if you want, you can convert it to Ogg Vorbis in Audacity.

http://solmire.com/

Try different sound fonts and see which one you like best.

 

[Andar]

Yea sigh, midi is higher quality

No, MIDI has no quality because MIDI is NOT an audio format. It's a format for storing musical notations, and the resulting quality depends on the synthesizer program used to turn those notes into audio waves. And that synthesizer program can have a lot of different results depending on how it was created.
The most perfect sheet of music can be butchered if the musician playing it to the audience is of bad quality...


And that is the second part of the problem: audio files can be send directly to the sound driver for playing, MIDI files need to be first send to a syntesizer program to turn them into audio data before they can be send to the sound driver.


That leaves any company making a game with a simple choice:


1) program their own synthesizer into the game (which will add a lot of work and rise the price)


2) hope that the player has a midi synthesizer (which isn't automatic) and that it will be of respectable quality (or the game sound will be "butchered")


3) do not use MIDI, but an audio format where they can hear and check everything independently of the synthesizer that may or may not be installed on the player's computer.

 

[Zoltor]

Then why does my midis ververted to crappy oggs have less sound(It's equal to console having less channels to play music. you convert a flute sound, and in ogg it sounds like nothing more then a whistle, the same with all instrument types, there's a big downgrade when you go from midi-ogg).

There's a reason games have used the midi format for decades(and then moved to MP3 when CDs came out), and not ogg.

Actually I have Midi's that sound better then the best MP3 versions of the same tune.

As for ogg, that butchers all, nomatter how high the quality of the tune is, it would still be butchered to an extent(I converted the perfect midi I was hinting at, and while it didn't fair as bad as the first song I convert, it still dropped in quality).

So because the developers were afraid someone was using a crappy PC/didn't have the most basic audio program on their PC, it wasn't added as a option?

To Gambit74: Hm cool, I suppose I can try that ty. If that doesn't help hold the quality, looks like I'll have to use MP3s for BGM, I'll just have to be careful on  how many I add.

What is the size limitations of a game in this anyway(I've heard of people running into size issues, where the system wont allow it to be compiled or whatnot, so what's the magic number) ?

 

[Andar]

Then why does my midis ververted to crappy oggs have less sound(It's equal to console having less channels to play music. you convert a flute sound, and in ogg it sounds like nothing more then a whistle, the same with all instrument types, there's a big downgrade when you go from midi-ogg).

It's because your synthesizer is setup the wrong way.
Each track in a midi sequence needs to be routed to an instrument that will be used to play that sequence. This routing is done by the synthesizer. And if the name for the midi track is not recognized as an instrument name, then it will either randomly select an instrument or keep that track silent (that's the reason for the problem Gambit74 reported with part of the sounds remain silent).


To prevent that you need to tell the synthesizer program what instruments you planned to use in the MIDI, hope that it has the audio sequences for those instruments (which isn't always the case) and then pray that it has the same sound when it creates the audio waves.


That is the problem with MIDI: it is a music file but NOT an audio file, and the audio needs to be synthesized again and again whenever the MIDI file is prozessed by a synthesizer.


And since MIDI Synthesizers are NOT included with windows, each computer will have different (or none) Synthesizer Programs, playing the MIDI with different quality.


THAT is the reason why your Synthesizer Program creates bad music when creating the OGG - it would create the same bad result when creating a MP3, or a WAV or whatever - because the problem is in the synthesizer (which is either setup in a wrong way or contains only crap instrument files/soundfonts), not in the audio format.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

There's a reason games have used the midi format for decades(and then moved to MP3 when CDs came out), and not ogg.

almost all the music files of games that I play nowadays (from 5 years ago up to now really) are on .ogg...


as for the max file size if you want it to be ecnrypted, I think it was 3GB...

 

[Siosis]

I have been developing my own independent games using more traditional formats than Rpg maker and I can attest to the complications of using midi files. Until I found an ad for VX Ace I built all my code in Visual Studio and All of my graphics in 3dsmax and Maya and when it came to sound every  time I used Midi Files for the music I would get great symphonic sound from the High end Computer systems and Glitchy crap sound like a NES that got rained on from the low end systems. It wasn't until I discovered First Mp3 and then later Ogg that made my audio solutions simpler and better sounding. Just in case you did not know Midi is actually an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and now a days if you are not using a computer system that is designed to write through a midi connector directly to Mp3 or Ogg then using the sound files are actually pointless as fewer and fewer media players out there are being written to play the base midi encoding. My Instrument setup encodes directly to Ogg and it was relatively inexpensive for being a professional system.

    If you want that retro 4 to 8 bit sound then there are software options that can make whatever you record in Mp3 or Ogg sound like you want it and not all of them have a cost. I created a track with vocals that when converted to sound retro allowed me to replace the vocal track with vocoder. The point really is that Midi really isn't the premium choice for game music but if you like the sound of choppy Nes antics then feel free to record your music in that style but do it in a format that everyone who plays your games can enjoy, like OGG.

 

[T.G.Fighterdoken]

When I need to do something like that I usually just set Audacity (free program) to record my system audio, play the song, and then export it directly from Audacity to a .wav format.  I'm not sure if it would work with midi but it's worked for everything else.

 

[Zoltor]

When I need to do something like that I usually just set Audacity (free program) to record my system audio, play the song, and then export it directly from Audacity to a .wav format.  I'm not sure if it would work with midi but it's worked for everything else.

Hey now, there's an idea, didn't think of rerecording it from my PC into a wav format. I don't see why that wouldn't work, thanks.

 

[Milennin]

Just keep in mind that .wav files can get very big very fast. I was forced to convert my battle midis into wavs to get them to loop properly. The .wav version being just over 1 minute in length is 12MB. That's just 1 song.

edit to reply below: Gotcha, that makes sense.

 

[Zoltor]

Just keep in mind that .wav files can get very big very fast. I was forced to convert my battle midis into wavs to get them to loop properly. The .wav version being just over 1 minute in length is 12MB. That's just 1 song.

You missunderstood, then you would turn the wav into a ogg, after rerecording the midi as a wav