Skip to content

mp3 to bmu?

2

Comments

  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992
    I'm personally hoping beamdog will pull a magic trick and update the soundtrack to work as ogg with loop points. They do have the original files after all. Right now I find the 10 minutes BMU inefficient and poor quality.
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    edited November 2017
    @fkirenicus As I said, there's no documentation with it so I have no idea what requirements it has. I'll install the net framework 3.5 now and let me know what else I need to do :)

    Edit: Nope, didn't help. I'm getting 'run time error 76, path not found'.
  • AndarianAndarian Member Posts: 185
    My best educated guess at this point is that the program may store the previously used input and output paths in a registry entry -- and that one of these is now corrupt and/or points to a location that no longer exists on your system. If the program doesn't edit-check the value fetched from the registry and just tries to use it anyway, it might cause the error you're describing.

    The only way to check or fix that would be to look in the registry, and, if you can find a key that looks like it's the one for this program, delete or fix it. Registry editing on Windows is a little like brain surgery, though, so it's not something I would recommend trying lightly. :o
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    Yeah I was walked through that task, there is no registry entry for mp3tobmu.exe. My guess is that since there isn't an installer that adds it to the registry, it just gets dropped into a folder and run from there.
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    The link on the first page of this thread is to version 0.10. There is a newer version 0.35 here. It comes as an installer. You'll probably have to set that to xp compatibility and run as admin. Maybe this one'll work for you.

    TR
    Savant1974
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    @TarotRedhand It worked! I didn't even need to run it in compatibility mode. I think this may be the version that everyone else has been using and assumed that I had? Anyway, I remember this interface so this is clearly how I did it 13 years ago :) As for this pesky music file, it's still refusing to play in the toolset/game but at least I can start sleuthing some more. It has the same bitrate etc as other music files so it's still a bit of a mystery. Thanks to everyone who pitched in on this one!
    ShadowMfkirenicusAndarian
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    edited November 2017
    Have you followed the steps for adding music that were outlined on the very first bioware nwn forums (via wayback machine)? It is in that bundle of pdf files I uploaded a while ago.

    TR
    Dark_Ansem
  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992
    In the archived NWN forums I see no mention of bitrate..
  • fkirenicusfkirenicus Member Posts: 331
    edited November 2017

    In the archived NWN forums I see no mention of bitrate..

    Actually, I think it had to be 128 kb/s. Back in the REALLY old days (2003-2004). From the NWwiki now though, it says there's no lower limit, but the higher the better. So I'm not so sure now. I've always encoded my BMUs (or MP3s) @ 128 kb/s at any rate, and they sound good enough for me.
    Dark_Ansem
  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992

    In the archived NWN forums I see no mention of bitrate..

    Actually, I think it had to be 128 kb/s. Back in the REALLY old days (2003-2004). From the NWwiki now though, it says there's no lower limit, but the higher the better. So I'm not so sure now. I've always encoded my BMUs (or MP3s) @ 128 kb/s at any rate, and they sound good enough for me.
    I remember that as well - but machines nowadays can probably take the "performance hit"
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    @TarotRedhand Thanks for that resource, I'll hang on to that in case of future difficulties. I've had the .2da file correct from the start of all this, no help there I'm afraid. As I said, someone else got this file working on their system but it won't work on mine for some reason. Maybe I'll try converting it back to .wav, and then back to .mp3 and .bmu from there :)
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    Here's an interesting twist - once the file was converted back to a .wav, and then to a .mp3, mp3tobmu is telling me the file has a variable bit rate, which it wasn't doing before. Audacity says it's 128 kb/s and I'm not sure why it's now coming up as a variable bit rate, or how to fix that. This has to be the problem though, progress!
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    edited November 2017
    Okay, got Audacity to convert to a constant bit rate file, mp3tobmu seemed to like it, still silence from the result. I'm not going to waste any more time on this, plenty of other things to work on atm :) Thanks again everyone.
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    One other thing to consider. A lot of people say to amke your mp3 stereo. The thing is I have only been able to get it to work when using mono. Go figure.

    TR
    fkirenicus
  • fkirenicusfkirenicus Member Posts: 331
    edited December 2017

    One other thing to consider. A lot of people say to amke your mp3 stereo. The thing is I have only been able to get it to work when using mono. Go figure.

    TR

    Yep, try that @Savant1974 if stereo encoding fails. As a side note, while you need to convert .mp3 files to .bmu format, a simple renaming of the file extension is enough to "convert" back to .mp3 and thus be able to play .bmu files as normal music files... Well, used to be at least.

    Also, take note that if the song title/ID in your .2da doesn't exist as a string in dialog.tlk or a custom talk table, you (probably) need to put it in "", like this: "mysong".
    To make things even more complicated, if it's a battle song, the name must be "mus_bat_[title/ID]" (again.... well, it used to be! :-))

    I myself have created several such files and corresponding .2da entries (follow the pattern for each column as already given in the file);

    2da entry
    "mus_amb_dtu_01"
    "mus_amb_dtu_02"
    "mus_bat_dtu_01"
    "mus_bat_dtu_02"

    music file
    mus_amb_dtu_01.bmu
    mus_amb_dtu_02.bmu
    mus_bat_dtu_01.bmu
    mus_bat_dtu_02.bmu

    and have no problems (the .2da then normally goes in the top hak, of course, while the music files should be in your music directory - in old days this would be the install folder; in EE my guess is that you should put them in \documents\nwnee\music directory or some such).
    Post edited by fkirenicus on
    Savant1974
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    @fkirenicus I'm still using the old nwn (gog version) as I can't seem to get the EE toolset working properly. I took your advice and put "" around the file name and crossed my fingers. Alas, still nothing.
  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992
    edited December 2017
    upload the converted files and post the link here, don't know what else to suggest.
    I don't think it is possible to actually make this sort of changes in the EE anyway, NWNexplorer reborn doesn't fully support BIF extraction yet and these 2da files have all been moved inside BIF files.
    Andarian
  • AndarianAndarian Member Posts: 185

    upload the converted files and post the link here, don't know what else to suggest.
    I don't think it is possible to actually make this sort of changes in the EE anyway, NWNexplorer reborn doesn't fully support BIF extraction yet and these 2da files have all been moved inside BIF files.

    If that’s the case then This is something we need from Beamdog to enable modding for NWN:EE. Has anyone brought this up to them yet?
  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992
    Andarian said:

    upload the converted files and post the link here, don't know what else to suggest.
    I don't think it is possible to actually make this sort of changes in the EE anyway, NWNexplorer reborn doesn't fully support BIF extraction yet and these 2da files have all been moved inside BIF files.

    If that’s the case then This is something we need from Beamdog to enable modding for NWN:EE. Has anyone brought this up to them yet?
    No, I'm not aware of anything of the sort.
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    edited December 2017
    I got it working! I tried two things, not sure which one worked: I selected 'Joint Stereo' instead of regular 'Stereo', and I took a music file that worked in-game, copied the sound data into it and saved that as an mp3, then converted it. Anyway, it's all good now :D
    AndarianShadowMTarotRedhandDark_Ansem
  • Dark_AnsemDark_Ansem Member Posts: 992
    We also just discovered that eventually NWN is moving to MP3s rather than BMU
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303
    Yes @TrentOster mentioned it earlier in this thread. I've had no further trouble converting files thankfully, but it'll be much easier just to use straight-up .mp3 in the future. I hope to see a similar improvement for .dds files!
    Dark_AnsemProontJuliusBorisov
  • TrentOsterTrentOster Administrator, Developer Posts: 433
    .dds was a compressed directx format. I haven't done much research on the status of compressed video card friendly texture formats.
    JuliusBorisovSavant1974Proont
  • seronxseronx Member Posts: 6
    edited December 2017
    @TrentOster
    Can the Opus Codec be supported?: http://opus-codec.org/

    Status of compressed video card friendly texture formats from google searching:
    .dds with ASTC for mobile OpenGL(Mali, Adreno): https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/extensions/KHR/KHR_texture_compression_astc_hdr.txt
    .dds with BPTC(BC6H/BC7) for desktop OpenGL(Nvidia/Intel/AMD w/ D3D11 support): https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/extensions/ARB/ARB_texture_compression_bptc.txt (OpenGL 3.2)
    Post edited by seronx on
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    edited December 2017
    @Savant1974 Ye gods no! Changing to modern dds will break almost every single piece of custom content out there. Keep legacy support for tga and bioware dds. Then add a different format such as bpg for going forward or even bog standard jpg.

    TR
  • Savant1974Savant1974 Member Posts: 303

    @Savant1974 Ye gods no! Changing to modern dds will break almost every single piece of custom content out there. Keep legacy support for tga and bioware dds. Then add a different format such as bpg for going forward or even bog standard jpg.

    TR

    Well I figured it could be used in addition to the old format, which is a development approach Trent and the team have spoken about. As you said, add new formats instead of adjusting the old ones.
  • seronxseronx Member Posts: 6
    edited December 2017

    @Savant1974 Ye gods no! Changing to modern dds will break almost every single piece of custom content out there.
    TR

    I think that is only an issue without the legacy flags which is only an issue with D3D not OpenGL. (D3D wants pure DXGI if D3D11(for BPTC) engine, and OpenGL doesn't really care, etc(DDSx/9/10/11 can be supported simultaneously in OGL))

    Then add a different format such as bpg for going forward or even bog standard jpg.
    TR

    Also, imho FLIF might be nicer over bpg/png/jpeg in the long run: http://flif.info/
    http://flif.info/#no-patents-free
  • DorrianDorrian Member Posts: 15

    In case anyone reading this wants to know the outcome, the mp3 to bmu converter was required to make the music file work, and the mp3tobmu.exe file didn't work on my windows 10 machine :)

    Note to Trent - consider ditching bmu and just going with ogg files :D

    How about ditching bmu and just going with mp3 in toolset! ;)
  • TarotRedhandTarotRedhand Member Posts: 1,481
    How about doing it by hand. For this you just need a versatile modern text editor. I use notepad++ and can recommend it. I'll assume that npp is what you are using in the rest of this post. First a few facts. A bmu file is just an MP3 file with 8 (that's all) extra bytes. An MP3 file potentially contains some extra text data as I'll show a little later. Let's get started.

    Create a copy of your MP3 file and put it into a different folder. This is just insurance in case something goes wrong. We'll work on that copy. Right click on the MP3 file and select "Edit with Notepad++" from the menu. Copy this precise text (just the text between the quotes) to the clipboard - "BMU V1.0". Back to the open MP3 file in Notepad++. Place your cursor at the very start of the file. Paste that text I told you to copy to the clipboard, at that precise point. Finally save your file as a bmu file e.g. original_name.bmu. That's it. You're done.

    Earlier I mentioned that I'd show you the extra text data in an MP3 file. I am assuming that you actually own some commercial music MP3 files and don't just stream everything. Go to wherever you have an MP3 file that you bought from either iTunes or Amazon. Select the MP3 file you want to examine. Before I go any further I just want to say Do not edit the file and do not save it either. It is possible to screw your file up and all we are going to do is look inside it. As we did when converting to bmu, right click and Edit with notepad++. Look inside and you'll see that both iTunes and Amazon "watermark" their MP3s by adding both their names inside the file and a serial number. Obviously, this also works with bmu files and is a very easy way to check that that the file is genuine and not pirated. OK close the tab in Notepad++ that the MP3/bmu file is opened in then close Notepad++ without doing anything else.

    Re. MP3toBMU.exe not working in windows 10. Did you try running it in compatibility mode?
    Re. Ogg files. I think you'll find (but don't quote me) that, that is the codex used in the wbm movies that EE uses.

    TR
    ProontGrymlorde
  • Wall3tWall3t Member Posts: 90
    edited November 2018
    The mp3 to bmu listed was submitted by me some year's ago and I can confirm it does not work however... it seems it did work when i copied it over from a windows 7 pc to my newer windows 10 pc last year. It was only just up until today did it stop working when i moved it, and tried redownloading it. It looks like it just doesnt work anymore and its just an odd software
Sign In or Register to comment.