Hacking RawkSD

[Szalkow]

About the "white veil", I was wondering but can't try this at the moment: if I edit the .ogg and .mid files and add 5 sec to the beginning of both, wouldn't that get rid of the "white veil" while pushing the notes to not start on top of you? Or could the song get out of sync by doing this ?If you're adding the same amount of time in front of both the .ogg and .midi files then it will remain in sync. It will also not have a white veil, as the BPM will be relatively normal and the quarter-note lines will not be ridiculous. Unfortunately, REAPER makes shifting an entire song a little more painful than it's worth - shifting the audio is easy, but there is no automated function to shift all of the .midi's notes and text events, meaning it must all be selected and moved manually.

Although you did a really detailed step by step instruction about what I should do, I confess Reaper is a little bit frightening at first sight, hehe

I felt like I was looking at an alien spaceship control panel

Anyways, I'm using Reaper 3.301 rev 11246 (Evaluation License). Most of the functions you told me to use aren't in the same place you pointed, but I believe I managed to replicate the corrrect actions. For example, the "double click the Guitar part to open a window with MIDI notes" didn't work like that. After dozens of double-clicking on Guitar Part different points, a mini bar graph of sorts (resembling some charting I've seen on other places") opened to the right of Guitar Part rectangle. A r-click on that graph popped up a window showing part of a piano-like keyboard and from that window I've found an option to export the file to a MIDI.

I skipped the steps about aligning the notes with the drum notes because I honestly couldn't find a way to show drum notes on screen. Today when I get home, I will try searching some youtube videos and try to find out where I should click to open the panes and options you told me to access.You're probably looking at the wrong thing. The default view for REAPER should show the tracks - a few audio tracks of the song, and several labeled MIDI tracks with names like "PART GUITAR". If you double-click a MIDI track in the area under the timeline (the large area in the middle-right, it will show a bunch of colored squares), it will pop out the MIDI editing window (you can dock it with the main window and it will line up). If you want to enable a Rock-Band-like preview, click the small "fx" square on the track options on the left for the instrument part you want and double-click the "RBN Preview" tab on the left to pop out a preview window.

1. The Guitar Hero import audio thing. I've read about this and know that the track volume is for some reason lower than Rock Band imports, but I was curious if there is anything that can be done either on the original import from the game itself or after you've created the customs and can edit them in RawkSD on your computer. I have fiddled with my volume settings in Rock Band 2 a bit, but the change in audio level is most jarring when going from an original RB2 song or RB import to one from Guitar Hero.There's not really any way around that at the moment.

QUOTE(bananaslug79 @ Feb 15 2010, 10:04 AM) 2. I've tinkered with a few created customs, from the Score Hero chart archive and such. Several of the tracks I've created have fairly obvious audio sync issues when playing; usually the notes are off a full beat or so from the on-screen charts. What's the best/easiest/most foolproof method for fixing this kind of thing? Is it usually from the chart I got or maybe the mp3 files I'm using?

The chart probably requires an audio offset that you haven't input when importing the custom. The original ScoreHero post should mention an audio offset if there is one. If you don't know it, you can try opening the song and the chart in REAPER and calculating the offset by hand (it's often an increment of seconds, or a multiple of 1000ms, but not always) and then putting that in RawkSD when you import. You can also attempt to edit the chart or song yourself to line up.

QUOTE(bananaslug79 @ Feb 15 2010, 10:04 AM)

Finally, I don't want to point fingers or anything but I have to put this out there and hope for a little guidance (or at least just to narrow down a current problem I have). I use a Western Digital My Passport hard drive for USB game loading and previously used it on the Homebrew Channel for homebrew games and such. It's got a ton more space than any SD card I have, and it worked wonders for a few weeks after I got it at Xmas. I apparently hadn't used the drive for homebrew for a while (but did and continue to use it heavily for USB game loading), but at some point between getting Rock Band and using RawkSD my Homebrew Channel inexplicably stopped being able to recognize the drive. This is doubly curious since my USB loader sees the drive and games I have loaded on it just fine.

It's pretty certain that the RawkSD patcher didn't cause this problem. The patcher installs IOS37 with a few trucha and ES patches enabled, nothing fancy. It would not in any way hurt your USB drive or the IOS that HBC uses (IOS61, if I recall correctly). My HBC reads my USB drive fine. If you do want to uninstall the RawkSD patch, just use DOP-IOS to install an unmodified IOS37.

 

[spritefreak]

I am preparing to complete the RawkSD install on my Wii. I have imported the songs from all legit Wii RB and GH games. I have a 2GB SD card. I am wondering how many songs will fit on one card?

 

[Szalkow]

I am preparing to complete the RawkSD install on my Wii. I have imported the songs from all legit Wii RB and GH games. I have a 2GB SD card. I am wondering how many songs will fit on one card?

A typical import from a Rock Band game is about 18 MB.
Typical GHWT+ games are about 20-25MB (although many songs, especially those from Guitar Hero Metallica, are much larger).
Most GH3-era songs are about 10-15MB.
From these numbers and from experience, a 2GB card will thus hold around 90 songs.

The next version of RawkSD will support SDHC and USB, but if you need more room until then, you can find 4GB non-SDHC cards made by Transcend on Newegg.com, or you can use multiple smaller cards.

 

[fubka]

What does RawkSD look for to play the pirate song? I think it is Herms 222/223?

 

[Szalkow]

What does RawkSD look for to play the pirate song? I think it is Herms 222/223?

Fail.

It checks for fakesigned tickets, most commonly associated with DLC piracy hacks. Most sane users will only hear the muffled bridge section of Get Clean, as heard in RB2's tour menus.

 

[crwys]

What does RawkSD look for to play the pirate song? I think it is Herms 222/223?

Fail.

It checks for fakesigned tickets, most commonly associated with DLC piracy hacks. Most sane users will only hear the muffled bridge section of Get Clean, as heard in RB2's tour menus.

I love the pirate song =) lol

 

[spritefreak]

I am preparing to complete the RawkSD install on my Wii. I have imported the songs from all legit Wii RB and GH games. I have a 2GB SD card. I am wondering how many songs will fit on one card?

A typical import from a Rock Band game is about 18 MB.
Typical GHWT+ games are about 20-25MB (although many songs, especially those from Guitar Hero Metallica, are much larger).
Most GH3-era songs are about 10-15MB.
From these numbers and from experience, a 2GB card will thus hold around 90 songs.

The next version of RawkSD will support SDHC and USB, but if you need more room until then, you can find 4GB non-SDHC cards made by Transcend on Newegg.com, or you can use multiple smaller cards.

Thanks Szalkow! Just a few other questions....does it usually take a long time to import songs into RawkSD from the disc? Also, if I import two discs, and then shut down RawkSD on the computer, will the imported songs still be there tomorrow when I open it or would I have to import again??

 

[Deleted User]

Szalkow, thanks for your replies to my questions. I shall work on audio syncing and look for other reasons to my HBC hard drive loading woes.

 

[Szalkow]

Thanks Szalkow! Just a few other questions....does it usually take a long time to import songs into RawkSD from the disc? Also, if I import two discs, and then shut down RawkSD on the computer, will the imported songs still be there tomorrow when I open it or would I have to import again??

Are you asking about the disc dump on the Wii, or the iso/dump import into the RawkSD computer program? I don't know about the former, but the latter depends on the disc. Rock Band discs have native audio, and take less than an hour per disc to import. Guitar Hero discs require re-encoding of audio and can take four hours or more depending on the game. The discs you import are saved to the RawkSD folder in the "customs" subfolder and will remain there until you delete them.

 

[spritefreak]

Thanks Szalkow! Just a few other questions....does it usually take a long time to import songs into RawkSD from the disc? Also, if I import two discs, and then shut down RawkSD on the computer, will the imported songs still be there tomorrow when I open it or would I have to import again??

Are you asking about the disc dump on the Wii, or the iso/dump import into the RawkSD computer program? I don't know about the former, but the latter depends on the disc. Rock Band discs have native audio, and take less than an hour per disc to import. Guitar Hero discs require re-encoding of audio and can take four hours or more depending on the game. The discs you import are saved to the RawkSD folder in the "customs" subfolder and will remain there until you delete them.

Thanks for your help!

A few quick questions...

Correct me if I am wrong, but GH: Van Halen and Lego Rock Band cannot be imported to RawkSD v2.02? (But they will be in v3)

Excluding the DLC songs, how many total songs are there between all the GH and RB games? If I can fit about 90 on a 2GB card, I am just wondering how many cards I will need!

Finally, assuming I have 200+ songs from all the imports (or whatever the total is from the above question) and I install RawkSD, will the songs be shown in the RB2 game, such as a playlist of all the songs I have imported? If so, and if I have several SD cards full of songs, and I try to play a song that is not on the inserted SD card in my Wii, will the game prompt me to switch SD cards?

 

[Szalkow]

Correct me if I am wrong, but GH: Van Halen and Lego Rock Band cannot be imported to RawkSD v2.02? (But they will be in v3)That's correct. GH:VH, Lego Rock Band, and Band Hero should all be included in RawkSD v3. Before you ask, no, Beatles will not.

Excluding the DLC songs, how many total songs are there between all the GH and RB games? If I can fit about 90 on a 2GB card, I am just wondering how many cards I will need!If you somehow own every Guitar Hero game and Rock Band track pack importable by v2.02, by my count it would be around 750 songs and would require seven 2GB SD cards. I'd hold off on buying them though, since RawkSD v3 will support USB and SDHC, making that many SD cards meaningless.

QUOTE(spritefreak @ Feb 16 2010, 09:15 AM)

Finally, assuming I have 200+ songs from all the imports (or whatever the total is from the above question) and I install RawkSD, will the songs be shown in the RB2 game, such as a playlist of all the songs I have imported? If so, and if I have several SD cards full of songs, and I try to play a song that is not on the inserted SD card in my Wii, will the game prompt me to switch SD cards?

The songs will show up in the Rock Band 2 song list as if they were DLC. You can sort by "Location" to distinguish between on-disc songs and DLC/imports. The game scans the SD card for songs every time you turn it on, meaning that only one SD card at a time will be shown in the list and playing a different card requires restarting the Wii. I think you only need to run the Wii RawkSD installer once, though, so once you've installed the songs it's just a matter of swapping cards for whatever you want to play.

 

[tueidj]

The game scans the SD card for songs every time you turn it on, meaning that only one SD card at a time will be shown in the list and playing a different card requires restarting the Wii.

Actually when you take a card out the game dumps you to the main menu. If you insert a new card it will be scanned when you go into tour mode or quickplay.

 

[crwys]

The game scans the SD card for songs every time you turn it on, meaning that only one SD card at a time will be shown in the list and playing a different card requires restarting the Wii.

Actually when you take a card out the game dumps you to the main menu. If you insert a new card it will be scanned when you go into tour mode or quickplay.

Yea I know, good thing too. I have two 2gb sd cards, one with customs and one with dlc. Would be annoying to restart the wii every time on sd card switch.

 

[Szalkow]

The game scans the SD card for songs every time you turn it on, meaning that only one SD card at a time will be shown in the list and playing a different card requires restarting the Wii.

Actually when you take a card out the game dumps you to the main menu. If you insert a new card it will be scanned when you go into tour mode or quickplay.

True enough. Thanks for the correction. I was a little confused as it works differently for me - I use two Transcend 133x 4GB cards which must be in the Wii prior to booting to be recognized. Rock Band should be smart enough to handle standard-sized cards.

 

[SFenton]

The game scans the SD card for songs every time you turn it on, meaning that only one SD card at a time will be shown in the list and playing a different card requires restarting the Wii.

Actually when you take a card out the game dumps you to the main menu. If you insert a new card it will be scanned when you go into tour mode or quickplay.

True enough. Thanks for the correction. I was a little confused as it works differently for me - I use two Transcend 133x 3GB cards which must be in the Wii prior to booting to be recognized. Rock Band should be smart enough to handle standard-sized cards.

I have definitely never heard of a 3 GB SD Card, ever.

 

[Szalkow]

I have definitely never heard of a 3 GB SD Card, ever.

Typo, fixed. It's a 4GB.

Also:

 

[tueidj]

The problem with the transcend cards is if they're asked to initialize in SDHC mode (which sysmenu 4.0+ will do, or bootmii boot2) they will use it, and they stay in SDHC mode until they're reinserted. This is where the "swap trick" myth comes from. If RB2 sees a SDHC card when it starts, it will give up on SD mode completely and not even try using it if you insert a different card. Just insert the card *after* starting RB2, IOS37 will be running and initialize it in regular SD mode, and it will work.

 

[GusMing]

I have 3 of the 4 gig cards and have no problem starting the game with them in. I only time i had to load rb2 with a 2 gig card is only after the wii crashes and had to be unplugged but i guess somehow I was a lucky one on that end BUT that was only b4 I modded the wii now I don't even have to do that.

and to switch between cards while playing and not be kicked to the main menu all you have to do is change the card anywhere from when the song loads and b4 you choose new song after playing a song

 

[grrkodiak]

Why bother with a 4GB non-SDHC when in a near future some amazing people will make the use of a SD with RB2 redundant.

 

[tueidj]

I have 3 of the 4 gig cards and have no problem starting the game with them in. I only time i had to load rb2 with a 2 gig card is only after the wii crashes and had to be unplugged but i guess somehow I was a lucky one on that end BUT that was only b4 I modded the wii now I don't even have to do that.
If you don't have sysmenu 4.0+ then the card won't be initialized in SDHC mode after powerup. Or if the card is initialized in regular SD mode and the wii shuts down to standby (yellow light), I've heard (but haven't confirmed) that the card doesn't lose power so it would stay in SD mode.
QUOTEand to switch between cards while playing and not be kicked to the main menu all you have to do is change the card anywhere from when the song loads and b4 you choose new song after playing a song

That's really not a good idea though, Bad Things? can happen.