Advantages of ELF Method Music?

[blyegg]

What are they, if any; also, what does ZSE have over the ELF Method?

Just wondering.

[CT075]

zse is faster and way easier

i would estimate that using ZSE is like, at least 10 times faster than doing ELF semi-automated (i'm probably underestimating here); doing ELF by hand is just so much slower that it isn't worth it unless ZSE is missing compatibility somewhere

[Agro]

The ELF method:

• is much more efficient space-wise
• supports panning (i.e. "Left/Right" sweeping)
• supports polyphony (i.e. more than two notes on the same line)
• supports pitch-bends
• you can change the volume in the middle of a note
• you can change tempo in the middle of a note

The ELF method has a steep learning curve (your first song will take about an hour just trying to wrap your head around it) but after you fully understand what's going on and you're used to it you can have a song inserted in about two minutes. The difference in quality will astound you provided you're using a MIDI that allows as such. Basically, if you just grabbed a MIDI off VGMusic.com that doesn't have much beyond just simple notes, ZSE is the way to go. If you have something with more complexity, go with the ELF method.

Also, the ELF method automatically halves (approximately) the volume of all your tracks so that they conveniently work really well with FE7's samples. ZSE preserves them so you have to do it manually--whether you think that's a good thing or not is really up to you

Here's a comparison of the two:

ZSE version of Tearing Shadows (also without the guitar from FE12): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlEFuBdjLVk

ELF Method version of Tearing Shadow (with the guitar from FE12): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvGR7oIHArg

[blyegg]

One video is private @_@

But, yeah, thanks. If I ever have a more complicated midi, I'll use ELF method.

[Agro]

Whoops! Fixed.

[Brendor]

One thing I always noticed with the elf method is the music in the song.gba almost ALWAYS sounds choppy even if the song works fine through ZSE.

Is that little song.gba preview really accurate as to how the song will sound in your rom or does it come out better at the end?

Edited November 1, 2013 by Brendor the Brave

[Jubby]

I think ZSE might have something to do with the GBA flash cart issues I had mentioned previously as well (if anyone remembers) since TLP worked just fine but most other games seemed to glitch up. :P Never actually put said theory to the test, but ??

[Agro]

One thing I always noticed with the elf method is the music in the song.gba almost ALWAYS sounds choppy even if the song works fine through ZSE.

Is that little song.gba preview really accurate as to how the song will sound in your rom or does it come out better at the end?

song.gba is never an accurate depiction of what the song will sound like I suspect that the ROM plays samples back at a very high frequency, which results in less noise (hissing sound) and better quality overall but very slowed playback. Regardless, it never seems to have issues playing in FE7 afterwards.

I think ZSE might have something to do with the GBA flash cart issues I had mentioned previously as well (if anyone remembers) since TLP worked just fine but most other games seemed to glitch up. :P Never actually put said theory to the test, but ??

I'm sure Blazer used ZSE at least once, and even then ZSE doesn't really do anything outside of inserting new samples and track data, so I honestly can't believe that it's causing the glitch, unless there's issues with where the data is being written.

[Brendor]

holy shit! the elf method is so much better! :D

[Crimson Red]

I used ZSE way back when to import a couple songs from FE8, but I can't think of any other times I used it. That being said the fact is I DID use it so I'm not sure that has to do with it working or not. I am generally pretty careful about what I'm doing to the ROM though whereas sometimes hackers inadvertently make changes without knowing it, so it might just be a matter of "luck", so to speak, that TLP works with flashcarts while other hacks don't.

That being said I mostly use the ELF method because it sounds better, as someone said, and I'd done it so much the difference in time was highly dismissable. Heck, if someone coded a program to repoint the data for you, it would probably take just as much time as using ZSE.

As for song.gba, a long time ago it used to sound okay, but at some point it stopped working like it used to... not really sure why, tbh. But I started hearing noise and a screechy sound but oddly enough, when I actually inserted it like normal, it sounded fine, so... meh.

And keep in mind song.gba uses a sort of "standard" set of samples so naturally it will sound different than if you use FE7 samples (or as I did in my song insertions, a combination of FE7 and "standard" instruments, since sometimes FE7 lacks samples I need or has other obscure issues).

Any other questions/things to clarify/whatever?

[Brendor]

Yea something weird happened to me with ELF, but isk if you can help. Ivor a midi off vgmusic.com and inserted it just fine but after insertion I realized it wasn't formatted to loop properly (ie the song plays 1.5 times and loops instead of once) so I used anvil to truncate the midi but after I saved and exited in Anvil, the midi showed up on the right side in tr.exe instead of the left. Soooo then I repaired the song in Anvil and saved and it sounded normal and it went on the left side but when the process the done it sounded completely distorted and not what it was supposed to sound like. Same thing after 3 separate insertion attempts at 3 different areas of free space Any idea as to why this would happen? How to fix it?

[Agro]

What do you mean "truncate"? Do you mean you just deleted some bars off it or was there some script that you ran in Anvil? Also, what do you mean "distorted"?

[Brendor]

in the file menu in anvil there's an option that reads truncate which deletes the remainder of a song either from the beginning to the current point or from the current point to the end. by distorted I mean parts of the song overlapped with itself. like parts of the song that were supposed to play halfway through were played in unison with the beginning parts and other abnormalities like that.

[Agro]

it sounds like you didnt rewrite the header properly?

[Brendor]

bro-dizzle...I got the same exact error all of the 3 times I tried inserting it and every other song(about 5) worked perfectly upon the first attempt at insertion :/

I even tried re-trucating the midi and inserting it into a separate rom. same exact thing.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Brendor the Brave

[Crimson Red]

Whatever you did when truncating it is what messed it up. Without really seeing what you did/having the MIDI I can't say explicitly what you did but my guess is the general issue is that the tracks are of different lengths--sometimes when truncating you think that the song would truncate all tracks equally but depending on the rest notes it sometimes truncates certain tracks more than others, I'm not really good at explaining but anyhow what I suggest doing is getting the original MIDI, truncating it properly beforehand (make sure the loop timing is good!) and then check the length of all the tracks so that it loops properly and they all start at the same time. Also make sure the tempo is fine too.

And IIRC if the song is on the right side there are some bad notes or event controllers or something in there that it can't process and the repair thing in Anvil usually fixes that but be careful it doesn't also screw up the song

[Agro]

If it appears on the right it's usually due to having too many event controllers

Brendor, can you please post the MIDI here, both after and before truncating it?

[Brendor]

original song

truncated version to start immediately and loop

repaired version of the above because it showed up on the right side

[Agro]

Blazer was probably right, one of the tracks is a different length to the rest of them. This probably also isn't a good MIDI to use either because a lot of the notes hang over into the next ones which kind of double up on the number of channels. It was probably appearing on the right side because the MIDI used weird obscure event controllers that tr.exe doesn't know how to read.

[Crimson Red]

Yeah, ripped MIDI's tend to have less issues because they were originally made for games (especially if it's a system before the NDS era), but picking up random MIDI's has the worry of the transposer (is that the word?) using whatever they can to make up for the general lack of functionality in MIDI's (e.g. event controllers, "echo" tracks, whatever--if they're not using audio mixing software then they're somewhat limited in what they can do if they want the MIDI to sound decent).

It's also important if you do MIDI requests to keep that in mind. I had some friends and former friends do some for me and it kinda upset people to know that they had even more limitations than usual ("no more than 8 tracks!") but at least they weren't as offended by how it sounds in-game because they were informed beforehand.

Random note: I realize "MIDI's" should probably be typed as "MIDIs" but I like adding in the apostrophe for no other reason than "it looks better to me"

[Brendor]

So is there a way to get it to sound and loop right or am I SOL?

[Agro]

Link to the original song again. The link you gave was a hotlink and it will only play through the browser.

[Brendor]

Hold....

here ya go

Edited November 3, 2013 by Brendor the Brave

[Agro]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51331815/dearlybeloved.mid

Give this a try. Use it with the native instruments table (not General MIDI).

Here's what I did:

• opened in Mixcraft 5 (Anvil is poo, it's only good because it's free)
• got rid of unnecessary control changes, such as Detune, Chorus, and Reverb (tr.exe doesn't recognise these so it will throw a hissy fit if it runs into them sometimes)
• got rid of non-essential parts (harmonies, echo tracks, etc.)
• stopped notes from overlapping in certain areas so that no more than 8 channels are ever playing
• re-instrumentalised certain parts to fit the native instruments table (so it sounds weird if you try to play the MIDI on its own)
• added panning
• created an echo track for the main piano because I had 1 spare channel

Edited November 3, 2013 by Agro

[Brendor]

it works but it sounds nothing like the original :<

plus the echo disappears after just one loop

Edited November 3, 2013 by Brendor the Brave