Audio Settings problem

[BIO] Israeli Red Dragon · 01-06-2006, 10:53 PM

Hey all,

After a whole year I finally got around to continue my ZH Voice Mod and I managed to get some people to do voices.

However, one of the guys who was doing the Battle Bus sound sent me an example for his sound and it turned out to be only 2 seconds long but around 450 KBs. Usually I would expect around 100KBs or less for such a file. He used sound recorder (XP) for that, like I recommended. When converted to MP3 it reduced the size by 88.76%.

Now my questions -

Going on AudioSettings.INI (see attached codes) you'll see those parts of code:

Code:

AudioSettings
  AudioRoot = Data\Audio
  SoundsFolder = Sounds
  MusicFolder = Tracks
  StreamingFolder = Speech
  SoundsExtension = wav
  UseDigital = Yes
  UseMidi = No

and

Code:

  AudioFootprintInBytes = 4194304

and

Code:

  MicrophoneDesiredHeightAboveTerrain = 50.0
  MicrophoneMaxPercentageBetweenGroundAndCamera = 33.3%
  ZoomMinDistance = 130.0
  ZoomMaxDistance = 425.0
  ZoomSoundVolumePercentageAmount = 20%

1) The line; 'SoundsExtension = wav' means it uses wav files for the units etc right? Can I change it to 'SoundsExtension = mp3' so the wav files won't work but as mp3 they will work?
2) What does 'UseDigital = Yes' means?
3) What does 'AudioFootprintInBytes' means?
4) What each of the 5 lines in the third piece of code means?

Thanks for help!

IraqiPeopleRocks · 01-08-2006, 05:58 AM

here's some dunno about teh others tho.

Code:

ZoomMinDistance     = "XXX" ;If we're closer than the minimum distance, then apply the full bonus no matter how close.
  ZoomMaxDistance     = "XXX"    ;The maximum distance from microphone we need to be before benefiting from any bonus.
  ZoomSoundVolumePercentageAmount = "XXX"   ;The amount of 3D sound volume dedicated to zooming.

sc4freak · 01-08-2006, 06:46 AM

Actually - I think there is a way to decrease bitrates of uncompressed PCM wav. Something to do with decreasing it from 16-bit to 8-bit audio.

CodeCat · 01-08-2006, 07:28 AM

But 8-bit sounds terrible. Especially when the sound gets quieter you hear lots of noise through it. Reducing the sampling rate to 22050 Hz is a better idea. You lose the highest frequencies in the sound, but not a lot of sounds have that much of a frequency range anyway so you won't notice. And it cuts the size of your sound in half.

I think Generals also accepts IMA ADPCM format WAV sounds though (like RA2 did), and those have a lot better compression than plain PCM WAV. You should see if you can convert to that, it saves even more size.

[BIO] Israeli Red Dragon · 01-08-2006, 07:45 AM

Well, thanks for IraquiPeopleRocks since he got me to look at ZH's INI files (instead of Dee's Pro;Gen files which didn't have the comments) so it cleared up a lot.

Secondly, I am using the IMA ADPCM format for WAV files (I am using my webcam as my primary recorder). However, I was wondering if I can change the ' SoundsExtension = wav ' into ' SoundsExtension = mp3 ' because it saves even more in space. I am already in project of changing 4000 sound files in Generals/ZH, so why not use Audacity and change them into mp3 then?

Generals/ZH do support MP3 (music), but I dunno if as voices. I think it should be, as the comment for this file is:

SoundsExtension = wav ; What is the extension for sound effects? (Probably wav)

So I bet it can go for MP3. I'd give it a go tomorrow.

Edit - If anyone wants to make some voices for the mod (anything, even generals challange goes!) you can do anything, just contact me for that general/unit to see if they weren't caught yet. Your sounds and your sayings. You can do 3 voices max (that is, like 3 different units or 1 general and 2 units etc).

CodeCat · 01-08-2006, 07:55 AM

Actually, the sound extension is probably only there so the game knows what the files are called. In SoundEffects.ini you only list the file names, not the extensions. So the game has to somehow know what the full name is, and that's what SoundsExtension is for.

But, if you just rename an mp3 to .wav it could work. You should try it.
What might also work is to simply add mp3 to the SoundsExtension list, after wav. No guarantee here but it's worth a try.

SmokeyDaBear · 01-09-2006, 08:51 PM

dude...wtf.... i have a sound that 4 seconds long and only 37.5 KB, and its:

BitRate = 88kbps
Audio Sampling Size = 4 bit
Channels = 1 mono
Audio Sampling Rate = 22Khz
and
Audio Format = IMA ADPCM

and it sounds fine to me