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NFS 4 custom music (new thread)

This is a discussion for the topic NFS 4 custom music (new thread) on the board Editing Projects.

Author Topic: NFS 4 custom music (new thread)  (Read 15390 times)

15 Replies on NFS 4 custom music (new thread)
on: Dec 09, 2016, 9:07 AM
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    Die-hard classic NFS Fan
Hi guys,
just seen that thread which already outdated but Zpectre made a good point:

Well... You also have option of using that prehistoric thing called a CD. :P NFSHS allows you to use an audio CD to play music in the game. It may not work, though, because I don't know if the game can detect new disk drives correctly.

I think NFSHS was contemporary of MP3 fever and Napster but, since digital music wasn't commercially available back then, physical CDs were the only option. It was pretty nice of EA to give us the option, actually, since nowadays they don't even do that, and leave us stuck with EA Trax junk.

When I play my 'Blues Brothers' game setup I have the soundtrack of it running as CD ^-^ but it comes from a virtual CD drive which also works fine with NFS (for me it does) .. does such also work for you and have you ever tried that?
Thing is, I have two virtual CD drives running (MagicDisc), one contains music and one has loaded an image of the game CD on its setup root which is necessary to turn back to default music if needed (even with full install and 'NoCD' registry patched), otherwise the Audio setup menu gets into a backloop if it doesn't find the game CD ...

Cheers
Frank
« Last Edit: Dec 09, 2016, 9:17 AM by FranknFurter »

Reply #1
on: Dec 09, 2016, 12:44 PM
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Well,
like i said in the other thread i always have a music player running with a playlist of "racing" tunes. With a media keyboard you can switch titles any time or repeat them.
The ingame audio options are very limited. An audio-cd image is an adequate solution but it takes up a lot of disk space, since the audio needs to be in wav format (true audio cd - no mp3 disc).
It would be better to edit the audio files directly, like you can with NFS Porsche for example. This way it would be possible to have more calm tunes for menu and racing music during the race.
Unfortunately thats not possible with a playlist nor an audio CD/Image.

I think the music of NFS4 is somehow encrypted or have a different format than the other bnk-files. To my knowledge its not possible to edit them atm.
The method nfsfan83 described in the old thread, always crashed my game btw.

Greetings
« Last Edit: Dec 09, 2016, 1:16 PM by MADMAN_nfs »

Reply #2
on: Dec 09, 2016, 10:45 PM
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Yes I tried that method once, too, without success and leading to crash on different computers, I can affirm that so far that this doesn't work for the most .. :(

But speaking of .bnk files, have you ever tried to open 'gen.bnk' in NFSWizard? This leads NFSWizard to an immediate crash even if it is yet smaller file size than my current reworked siren.bnk, don't know why, perhaps a compressed audio codec that NFSWizard hasn't implemented or whatever ... would be nice if one could alter that since it also contains those omnipresent ambient sounds (background sounds) like that church bell, the mooing cows and also that annoying German croupier I think which is only speaking English :o etc ...) and also the passing traffic 'rush' sound and the diesel engine sound of traffic Buses and Semis which is somewhat poor and always just idling >:(

I have exported it and tried to open it with other tools and also tried to play it with Media Player Classic that has so many different audio codecs implemented, none had worked :(
« Last Edit: Dec 09, 2016, 10:58 PM by FranknFurter »

Reply #3
on: Jan 16, 2017, 7:30 AM
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Well, got to correct what i said.
I gave it another shot and its actually working for me. Not sure why it hasn't worked before.
This time i used the command-line version of the ditty-importer, tho.

Did it like nfsfan83 described.

1) Prepare wav files with 16bit and 22050 Hz.
2) Process with impditt.exe
3) Process with splt2int.exe
Done.

The resulting .asf files have the correct format and are recognised by the game without errors so far (using Modern Patch and Stereo mode in audio-options)

For converting the wav files i used the commercial "FairStars Audio Converter". This way you can process many files at once.
Im sure there also freeware alternatives for this kind of conversion. With Audacity you can also perform the conversion wav-44100Hz -> wav-22050Hz of course, but only file by file.

I prepared some tiny bat files for easy use (see attachments).
Just place the prepared wav's and my files into a new directory. Run the bat files according to the steps above: 1st impditt.bat, 2nd splt2int.bat (tested with WinXP and Win10)

Reply #4
on: Jan 16, 2017, 9:39 AM
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Nice work, MADMAN_nfs

I created my version of it  :D I used FFmpeg for coversion to wav and automatized whole process a lot  ;)

All you have to do is copy desired files (anything what have sound in it, so any audio and even video files for example from youtube) to INPUT_FILES folder, run !START.bat (or !START-XP.bat for WIndows XP), wait a little and when it ends copy ASF files from OUTPUT_FILES folder

Download it (with FFmpeg, XP supported)
Download it (without FFmpeg, XP supported)

(ffmpeg is included, so it is big, 68MB uncompressed, 26MB compressed with zip. also MADMANs original zip is included, version without ffmpeg have 155KB, but you have to download it separately)

hope it helps ;)

edit: change url for eng verion of that page  ;)
edit: xp support and included readme + codec and format suport for input files
« Last Edit: Jan 17, 2017, 7:50 AM by Keiiko »

Reply #5
on: Jan 16, 2017, 10:06 AM
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    I keep trying so far... Hmm 😶‍🌫️ ☮️ 😎
Yes I need to etc some music going in my game!, haven't yet.. like to try this some day. Can this be imported now what all Keiiko put together now to.
An good job Madman I don't have these programs yet anyhow  =D
I want get your 14 meg files Keiiko, but I can't read your Language, bummer what button
Turns on the Download.
Thanks
« Last Edit: Jan 16, 2017, 10:28 AM by WiLL »
Let's have a better day...?

Reply #6
on: Jan 16, 2017, 10:37 AM
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I want get your 14 meg files Keiiko, but I can't read your Language, bummer what button
Turns on the Download.
Thanks

I changed url for eng verison of ulozto (uloz.to -> ulozto.net) or you could do that in top right, there are flags and you can choose between czech, slovak, english and poland

Reply #7
on: Jan 16, 2017, 1:37 PM
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I created my version of it  :D I used FFmpeg for coversion to wav and automatized whole process a lot  ;)

All you have to do is copy desired files (anything what have sound in it, so any audio and even video files for example from youtube) to INPUT_FILES folder, run !START.bat, wait a little and when it ends copy ASF files from OUTPUT_FILES folder

Download it
(ffmpeg is included, so it is big, 36MB uncompressed, 14MB compressed with zip. also MADMANs original zip is included)

All credit goes to nfsfan83 for finding the workflow.
Thanks Keiiko for sharing your script. Definitely more comfortable then my version hehe - i also tried to make subfolders but it did not work out. So, interesting to see your bat files :)

Your script is not compatible with WinXP tho. Just out of curiosity: are some bat-commands not present in older windows versions? I thought cmd.exe is more or less the same in all Win OS.

Well, although this seems to work, i still think running a Media Player in background is more comfortable.
But its interesting :)

Reply #8
on: Jan 16, 2017, 1:47 PM
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@Keiiko: how big was the file w/o FFmpeg since I have that WinFF also .. so u have 'light' version of that too? Will it convert ev'thing to ASF? that was cool .. never having to load Image CD for 'Blues Brothers' soundtrack again :)

@Madman: is ur version all command prompt or can I also assign file ass to them .exe's? that was better since I'm lazy guy .. LOL
« Last Edit: Jan 16, 2017, 1:51 PM by FranknFurter »

Reply #9
on: Jan 16, 2017, 2:09 PM
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@Keiiko: how big was the file w/o FFmpeg since I have that WinFF also .. so u have 'light' version of that too? Will it convert ev'thing to ASF? that was cool .. never having to load Image CD for 'Blues Brothers' soundtrack again :)

@Madman: is ur version all command prompt or can I also assign file ass to them .exe's? that was better since I'm lazy guy .. LOL
well, ffmpeg is like 99% of that zip :D i downloaded stable version (ffmpeg-3.2.2-win32-static.zip) from official distribution. and yes, it will convert almost everything to almost everything (in our case pcm_s16le wav file). run this in cmd in kits folder and in created txt file you will see wich formats and codecs it can decode
Code: [Select]
ffmpeg.exe -formats > formats.txt
ffmpeg.exe -codecs > codecs.txt

also i wanted it to be drag'n'drop, but bat files are terrible at it. and in both mine and madmans scripts it is not possible to assign file format to it.

(...) Your script is not compatible with WinXP tho. Just out of curiosity: are some bat-commands not present in older windows versions? I thought cmd.exe is more or less the same in all Win OS. (...)
it is possible that some commands are not in xp... ill try it on my xp wm if i still have it

edit: indeed, it is not working under xp sp3, thats because included ffmpeg is missing something in xp... and yep, ffmpeg no longer works in xp, see this to download last working build: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3572
« Last Edit: Jan 16, 2017, 2:31 PM by Keiiko »

Reply #10
on: Jan 17, 2017, 7:54 AM
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Uploaded updated version for Windows XP and also version without ffmpeg:

Download it (with FFmpeg, XP supported)
Download it (without FFmpeg, XP supported)

(ffmpeg is included, so it is big, 68MB uncompressed, 26MB compressed with zip. also MADMANs original zip is included, version without ffmpeg have 155KB, but you have to download it separately)

Whats new?  xp support and included readme + codec and format suport info file for input files

in attachment is the same zip as above
« Last Edit: Jan 17, 2017, 7:57 AM by Keiiko »

Reply #11
on: Jan 17, 2017, 10:08 AM
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Perfect one-click solution for basically all Win OS, from XP and up, with freeware tools. Nice job Keiiko.
This makes replacing the game music files a true option.

Reply #12
on: Jan 31, 2018, 8:44 AM
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Hey Keiiko, you should upload this in the Utility/Tool section here on the site and maybe on your homepage as well :)

Although its just a batch script, it is working pretty well... but burried somewhere in a subforum thread like this i'm afraid not many people will find this tool (i had trouble finding it here again actually).

Imo, for compatibility reasons and to save some filesize, i would just include the XP supporting version of ffmpeg, since mp3 and wav files are probably the most common files to be converted (and it will do this just fine...).
Link to old ffmpeg versions: http://zeranoe1.rssing.com/chan-5973786/all_p30.html (Zeranoe FFmpeg 2015-05-25 at bottom of page 30)

Greetings

Reply #13
on: Feb 11, 2018, 1:54 AM
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Wow, that was easy. I just replaced the MENUx.asf files without any problems.  :)
Get T3ED, Stock & Expansion Pack from Magenta Cloud.

Reply #14
on: Feb 11, 2018, 3:07 AM
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Hey Keiiko, you should upload this in the Utility/Tool section here on the site and maybe on your homepage as well :)
Will do eventually with other things and updated nfs3/4 Launcher, but for now this will be placeholder ;)

Original post, More general and XPsupport info, Update with Script in attachment

 


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