Couple of basic audio questions

Fodder76

Hey there helpful friends,

I have a couple of basic audio questions for you.

First, I have an ogg that I'm trying to import as MUSIC. From what I understand, when I go to import its supposed to ask me if I want to import the track as music or sound, but it doesn't. It only asks me that if I import a wav file. I don't want to use a Wav because its about 7 times larger than the ogg.

Second, is there an easy way to make a song play across scenes?

Thanks in advance!

Chris

Fodder76

Nevermind on part two of my question. With the wav in there as music and not sound, it does play across scenes. Now I just need to figure out how to get my ogg to be recognized as Music.

Thanks!

quantumsheep

Not sure about the .ogg - I only use that for sound effects, with .wav files used for music - sorry!

However, way to have the music play across all scenes is to start the music playing on your splash screen. Make sure you never go back to that scene, and set it to 'loop'.

Then, as long as you don't use 'reset scene' or 'reset game', you should be fine

Hope that helps,

QS

FranzKeller

what's wrong with using MP3's? Still fairly small.

Sparkyidr

As far as I am aware, you need to have the music as a .m4a file (or a wav and let GS convert it for you).

Note... GS "Converts" it to m4a (I think), but am not sure of the bit rate it uses.

The easiest way to do it, if you don't have any dedicated audio software is :

Import the wav into iTunes
Once it's in your library, go to the settings/preferences, and look for the "Import Settings" button on the general tab and click it
In the dialogue that pops up, change the 2nd dropdown to custom
This will allow you to choose a bit rate and choose if you want it in stereo or mono

Sor a game soundtrack on the phone I would suggest : 96kbps, 44,100, mono
96 drops the bit rate a little, but stll sounds pretty good out of the phone speaker,mono is half the size of a stereo file, and again, if it's just for a game, chances are you will not be using headphones as you play, so mono is fine.

Once you have chosen your settings, click ok, then go back and find the wav in your library, right click, and choose "Create AAC version"
It will go and create a AAC (.m4a) version in your library... you can then just drag and drop that from your library to a folder (or your desktop).

Then import that m4a into GS.

Hope that all made sense.

Fodder76

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I find it really strange that everyone is suggesting using audio formats other than ogg, only because of this information, straight from Gamesalads own help page:

http://gamesalad.com/wiki/media_importing_reference

'The only accepted format at this time for audio in GameSalad is .ogg ( Ogg Vorbis). Open-source programs such as Audacity and VLC allow you to convert formats such as .wav to .ogg by simply opening the sound file then exporting to .ogg format. '

But regardless, I'll take your advice and try out the different audio formats. Thanks!

Sparkyidr

I think the rule of thumb is

for short sounds (effects etc) use .ogg (or .caf)
for music and sounds longer than say 10 seconds, then use .m4a

Has always worked for me, and many others I assume.

Fodder76

Thanks Sparky!