Importing m4a as music not sound?

pixel_knights

I'm trying to import some music into my game, i've tried .ogg then read they are always sound, so i converted them to .m4a, yet they still get imported at sound, not music? How do I get GS to treat files as music, not sound?

Clouds

I had this problem too, GS had been offering me the choice for a long time - and then all of a sudden decided that it was going to make all the files I dragged in as 'music' (the opposite problem to yours).

They would just appear in the sounds window after I dragged them in - the stage where you are offered a choice didn't happen.

One solution is to take your .m4a files - open them in something like Quicktime Player 7 and save them off as uncompressed (16bit/44.1kHz) WAV files (so you don't loose any quality) and then drag these WAV files in to GS - this forces GS to offer you the music/sound choice once more - it will then convert the WAV for you (to ogg if you select 'sound - or a m4a if you select 'music').

SlickZero

The sound issues with GameSalad have been erratic and different for lots of people. It keeps changing with each update it seems. I used to use Audacity to convert all my sounds and music to the appropriate GameSalad settings, like sounds being .ogg and music being .m4a. etc... That got messed up for me a couple of updates ago, so I started using .mp3's and letting GameSalad handle the conversion. I did a couple of tests, and I know Tynan did a couple of tests, and now a few updates later, I'm back to converting my music back to .m4a myself, and not letting GameSalad handle the conversions. I still use .mp3's for sound effects, and let GameSalad handle the .ogg conversion, but I like having control over the music files overall, and .m4a seems to let you have the most control over any other setting when you import.

Clouds

Yep, what SlickZero said.

MP3s will work just as well as uncompressed WAVs or uncompressed AIFFs when it comes to forcing Gamesalad into giving you back the select-music-or-sound stage of the importing process.

And, in theory, using an m4a should give you complete control over the final audio within GS (when used as music) as GS doesn't convert m4a files - it just seems to copy them into the game's file. But, as you've said - and as I've experienced myself, this process sometimes randomly stops working !

Here's that table from the other thread of what goes in and what comes out of Gamesalad:

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Instead of dragging them in use the import + it gives you the option if not make them aiff right out of QuickTime or GarageBand.

Clouds

@dsouza41
>>"Instead of dragging them in use the import + it gives you the option . . . . "

Once Gamesalad has "gone bad" in respect to audio importing - using the import (+) button doesn't help, m4a files are still just imported as m4a files (ie: it still doesn't give you the option to choose 'music' or 'sound').

JayReiter

@Clouds Did anyone ever figure out how to resolve this problem? Or is GS just buggy in this respect? I'm using a PC. I have tried several different methods of importing music into GS and all have failed today. What's strange is that GS allowed me to import a m4a several weeks ago just fine. The music works and plays. Now, using the exact same methods as before, GS will recognize the m4a I drop in, but there's no sound coming GS when I click the play button. I checked the files in the sounds folder for the game and they work fine. Very strange.