**Great Discovery for optimizing your game!**
3xL
Member Posts: 676
so here i am optimizing my files and trying to keep my game under 20mb and i've discovered something very useful/exciting/interesting.
i make my music with garageband right? usually when i'm done with the song/sound, i export it to my hardrive as a mp3 file. but when i import it to gamesalad, gamesalad converts it to an m4a file. but at almost double the mp3's file size. so here is what i discovered:
mp3 into GS = double sized
example:
540kb file = 1.2mb file
all this adds up making your game a lot bigger, alot faster.
how do i know this?
right clicking my GS project file>
and then "show package contents">
then double click "sounds" and then>
compare files (original music file vs gs's converted version)
so i was upset cause i had compressed all my images as much as i can (keeping quality intact) and still somehow stayed over 20mb.
DISCOVERY:
i know garageband can export to mp3, but there was another option called ACC. im sure a lot of you are familiar with this type of audio file (itunes favorable).
so i export using ACC format, which is what gamesalad converts mp3's to and viola!
a 540kb file = 540kb file
file size stays the SAME!
i did this to all my tracks in my game and saved so much memory!
before using this method my project file was 21.6mb
now? its 16.3mb!
i hope this helps out everyone and anyone, maybe even sticky this if you want. it really does help optimize file sizes. hope this helps everyone
p.s. - i also when into my project (through "show package contents") images files and used ImageAlpha to compress them an additional time to save even MORE data. not sure if gs converts image files too, but i was able to compress my png files an additional time (i compressed them through image alpha BEFORE importing them into GS as well) so save more data.
cheers!
EDIT: keep note this method is for MUSIC files not SOUND.
i make my music with garageband right? usually when i'm done with the song/sound, i export it to my hardrive as a mp3 file. but when i import it to gamesalad, gamesalad converts it to an m4a file. but at almost double the mp3's file size. so here is what i discovered:
mp3 into GS = double sized
example:
540kb file = 1.2mb file
all this adds up making your game a lot bigger, alot faster.
how do i know this?
right clicking my GS project file>
and then "show package contents">
then double click "sounds" and then>
compare files (original music file vs gs's converted version)
so i was upset cause i had compressed all my images as much as i can (keeping quality intact) and still somehow stayed over 20mb.
DISCOVERY:
i know garageband can export to mp3, but there was another option called ACC. im sure a lot of you are familiar with this type of audio file (itunes favorable).
so i export using ACC format, which is what gamesalad converts mp3's to and viola!
a 540kb file = 540kb file
file size stays the SAME!
i did this to all my tracks in my game and saved so much memory!
before using this method my project file was 21.6mb
now? its 16.3mb!
i hope this helps out everyone and anyone, maybe even sticky this if you want. it really does help optimize file sizes. hope this helps everyone
p.s. - i also when into my project (through "show package contents") images files and used ImageAlpha to compress them an additional time to save even MORE data. not sure if gs converts image files too, but i was able to compress my png files an additional time (i compressed them through image alpha BEFORE importing them into GS as well) so save more data.
cheers!
EDIT: keep note this method is for MUSIC files not SOUND.
Comments
yes. infact i had to do the same thing. i imported some mp3s that were already in the game file, exported them using this method and reimported into GS. basically any audio file.
@Stevard
not sure, if Darren's tools does this, but either way the optimizer cost money. this is a FREE way of doing it.
Very cool. Thank you I will be sure to use this.
Music files get converted to .m4a
I could be wrong but I think .wav files, if imported as "sound", get converted into ogg files. Not sure tho.
basically the rule of dumb is:
whenever possible, import sound as m4a instead of mp3
In my first app in iTunes (well, my only app!) the file is over 60mb because it contains over 45 minutes of music (which would amount to about 30mb). I tried everything to optimise the music without success. Your advice sounds like it might save over 10mb at least; I'm definitely going to give that a go for the update. Thanks again! :-)
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No problem man. Just trying help out
@SlickZero
Yes I know NOW lol. Gs should point this out. Unless they did and I missed it?
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If you drop an .ogg in GS, GS doesn't alter it in any way because that is its chosen format for sound fx.
If you drop an .m4a in GS, GS doesn't alter it in any way because that is its chosen format for music.
Any other sound you put into GS will be converted to ogg or m4a depending on whether you tell it it's a sound fx or a music. It will be converted with the default quality settings specified by GS for each of the 2 formats.
Now if you aren't very audio savvy, it's good practice to drop uncompressed (wav and aif) source files into GS and let GS make the compressed versions for you. What you shouldn't do is make any kind of non-ogg or non-m4a version of your audio first, because you're just setting yourself up for unnecessary file size increases or 2nd generation+ degradation of your sound when GS cross converts to its native formats.
But like Slick said, if you are able to produce m4a or ogg files yourself from the highest generation version of your audio (EG the way garageband can give you an m4a straight up, or you can use a program like Max (http://sbooth.org/Max/) to produce oggs from wavs or aifs), you can then control your own quality settings, drop the resulting file in GS and have GS accept the file without altering it. This can allow you to make higher quality oggs/m4as than GS would normally allow - which also take up more disk space - or lower quality ones which will save you space.
I did some sound fx experiments and I can tell you a couple of things - the default ogg quality for a GS conversion is very low, but the result is surprisingly alright for sound fx that are gonna be played back through the crummy speakers of a handheld device or earbuds.
I took a 1:50 piece of sound which was 16 MB as an uncompressed 16 bit aif. I then did 3 ogg conversions - one myself at quality 10/10, one myself at quality -1/10 (the Max quality slider goes from -1 to 10!) and one where I let GS do it.
The results:
10 quality file: 6.7 MB
-1 quality file: 725 kb
GS quality file: 1.1 MB
So GS is converting sounds to OGG at a quality Max rates at about 1/10. To my ear, the -1 version was barely different to the 1/10 version. Basically, GS is already saving you acres of file space when it converts to ogg... but if you want to save even more space, it's possible to do so if you go to the lowest quality of ogg yourself.
Haven't experimented with the m4a side of things yet, but hopefully the above summary will help you out.
That's why I said in my first post "if you use GarageBand....."
If you are using garageband, you should either go straight to m4a, or export a pure aif/wav and let GS convert that. What you shouldn't do, as you discovered, is ever go to mp3.
@Tynan
technically speaking, i am correct and your not :P
you just informed me that gs does infact change the file size (bigger or smaller, but it DOES change it) when converting an mp3.
in my case, i was using lower quality mp3's which is why gs was upconverting them. i didn't know gs did this. thanks tho! u just thought me something new
"If you produce a very high quality MP3 it will be down-sampled to a 128 kbps m4a file - the file size will shrink.
If you produce a very low quality MP3 it will be up-sampled to a 128 kbps m4a file - the file size will grow."
i'll be sticking to m4as for now. either way its good for newcomers to knows. ive been using gs for over a year now, and didnt know this lol. i will be up dating the music in my games, "terra god" and "my zombie date"'. i can probably add more levels thanks to this method.
oh well, typing fast on the ipad isnt ideal i guess.
how am i incorrect if you agree with that statement? gs DOES convert mp3s to a bigger size (by up sampling low quality mp3s)
but yea you should too. save some memory. with the added space you can add more things to your game at a smaller size.
If you produce a very low quality MP3 it will be up-sampled to a 128 kbps m4a file - the file size will grow."
looks like Alzheimer's is kicking in?
pour me some
No (not as far as I am aware ! lol !! 8-X ) . . . . you simply made a technical error and looked to share that flawed information (with the best intentions) with others, but you have now had that mistake pointed out, to be honest there are numerous trivial technical mistakes in your original post ("mp3 into GS = double sized", "so i export using ACC format" (not AAC ?) . . .etc), but I just thought it was worth pointing out that the idea that "Gs converts mp3s in a way that ncreases [sic] the file sizes" is not accurate.