Having trouble with music files and size

butterbean

I'm having trouble with the music and files, and what the best way is to compress them. I'm finding that the sizes are still over 1mb for a 1 minute song for background music

I'm currently using Max for MAC, and I'm choosing 0.1 quality and 64 bitrate and converting to ogg vorbis.

I couldn't find AA4 file format to convert to which I thought I had read is supported now, or is ogg vorbis the only supported format....?
Any help appreciated, I have looked at the previous posts, but couldn't find an answer, apologize if this has already been answered

ktfright

i never heard of aa4... i think you mean AAC. itune can convert that, but I hope im not steering you in the wrong direction.

butterbean

Sorry I meant AAC, but on a one minute song, what are people averaging in memory? That seems to be my problem with memory conservation.... if anyone uses Max for MAC, the music converter, maybe they could provide some tips?

And is it okay to use AA4 files in addition to Ogg vorbis?

Cobra

I posted the following in another thread a while ago, perhaps it will be helpful to you:

What matters most is the bitrate, which is typically either 128 or 192. If it's 192, you can reduce it to 128 with an almost imperceptible loss in quality. If it's 128, you can reduce it further, but keep your ears open. (The high end will be the first thing to go -- listen to the cymbals.) This works exactly as advertised: a one-minute stereo .m4a AAC file should be right around 1.5MB using a bitrate of 192, 1.0MB using a bitrate of 128, 500K using a bitrate of 64, etc.

For music you generally want to use AAC and _not_ OGG files. The former will give you much better performance on the iPhone. You'll still have to keep file size in mind though, especially if you want to stay under 10MB.

I use Max to convert between filetypes as well.

You mention you currently have a one-minute background song that is taking up just over 1MB; that's about right. If you convert it from OGG to 128-bit AAC, you'll keep that filesize but get better performance on the iPhone. If you go to 64-bit AAC, you'll have half the filesize but might seriously hurt the music (depends on the nature of the material).

So basically... if these numbers are "over budget," then you have other things to consider. Could a shorter music loop get the job done? Can other things be optimized, or cut, to make room?

butterbean

Thanks Cobra!
In The max program for mac, can you cut the music time to a shorter length? If so how do you do this? I was searching and couldn't find a way, I think the best solution would be to cut the song time to a shorter length and loop it

quantumsheep

Thanks Cobra,
I'm using 22k mono .ogg files as Apple supposedly favours these for some reason.

Will people be ok making games with AAC files instead of ogg?

Also, Butterbean - I use *maybe* a one minute song at most for the title screen - any other audio is looped at around 30 seconds. Cuts down the file sizes nicely.

Cheers,

QS

butterbean

Yea I'm finding the music files take up sooo much space, trying to cut the songs down in size to help with memory.... trying to get all games below 10mb and it's a challenge!

Cobra

@QS,
GameSalad uses OGG for the "play sound" behavior and AAC for the "play music" behavior. "Play music" is intended for use with a single track of background sound, like a music loop. There are several advantages to using this behavior for your music track... one being that it streams the sound file from disk instead of loading the entire thing into memory, thus improving iPhone performance a bit.

@Butterbean,
I'm not sure if Max can shorten audio files, it's worth investigating. But at any rate, a feature like "shorten file to X seconds" wouldn't be very good for creating a seamless loop. You could try an audio editing program like Audacity (available for free online) or GarageBand (probably already on your Mac) to make the cut.

It has become clear to me that an extensive Wiki entry on all things audio could help a lot of GameSalad users... I'll try to squeeze that in next week.

quantumsheep

Cobra,
That's very interesting re: Memory issues and ogg/AAC files.

I'd certainly like to switch to AAC files, and it would be relatively painless I guess. I think my question still stands though RE: Apple's preferences and whether our games are likely to be rejected if we use anything other than those preferences!

Cheers,

QS

imGua

Found a Online ACC covertor http://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-aac

The end file should be acc or m4a?

Pixelgun

Finding an AAC converter is almost as easy as using google. Does no one know about Macupdate.com? Great resource if you're looking for software.
here's a couple of free converters I found there.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder

Lossless Decoder (XLD) is a tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various 'lossless' audio files. The supported audio files can be split into some tracks with cue sheet when decoding.

XLD supports the following formats:
(Ogg) FLAC (.flac/.ogg)
Monkey's Audio (.ape)
Wavpack (.wv)
TTA (.tta)
Apple Lossless (.m4a) [10.4 and later]
TAK (.tak) [Requires Wine]
Shorten (.shn) [SHN v3 only]
AIFF, WAV, etc.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/40771/music-converter

Music Converter lets you quickly and simply convert a music or sound file to all popular formats. The app provides full iTunes integration and lets you edit the album, artist and track information.



Convert from: MP3, FLAC, WAV, WMA, M4A, AIFF, FLV and many more.
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Convert to: MP3, AAC, M4A (Apple Lossless), M4R (iPhone Ringtone), FLAC, WAV and more...