Creating Seamless Loops for VideoGames?

[Schematist]

I was hoping someone could guide me on this. The tracks I create loop with no issues inside of FL Studio, but after converting them to mp3 or wave files there is still a bit of silence before the song loops when it is placed in game. I am working on a soundtrack for the Unity Engine as well as the RPG Ace System if anyone has any tips at all please help!

[Flexstyle]

You shouldn't have any trouble with .wav files as long as you're rendering with the tail either cut off or wrapped (as opposed to left in, you'll see what I mean on the render page). MP3 files, though, automatically insert just a little bit of silence at the beginning of the file, so I wouldn't really recommend them as being used for looping in a game.

[liquid wind]

Load the wav in edison to edit the wave file, just delete the opening silence and export

[timaeus222]

Yes, MP3s create a small bit of padding, so render as OGG from the very beginning for space-conservation and WAV-like behavior.

[Schematist]

Hmm.. to be honest I think the problem lies at the very end of the track as opposed to the beginning. I think there might be literally 1 more second of sound at the end that horribly damages the loop. I never tried to edit in Edison but I will give that a try as well. And to be honest I have never cut the tail before rendering so that might be it. This is going to take some trial and error to get it right. Thanks for the help you guys.

[Flexstyle]

Yeah, check your looping mode.

[timaeus222]

Actually, good video game loops don't use Wrap Remainder right away. Do Cut Remainder, and then Wrap Remainder for another copy. Run the Cut Remainder OGG, then the Wrap Remainder OGG for remaining loops.

[Schematist]

Thanks for the quick responses you guys I'll give this a try. Thanks for pointing out the cut and wrap remainder options in FL studio Flexstyle. I think I will try and follow what Timaeus is saying thought. I just need to find an audio program to help me do this. I heard audicity was pretty decent

[Argle]

Wow, that wrap function seems pretty useful. I wish Reaper had something like that.

[dannthr]

Actually, good video game loops don't use Wrap Remainder right away. Do Cut Remainder, and then Wrap Remainder for another copy. Run the Cut Remainder OGG, then the Wrap Remainder OGG for remaining loops.

That's a waste of budget.

Your intro segment should be not much longer than the reverb tail if it can be helped. Maybe just a couple bars at most.

Here's an example of a long reverby (a reverb longer than one bar) 8 bar loop.

[1] [2] |cut| [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [1] [2] (loop back to cut)

In this case, you don't even need some fancy wrapping. Just render it out with the first two bars on the end and cut properly in a wave editor. (Cut on the 0 crossing on the same transient if you can help it)

MP3: Yeah, mp3 is a challenge. Mp3 encoders pad the ends of the file with silence because of parsing, but there are ways around it. Avoid it if you can, though, it's a bit of a pain.

You shouldn't have problems with your wav files though, so you might be doing something else wrong.

Ogg is nice, nice compression rate, loops cleanly, but it kills iOS devices. Decoding it is a CPU hog and support will have to be built into the game.

[timaeus222]

Ogg is nice, nice compression rate, loops cleanly, but it kills iOS devices. Decoding it is a CPU hog and support will have to be built into the game.

I've already done it with my friend's game, and the programmer was able to work with OGG just fine. In fact, OGG was requested because it's way smaller than WAV but acts pretty much the same in terms of silence padding.

[dannthr]

I've already done it with my friend's game, and the programmer was able to work with OGG just fine. In fact, OGG was requested because it's way smaller than WAV but acts pretty much the same in terms of silence padding.

Good! Yeah, it's a compression format, so it doesn't work quite the same as wav, which is uncompressed. It doesn't add the padding on the sides because it has a more elegant "parsing" system than your typical mp3 encoder when it encodes.

But yeah, it performs nicely on computers and consoles and I believe it's natively or easily supported with OpenAL, which the PS3 is programmed using.

You can get pretty clean compressions scales at as much as 12:1, which is great!

But Flash doesn't support it, and iOS devices do not like it.

So, you've got to pick the format right for the job--it's not always going to be the same one.

[timaeus222]

Good! Yeah, it's a compression format, so it doesn't work quite the same as wav, which is uncompressed. It doesn't add the padding on the sides because it has a more elegant "parsing" system than your typical mp3 encoder when it encodes.

But yeah, it performs nicely on computers and consoles and I believe it's natively or easily supported with OpenAL, which the PS3 is programmed using.

You can get pretty clean compressions scales at as much as 12:1, which is great!

But Flash doesn't support it, and iOS devices do not like it.

So, you've got to pick the format right for the job--it's not always going to be the same one.

Right, I think the game ended up being a PC/MAC game, so it worked out!