Song Edits Guide (Because some people are just that lazy)

[IHYD.Blake]

Apparently people are still asking how to do this, believing there is no communication world outside of ddrfreak. For those people who have their IP address banned from all other locations on the whole internet that says how to do this, I will be a nice president and help out.
Please tell if there are any mistakes or anything important that should be added.

In The Groove: R21 Patch – SONG EDITS

With the newest patch for In The Groove 2 AC, you are able to take any song you want, and make it play on an ITG2 arcade machine. However, you don’t just put the files on a USB drive and it automatically works, there are a few necessary changes you must make to them in order for the machine to read them, and they will be explained here.

Music Files
• The machine does not read .mp3 files; it only reads .ogg music files. There are many ways to turn your mp3s into oggs.
• Before you choose what songs you want to convert, remember, there is a 2 minute limit on the song length. Any song longer than 2 minutes will not be read by the machine. If you need to, edit your songs BEFORE you convert them to ogg.

1. You can go to http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php to convert your songs online without any software.
Directions:
At the top left of the conversion menu, there are two radio buttons: URL and File. If you want to convert a song that is not on your computer, but has a direct link to it, choose URL, and put in the web address in the space to the left. If you have the file saved on your computer, choose File, then click browse, and find that file. As soon as you highlight it and click open, the input format should automatically switch to mp3, or whatever type of file you are converting. Next, scroll beyond all of the ads, and you should see output format. Change this to “Ogg Vorbis (.ogg),” which should be the 2nd choice on the list. After your song is completely selected, check that you accept the terms, and click convert. A pop-up box should appear, and will start with the word “Waiting,” and then will turn into the percentage of how much of your file has been transfers. How fast it uploads completely depends on your internet connection – it took mine about 30 seconds. After your transfer has reached 100%, your pop-up box should close automatically, and you proceed to another page, where it converts it. You can choose how high of quality you want your conversion to be – 7 should be good enough for what you are doing with it. The next page does not say how long it will take; all it does it flashes a message telling you it might take several minutes to convert. It took mine about 25 seconds. After it is completely done, it tells you how big your file is, and has a big download button. Click the download button, and your song should be downloading to your computer. You should save the file onto your desktop, or somewhere else that is easy to get to. Now, your audio file is ready to put on the machine.

2. You can download various music conversion programs. Most of them are demos. The only one I have found that is free is Freerip.
http://www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml
http://www.4musics.com/mp3-ogg-converter.htm
http://www.blazemp.com/convert_mp3_to_ogg.htm
Those are the top 3 converters you should use; however there are many more available, by simply typing in “mp3 to ogg” on Google.
I will not go into an individual tutorial on each conversion program, but it should be self explanatory.

After you have your music file, you need the step chart to go along with it. All you need is simply the .sm file from your StepMania folder, if you have it. If the song you want to put on is only in dwi format, you must change it using StepMania. To change the step chart format from .dwi to .sm, open StepMania with the song you want to convert in the Songs folder.

Example: C:/Program Files/StepMania/Songs/Conversion/Tough Enough/

When StepMania opens, you must open up edit mode. This may be different depending on what theme you are using. However, if you are using the StepMania 3.9, 3.95, 4, or any official StepMania theme, go to Edit/Sync Songs. When you find your song, open it. It doesn’t matter what difficulty you open, you won’t be changing it at all. Once it opens, press Esc on your keyboard, and then save it. It should say “Saved as .sm and .dwi.” If everything went all right, you should have a .sm in your song folder along with your mp3 (or ogg, if you already replaced the mp3 with it – StepMania on your computer reads .oggs as well,) .dwi, and any background images you might have. Make sure your .sm and .ogg files are both handy, because at this point, the files will be going on your USB flash drive.

Find your USB flash drive, and go inside of the In The Groove 2 folder that was written by the machine onto your card. Inside this folder, create a folder called “Songs,” and treat it just like the StepMania songs folder. The only difference is that “group folders” aren’t necessary – you may put your simfile folders right inside of your newly created “Songs” folder. Inside each song folder should only be your ogg file and your .sm file. The machine does not read background images, background videos, banners, .dwis, or anything else like that. The machine only reads 50 songs at a time, so you should pick your songs wisely.

Now, if you go to an arcade with a ITG2 machine, dedicated cabinet or upgrade, with r21 installed, and USB slots, you should be able to put in your card, and the simfiles will be read. When you start up your game, along with the group folders “In The Groove” and “In The Groove 2,” you should see whatever name you put on your card with a “’s Songs” added onto it. For example: “Htmlrules1’s Songs”

Happy Playing~

EXPLOIT: If you have a song longer than 2 minutes long that you really want to play, you can cut the song down to under 2 minutes, but the arrows will keep showing up. Many people have asked why this doesn’t work with regular In The Groove edits. This is because the .sm that is attached to the regular In The Groove songs only has as many measures as the song. If you keep your regular .sm that you got from your song, the arrows will not stop coming up until your .sm says the song is over. This way, for example, if you played Quasar, if edited the right way, music will not be played for the last 5 seconds or so of the song, but the arrows will still come.
Don’t keep your hopes up on this exploit though, because it will probably be fixed in future revisions.
_________________

[ItsDrew]

Oh I thought you were going to give us the simfiles..
_________________

In the Groove Videos (now with doubles)

[IHYD.Blake]

Thatll be next week's thread.

And since I just realized how many people would think that, I changed the title.
_________________

[Tyrgannus]

I thought you were going to tell us how to make stepcharts
_________________

AA Bob wrote:

Summer is as much of a 12 as PSMO is a 9.

[IHYD.Blake]

Even I dont know how to from scratch and create a simfile.
_________________

[0rion]

[mb41186]

ok I know this is gonna sound really stupid.. because I am stupid =p.. but anywayz..


how do I get the R21 patch in my Dedicated cabinet? or how do I know it doesn't already have one?

I mean I understand everything else like converting the song/sm files.. but how to I get the Patch to work in my machine.. How do I put it?
_________________

DDRbeat.com my dance games page

[ItsDrew]

R21 how to install

1) Download it from the official site

2) Copy the update file to the root directory of a USB memory card.

3) Press the Service button on your ITG machine, then choose Machine Update from the menu.

4) The game will prompt you to insert a USB memory card containing the update. Insert the USB memory card that you prepared earlier.

5) Progress will show for a while, then you'll see a message saying that the update was successful. Press the green button to restart the machine and finish the update.

6) Enjoy


Copied from here
http://www.inthegroove.com/page/Machine_Updates
_________________

In the Groove Videos (now with doubles)

[IHYD.Blake]

I guess that post wasnt enough - when im not busy, Ill say how to put it on, and ill put sir orion's stuff in the post.
_________________

[Mr. Kennedy]

Milo
_________________

Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Kennedyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy............... Kennedyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[Cartoonist]

[Tyrgannus]

In case it means anything, I know how to make stepcharts. I've made some (look at bemanistyle)

I was just commenting that the thread title seemed a little unclear.

PS. Blake, when did you get assumed into the IHYD Borg?
_________________

AA Bob wrote:

Summer is as much of a 12 as PSMO is a 9.

[Mr. Kennedy]

Borg?
_________________

Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Kennedyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy............... Kennedyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[IHYD.Blake]

[DARREN HAYEZ]

To change .dwi files to .sm files, can you just change the file extension? For example, say I had Butterfly.dwi. Could I just make it say Butterfly.sm? Would that work?
_________________

[0rion]

No. DWI and SM are completely different file extensions. But really, all you have to do is Edit the song in Stepmania (you don't have to change anything), then save it. It will automatically create an SM file.
_________________

-Sir "O"
There's a little yellow bird on my avatar. (Brawl FC: 4640-1720-6690)

[DARREN HAYEZ]

Haha, damn, I have to do all my stepfiles over again then. I'm glad I read this thread!
_________________

[Kitten Nuggets]

If anyone has any songs they have already completely converted and have tried to make sure they are on-sync, I'd love it if you sent me them. I'm trying to get together a very large portion of already done files for anyone to take and compile them altogether in one place, and if you want your song in there, or you'd just like to contribute the whole community would appreciate it.
_________________