MIDI errors

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

Music is a key part to making any quest, and while I've got a handful of snazzy tunes for my new project, one of them in particular does not seem to get along well with ZQ. Whenever I try to import it, I get a message telling me that there was an error loading the midi, at which point I am prompted to select the "Dang" option to continue.

Is there any reason this should be happening? It's a standard .mid file, and it works just fine when I open it regularly in Media Player. I'll link to it below, for the heck of it. Any help is appreciated.


http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/n64/CastleVania-_Maze.mid

[Freedom]

Some midis just do that, I couldn't ever get secret of mana to work

[Tim]

Do this, it works for me:
Use a Midi Editing device, I used Anvil Studio, and erase all the tracks that have no data in them.

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

Midi Editing device, eh? Never knew where to find one of those... I'll check it out! Thanks, Magi.



EDIT: I deleted about forty extra tracks of nothing, and it works now. Thanks again, Magi.

[Tim]

Freedom, do what I did and maybe the Secret of Mana Midi's will work.

[Freedom]

Thanks Magi Hero,
I didn't have anything to play with midis so I grabbed that Anvil studio and then set up and played with it to the wee hours, seems like a pretty cool little program.

I haven't tried to fix Mana yet, but I changed several others I have.

[Tim]

Glad to help you guys, and maybe this will help other people as well.

I have seen that many Midi's from VGMusic have this problem. I guess the people that submit them forget about the extra tracks they used, in case they needed extra space.

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

Well, this is the first time I've had it happen, but I'll keep it in mind for future occasions, should they crop up.

[Freedom]

Magi Hero,

How do you get selected tracks to delete?
The help file says to click on them and then go into tracks and hit delete, but it keeps wanting to work up from the bottom tracks and not the track that I single out to delete.

Secret of Mana has 31 tracks, and it's a real pain to work with too because the scroll bar keep jumping back up to the top, so if you click on mute or solo, then you have to keep scrolling back down again and again.

[Tim]

When you delete a track, the track after it takes it's number. The tracks become readjusted to it's new numerical order. And yes, it is tedious and annoying. I just deal with it.

[Freedom]

I got Secret of Mana to work anyway :)
Thanks :)

[{DSG}DarkRaven]

The tracks in my midi amounted to 38 of blank space, and whenever I deleted one, say, #10, the first blank, the ones after did NOT readjust. Strange?

Oh well, at least it worked. Too bad I don't know how to use this thing for anything else besides screwing with other people's work. I'd love to make some snazzy tunes of my own, or make some better, closer to the original copies of some classic NES tunes.

[Freedom]

I'm in the same boat as you, but I figure in time I'll figure it out.
I've alread fixed a hand full of midis that sounded pretty bad.
Seems they always replace the voice in a song with the most awful noise, so it's allowed me to choose other instruments that sound a little better, and to lower the volume of that track to help blend it better.

[Espo]

I've been having this problem for a while. I sequenced the midi I'm using myself and it is using ONLY FOUR TRACKS. For some reason it still won't load. Dang!

EDIT: I realized what the problem is. While I was thinking about this (within the last 2 minutes) I realized that there are a number of different MIDI formats to which a MIDI file can be saved. The file I was trying to use for some strange reason was using the formate "RIFF MIDI format 1". When I changed it to "MIDI format 1" it worked. Huzzah!!!

[TheouAegis]

For all you GUI-aided game designers out there, other programs have problems with MIDI files as well. I came across Anvil Studio when a friend reccommended it for fixing up MIDI files for the less-than-legal-crack of RPG Maker 2000. Damn program's picky about its MIDI files and wouldn't let you play any MIDI with some certain data at the beginning. I waws smart enough to compare my corrupt MIDIs with one that did work in RM2K. And lo! I found the problem that had been plaguing RM2K users for years. Had to go through every one of my MIDI files in Anvil Studio, find and delete one line of coding that had nothing to do with the music, just some technical jargon.

So this is just a heads up: Whenever a program won't accept certain MIDI files, seemingly at random, or won't play them back correctly, load it up in Anvil Studio along with one that works and look for any differences between the two.

[Tim]

I knew this already. Did you know RM2k3 doesn't have that problem. It accepts all Midis, I've seen.