Silence and the beat 0 issue
kisler
Publisher
When the first note of a particular stepfile occurs at the beginning of the very first beat in the file, it's not necessarily on sync. The ThirdStyle engine uses the first beat of the file as a corrector to be sure it has the right scroll rate for the particular beginning section of the file, which means you might see a visual shift in this first arrow as the change takes place. You might describe it as a hiccup or skip depending on your amod.
Examples of files where this can become an annoyance --
Cha-Cha Moderne: 20 second intro before the song even starts, and then a potential great on the first note.
Pork Cylinders: 13 second intro with a second visible note that's very easy to great as well.
Tricky's Song: File and song both start at the same time, but this happening interrupts SP grinding.
How can you fix it? Move back your offset so it's a beat early, then copy your arrows down a beat. You can get a new offset mathematically by getting out a calculator program or typing straight into Wolfram|Alpha. Just get the time at the second beat and subtract it from the time at the first beat. Then take that result and subtract it from the time of the first beat. For higher bpm songs (300+), consider doing this twice.
Example -- I have an offset of 2.235, and my second beat is at 2.715. 2.715 - 2.235 = 0.480, which is the distance between the beats. Then 2.235 - 0.480 = 1.755, the new offset.
Load up an mp3 in Audacity and wait until the waveform appears. Use the magnifying glass (or the key command Ctrl 1) to zoom in on the beginning of the mp3, and click in the space before the first waves appear. Then find the command to generate silence, which is aptly Generate -> Silence:
Click on Silence and you'll get this window:
Change whatever number is in the box to something low. It defaults to 30 seconds, which is extremely unnecessary. And yes, for some reason this works to 6 decimal places. Then click Generate Silence and it will add in the silence for you.
Use File -> Export As MP3 to create an mp3 with the silence on it, and name it something different than the original mp3 to avoid problems. On your first export, Audacity will ask "Where is lame_enc.dll?" in which case you should follow the directions listed here to get it and export successfully.
Hopefully this made some kind of sense, and thanks for reading!
Examples of files where this can become an annoyance --
Cha-Cha Moderne: 20 second intro before the song even starts, and then a potential great on the first note.
Pork Cylinders: 13 second intro with a second visible note that's very easy to great as well.
Tricky's Song: File and song both start at the same time, but this happening interrupts SP grinding.
How can you fix it? Move back your offset so it's a beat early, then copy your arrows down a beat. You can get a new offset mathematically by getting out a calculator program or typing straight into Wolfram|Alpha. Just get the time at the second beat and subtract it from the time at the first beat. Then take that result and subtract it from the time of the first beat. For higher bpm songs (300+), consider doing this twice.
Example -- I have an offset of 2.235, and my second beat is at 2.715. 2.715 - 2.235 = 0.480, which is the distance between the beats. Then 2.235 - 0.480 = 1.755, the new offset.
Sometimes, though, the offset is so close to the beginning of the mp3 that it can't actually be moved back a beat. This is where adding silence to the song comes in handy, and I'm thankful for the steppers that already do this when necessary. Here's a tutorial on how to do it in Audacity for those who might be new to this:isk;16074 said:One other note, the syncing occurs after at least 100 ms into the mp3.
Load up an mp3 in Audacity and wait until the waveform appears. Use the magnifying glass (or the key command Ctrl 1) to zoom in on the beginning of the mp3, and click in the space before the first waves appear. Then find the command to generate silence, which is aptly Generate -> Silence:
Click on Silence and you'll get this window:
Change whatever number is in the box to something low. It defaults to 30 seconds, which is extremely unnecessary. And yes, for some reason this works to 6 decimal places. Then click Generate Silence and it will add in the silence for you.
Use File -> Export As MP3 to create an mp3 with the silence on it, and name it something different than the original mp3 to avoid problems. On your first export, Audacity will ask "Where is lame_enc.dll?" in which case you should follow the directions listed here to get it and export successfully.
Hopefully this made some kind of sense, and thanks for reading!
Comments
One other note, the syncing occurs after at least 100 ms into the mp3.
Edited that note into the OP, thanks.