Site newcomer

Hi, all.

I've been working myself up a collection of Stepmania 5.0 simfiles. A personal stash that I'd like to start sharing.
So far, I've read this forum and I understand there's a 50pt User Rating minimum before one can begin, officially, uploading files for download.

So, in the meantime, before I hopefully acquire such a rating, my question is:
What makes Zenius -I- vanisher.com the best Music Gaming community?

And don't worry, I accept all sorts of responses.

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it's got a nice (mostly) up-to-date arcade locations feature. Usually covers a lot of bemani games well over here too.

Some of the community itself leaves much to be desired, but I guess I can kinda blame the number of younger people here compared to other sites

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What makes Zenius nice? The fact that the people are so open to opinions. (false)

It might take a little while, but if you stick around, you'll probably get along fine with pretty much everyone here.

And if you ever need help, There's a particular person for each of the many questions you may need to ask I hope you will enjoy your time here

Well, it's one of the only one of these communities still alive XD
It's a pretty good community though. Mostly nice people, and yeah, like SM MaxX said,

It's... well, surprisingly current.
Anyway, most people are open to questions, too. Come to the New/Friendly chatroom too, people are pretty nice in there.

Awesome!

That's a pretty good run-through, already!
I'll take a peek around, maybe see if I can't join in or start a conversation.

Maybe I should, also, post links to some videos of the syncs/steps I've made thus far?

Finally, feel free to continue telling me why zenius-i-vanisher is the very best, like no gaming community ever was. I'm still listening.

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It wouldn't be a bad idea if you have some stuff prepared. YouTube links work just fine on here. There's some old people around here that know a thing or two that might be interested in seeing what you have.

Might.

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Sure.

I don't want to have to qualify too much, but it bears explanation:

I do through , and the occasional . I was very big on the PS2 DDR Era.

Also, these are just some of my MLP steps. I've got a few more unposted, non MLP, and my next project is going to be a not so traditional stepset.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNmNkseTT7rvjBs2tgE-GCsOJXn64071n

The final thing I have to say is that, while I don't do the graphics myself, I try to stay, fanatically, on top of crediting the original artists. If I ever package steps for download, it usually comes with a credits.txt. So, make sure you give credit where it's actually due.

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Yea, I wouldn't mind taking a look at some of these to check sync. What exactly do you use to do the job of making sure all the music you choose is on beat?

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I'm pretty manual. I do have a few software tricks, though.
Firstly, when syncing, I always have claps/ticks all on

Most of it comes down to two things, though.
1. open the file in audacity, and use the seconds/milliseconds display to find an appropriate time offset.
2. use any of the free BPM finders online, see here: http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm to find BPM.

then it just comes down to complications.

1. can be complicated when a song has an indefinite beginning, something with a lot of slurring over the first note usually does it, so I have to go by ear. The claps really help with this, and just having a knack for timing in music helps a lot.
2. For erratic BPMs, I try to find 'anchors'. Definite down-beats that measures hit at and/or change BPM.
I also put steps equivalent to the actual rhythm, so that the claps/ticks help me check accuracy.
Then, fine-tuning by ear.

The hardest song I've synced, and I'm not saying my sync is perfect, is:
http://youtu.be/N7WZD95iRoM?t=3m54s
I've cut to the slow-down section, so you can get the idea. And I do, really, need to get that one online, sometime.

And that's pretty much it.

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Syncing by ear can be a bad idea. It's usually better (well depending on the waveform at least) to check a specific part of the waveform along each measure and see if the numbers line up that way. Some audio editting program like acid/garageband can make checking this really easy, personally I just use audacity and check each measure that way; can be tedious but I usually don't have to check much if it's a constant bpm (drifty stuff is quite a pain though no matter what you do).

I personally have never found a use for assist tick, trusting what my ears hear instead of just what numbers say 98% of the time never works out. I also pretty much never trust bpm analyzers and only use them as rough estimates, check the numbers in audacity/SM and make adjustments that way.

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It's a reference. It isn't meant to be used to sync the entire thing.

Most of what I'll base off of is what MixMeister will give me for any given segment or an entire segment if I'm confident that the entire track is on beat the entire time. From there I'll use assist tick every so often if I'm unsure.

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The reference is trusting what your ears hear with it, which isn't a good idea. I'd much rather trust numbers on the actual waveform before that.

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So how do I trust numbers on a waveform or that stuff to something like this?

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check every measure and pretty much make bpm adjustments every measure or so to make sure the numbers line up on the next measure (like I said, it's a royal pain for drifty stuff). Your ears can only get you so far and you would be quite something to be able to be that musically acute to detect millisecond bpm differences.

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For something like this that's produced fully digitally, you probably want to start with a conversion of the NSF format's timing cues into .sm timing cues for the BPM adjustments.

With what?

I went straight from the OGG. I guess I could have asked Dave but I didn't KNOW Dave at the time.

Also, we're kinda off-topicing a newbie thread...

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Here, I've moved the syncing talk to another thread. Feel free to grab and quote as necessary from this one:
http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/viewthread.php?threadid=6270&page=1

So; If Anyone else has fun words to say about Zenius-i-vanisher.com, have at it! I'd love to hear about the good times you all have.

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