I see a lot of people wanting to replace sounds/songs in San Andreas and having problems with the GUI tool. I have posted this a few times before and decided that it would be more useful if it had its own post here in the tut section.
The GUI is nice, but its too touchy in my opinion. The best way to go about changing audio is the dos method.
First, go to your C: drive and create a new folder called TEMP. It should be C:TEMP. This is where you audio will extract to for editing/swapping and re-import.
Next, place the files:
| CODE |
SAAT_SFX
SAAT_STREAM
METADATA-FULL.INI
METADATA-GENERIC.INI |
DOWNLOAD THEM HEREinto your San Andreas root directory where the .exe is. Now open a command prompt and navigate it to your root directory.
Now type or past the following into command prompt to extract you SFX:
| CODE |
| saat_sfx -e audio\SFX\GENRL c:\temp\saat audio\CONFIG\BankLkup.dat |
The audio will now be in the folder you created. Do not close the command prompt! You can easily swap audio files. My advice is to use the free program AUDACITY. Use it to open the file you want to replace. Now take the file you want to use and open it as well. Copy your new sound and paste it in the track with the origional. This will reset the bit/sample rates to match what Rockstar used. Now you can highlight and delete the origional sound from the track so that only yours remains. Move it if needed so that there is no space at the beginning. Also, to avoid audio glitches, make sure your new sound is the EXACT length of what it is replacing! At least try to keep it as close as possible. Also, all SFX files must be saved in .WAV format. For those who are trying to replace the intro/loading music, I have found that the most error free means of doing this is to keep these tracks MONO. Keeping the tracks at the right length and sample rate will ensure that you do not get glitches such as the 'bullet sounding rain' or car sounds when punching or opening the parachute. This mostly applies to ANY sound in the GENRL audio. Sounds in the other banks do not (for me anyway) cause sound glitches as long as you follow a few less strict rules.
Once you have made your changes and are happy with the results, you can go back to the command prompt and type/paste the following to re-import it to San Andreas:
| CODE |
| saat_sfx -i audio\SFX\GENRL c:\temp\saat\GENRL\sfx_import.ini audio\CONFIG\BankLkup.dat |
Now close the command prompt. Test your game. If you want, you can keep the files in the TEMP folder. If you want to make any further changes, you can do so and then simply run the re-import step to update your changes.
The same can be done with ambient sounds! But the rules are slightly different. All sounds for ambiance must be in .ogg format. Length is more flexible as well. Heres the basics:
All ambiance files must be:
.OGG format
At least 2 SECONDS long
NEVER larger than 10.5MB in size. 10.0MB to be safe!
Check out the GTA wiki to see a list of ambient locations and what is played. This will allow you to change the music played at casinos, missions like beach party, the dance clubs, etc.
You can even change the 'beat timings' to allow for the replacement of 'minigame dances' songs with proper arrow timings!
For ambiance export/import you can use:
| CODE |
EXPORT
saat_stream -r audio\streams\ambience c:\temp\saat metadata-full.ini
IMPORT
saat_stream -i audio\streams\ambience c:\temp\saat\ambience\stream_import.ini audio\CONFIG\TrakLkup.dat |
For the BEATS audio, including audio from the mission LIFES A BEACH, the lowrider challenge, the minidances, and club music + more, you can use:
For ambiance export/import you can use:
| CODE |
EXPORT
saat_stream -r audio\streams\beats c:\temp\saat metadata-full.ini
IMPORT
saat_stream -i audio\streams\beats c:\temp\saat\ambience\stream_import.ini audio\CONFIG\TrakLkup.dat |
Again if you need the root folder files I mentioned at the beginning, I have uploaded them
HERE.
Hope this can help someone who has been having trouble with the GUI method.
-Fox
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