fast tracker 2 instruments (.xi) to beat maker 2 (.bmk2)

edited October 2011 in Support
if you have old fast tracker 2 instruments kicking around, there's a free command line tool to convert fast tracker 2 instruments to beat maker 2 keyboard instruments at http://jeremyevers.com/2011/10/xi2bmk2/

It keeps your keymaps and tuning and stuff, works great with multisample instruments.

If you do what I did and decide to upload several thousand at once, be prepared to wait a long time while beatmaker updates it's database.

Comments

  • edited 9:20PM
    Hi,

    Thanks for letting us know! Building this kind of tool is a great initiative and we really appreciate it!

    Cheers,
    Colin
  • edited 9:20PM
    I did a search, and only found user drumkits for beatmaker 2, and decided i needed more keyboard sounds. Tuned, multisampled keyboard sounds. <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

    If you need some .xi samples to try it out, i found a forum filled with them:

    <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/25513-fasttrackerxi-instruments/">http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php? ... struments/</a><!-- m -->

    I haven't tried those particular samples, I have my own collection from the olden times.
  • edited 9:20PM
    Nice tool herb nice!
    Much apreciated!
    Although I have problems converting files- Program randomly (I guess) is skipping some of my files. If I do my folders one by one then it does it right, but if I have more complex subtree it skip some, not all and not ever the same .xi files.
    Cheers, and thank you!
  • edited 9:20PM
    Really? I didn't notice that, and I have been running it on my old collection of 20,000 samples with a pretty crazy directory structure.

    Next time I have some nerd time at home, I will have a peek and see what is up. I might ping you for more information.

    It _may_ have problems with .xis with adpcm samples, as I didn't have any in my collection to test with, but I did write code to handle it. But that issue sure shouldn't be random.

    I had a different problem where beatmaker2 itself is randomly ignoring some of the data I upload to it. I started another thread here about that.
  • I really appreciate this tool. Seems to work great.

    However, I'm getting crashes in beatmaker when trying to load some of the bmk2's produced. Sometimes I'll get an "invalid bmk2" file when I attempt to load a converted instrument. I imagine that's to be expected here and there since I the xi format is so old (or something), but what bums me out is that if go back and try to enter the keyboard sampler after receiving that message, then bm2 crashes altogether.

    Also, I've been getting bm2 crashes immediately upon trying to load certain converted bmk2s. I've only been using ones I converted from that big library on the renoise forum -linked above- so it may be specific to those particular xi's. In fact, one thing I noticed about the original Xi's and the corresponding converted bmk2's is that the sample names contained a lot of foreign characters. When you try to look at the resultant .wav in the bm2 library browser, you just get a bunch of question marks. I'm starting to wonder if the problem is all those bizarre characters in the file name.

    Any thoughts, intua? I've got crash reports a plenty if you want 'em.
  • edited 9:20PM
    Hey- Thanks for the report- I appreciate it.

    I was naming the samples based on the names in the xi file, but as you said, they can contain junk characters. That's probably very bad. I'll fix that next time I am at home in front of the computer.

    If you have a specific .xi that you know destroys the universe, can you let me know the name? I can download that collection and hunt it down.
  • edited 9:20PM
    that the sample names contained a lot of foreign characters

    I had a peek at the code, and i do filter out bad characters. I would certainly like a copy of the xi that is causing this issue so I can track down the problem.

    Thanks
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