XeNTaX

YEs. The STD files seems to contain several chunks....
atleast i found 3 SCHl headers in some of them, are these individual
sample files, or do they contain to the same sound? =o

Ive found an EA Games ADPCM Decompression scheme, so
it is possible to make a converter for them aswell, however
i dont know how to make bit operations in a smooth
way using VB code :/

@Strobe some games with Ea sound are with 4-6 channels, like fifa '06

pulposo:
That would make more sense actually.

However, im not fully convinced about this format.
some sites states that SCHl is the beginning of an EA Sound file,
and you say they start with 127 junk data and then SCHl header?

im not sure of what i should be going after here. =(

OK, I dunno if i have understood you well enough, but here's the story I faced while dealing with these STD files :

First of all there was a game called Harry Potter : Goblet of Fire. The game had several big files including MOVIES.BIG and SPEECH.BIG .

I extracted these BIG files using Watto's Game Extractor.

So, now i have some .SDT files which come from the SPEECH.BIG and some .ASF and .MPC files which come from the MOVIES.BIG. The ASF files i could handle easily, but i noticed that the SDT files are something like gropfiles which were containing several (at some cases upto 500+) EA Sound files with the header SCHl. So what pulposo suggested and it realy helped was using a program called Extractor. By using this software I was able to extract the EA Sound files (Extractor used MUS as their extension) and succesfully converted them to WAV using the good and helpful sx.exe which also pulposo suggested. Now i have bunch of working WAV files and so i changed them I wished and by using the sx.exe again, i converted them to ASF (same as MUS; the same header atleast). Till here, I had no problem. The hard part starts when i want to put these ASF files back into the SDT file, which using the extractor again, i had to import the ASF files one by one (after reducing it's size) in to the original ST file and replacing the original MUS part of the file.

What I realy would appretiate is how to make an SDT file without importing the files one by one inside it (and without the need to reduce the filesize). I couldnt just merge the ASF files and rename it to SDT, just because of the 127 byte header of the SDT file, so I had to import and replace the MUS files without touching the skeleton stucture of the SDT file.

wow! i hope this story made any sense to you folks. I would appretiate any help. thnx

hehehe, thanks for the story! now i have bit better understanding of what
you need here. Ive started on EA Game file implementations in my ripper,
however at the moment only extraction. no conversion, or easy injection.

but atleast it seems to work terrific in extracting the data for now.

I may redesign my injector tool to be able to inject files
easier. (especially multiple files, people seems to need this),
but it will be done when i have time =X (or feel like it!)

are there anymore references too anyother EA game files?
(the MUS files seems to work as intended now).

further analyzing of the SDT format.
its very easy to recreate a header by the way. i think i can write a program
for it. (or make an implementation in jaeder).

if i have understood everything correctly, you need something
that can take your reconverted EA games (mus files) and recompile
them to a SDT archive?

I understood this:

-Extraction of the audio with offsett info
-Reconversion with the reconverter
-Inject the reconverted file to the big file (tnx to the info of the offsett) dont main if the file it's more small

Forgot that the SDT files actually comes from a bigger archive =o
funny to have archived archives.......well well...

i think ill just go order a pizza and have a nap for a few hours.
*poor brain is overheating*

Another irritating thing ive now found is that if im having a MUS ripper,
it will meen it will rip the MUS files out of the archived archive files (SDT)
from a BIGFile instead of actually saving the SDT file. (which would
be neccessary because of the 127 byte header)

the problem here is too determine if the file is really an sdt-archive
or if it is a stand-alone MUS file? =///
(the SDT table contains information of where files are stored
in the sdt files, and offset, and how many of them there is, it can contain up to 14 files per SDT archive at maximum), this makes it
difficult too determine what-is-what. because there is NOTHING in the header
that says "Hey im an SDT file!! please rip me!"

but this is maybe off topic.....=X


EDIT: you say that a SDT file can contain over 500 files? =o
that meens i have to analyze some more. for me, it looks locked at 14 files, as the table is always 128 bytes, (atleast on all SDT files ive seen).

Could anyone help me with an editor I can decompress/compress the .str files? These file contain the speeches.

Strobe wrote:you say that a SDT file can contain over 500 files? =o
that meens i have to analyze some more. for me, it looks locked at 14 files, as the table is always 128 bytes, (atleast on all SDT files ive seen).

yes, I've found some SDT files 10 Megabytes large and containing 500+ files in it. As soon as i get back to my own PC, i'll check the header to see if it has 128 byte or more, or maybe i could send it, but i know it'll take ages via 56kb dial up connections.

SilentHill wrote:Could anyone help me with an editor I can decompress/compress the .str files? These file contain the speeches.

I think these files have something to do with subtitles. Can i ask in which game did you find them?

Strobe wrote:if i have understood everything correctly, you need something
that can take your reconverted EA games (mus files) and recompile
them to a SDT archive?

that's so true, specially by selecting multiple files at a time, like if a SDT file is going to contain 20 files, i could select the 20 files and click on "convert" or "pack" button and does all the work for me that sound's cool doesn't it?

I think these files have something to do with subtitles. Can i ask in which game did you find them?

I found them in the Harry Potter: Goblet of fire. They are in the .big file.

Prince_of_peace: An SDT archive creator wouldnt be so difficult too create.
however i must ask, how can you reinject the SDT file later into the BIG file
if making it larger ? (or maybe mexcom supports this archive type :X)

because right now when looking at the SDT files, they look kinda easy to
recompile.

SilentHill wrote:

I think these files have something to do with subtitles. Can i ask in which game did you find them?

I found them in the Harry Potter: Goblet of fire. They are in the .big file.

yeah, i suppose they've got something to do with subtitles