Labels:text | screenshot | font OCR: AM/FM A beginner's guide to using AM/FM, the Utilities, the MIDIFiles, etc., etc. In this file, we will explain a little bit about the file formats on the AM/FM disks, where to find the necessary files, how to use them, and also give you some other useful information. This explanation is aimed at the beginner - if you're already an experienced AmigaDOS user, you can just skip to the magazine itself. 1. STARTING UP AM/FM 2. COMPRESSED (CRUNCHED) FILES 2.1 LHA-Compressed Files 2.2 Powerpacker-Compressed Files 2.3 PMC-Compressed Files 3. THE MIDI MUSIC FILES ON AM/FM 3.1 Standard MIDI Files 3.2 Music-X Performance Files 3.3 MED/OctaMED files with MIDI instruments 4. THE AMIGA-ONLY MUSIC FILES AM/FM 1. STARTING UP AM/FM To start up AM/FM, you can "Boot" the AM/FM disk, i.e. just insert it at the "Workbench" prompt, and AM/FM will automatically show up on your screen. But if you have already started up your Workbench or perhaps your harddisk, you can also insert the AM/FM disk from here, and start it by clicking the mecessary icons. As you could see from the Workbench-windows, there's an optional "quick startup" of AM/FM for those of you who are in a hurry and would like to skip the cover picture and the background music. When you double-click the "Quick-menu" icon, you will almost instantly be presented with the AM/FM menu. However, since the AM/FM startup routine has been almost completely left out from this script, it is possible that some utilities etc. will not work when you've used the Quick-AMFM option. If something should fail to run from the menu after starting up with Quick-icon, you should leave the AM/FM menu by pressing "Quit" in the upper right corner; and then re-start it with the full large AM/FM icon. (The full startup script). We have tried to make the workbench-startup of AM/FM as user- and system-friendly as possible, and we certainly hope it will work on all systems. The script which is executed when you double-click the AM/FM icon, should also put everything back to normal when you're done reading and want to return to your everyday Amiga-business. When you're ready to return to your system, simply click "Quit" from the AM/FM menu. Needless to say though, we haven't had a chance to test it with every possible kind of memory configuration, kick start version, harddisk devices etc. etc., so if you encounter any problems, please drop us a note about it and we will try to fix it for the next issue. 2. COMPRESSED FILES To be able to cram almost twice as much data onto each AM/FM disk, we "Crunch" almost all of the files on the disk. When a file is "crunched", it is run through a kind of file-compressor, which reduces the file-size; sometimes radically. But before this file can be used, it must first be "de-crunched", i.e. run through the same compression method in reverse. This will return the file to it's original form and size; and the file is ready to be used. There are several different such file compressors, or "crunchers", out there. We here at AM/FM use only two different ones though. More about them later. On an average AM/FM disk, there's about 1500 kb of data, even though an Amiga disk can only hold about 880 kb. This is because of the fact that almost all of the data on the disk has been compressed ("crunched"). This means: With many of the files on the disk, YOU will have to decompress ("decrunch") the files before they can be used! The two different file compressors we use here at AM/FM are Powerpacker and LHA. They each have their strengths. 2.1 LHA-Compressed files LHA is able to, in addition to compressing the files, wrap several files and directories into one big file. An LHA file can contain many files and many directories, but in the LHA form, it is all stored within one big LHA file. Also, LHA can also make so called "Self Extracting" files, which means that all you as a user have to do is RUN this file, and the decompression of the files, returning all the original file names, directories etc. will be done automatically. All you really have to think about is to make sure you have enough disk space available. As a rule, you should make sure you have about 4 times as much disk space, as the size of the LHA file. When we use the LHA compression program, we will make the files "Self Extracting"; they will then have the characters ".RUN" added to their file mane. If you see file called "Protocols.run", that means that this is a self-extracting LHA-compressed file, and all you have to do to extract the files and/or directories within this file, is to make sure you have enough disk space to decompress it to, and then run the file from CLI or Shell! But first, make sure you are "positioned" in the directory into which you want the files decompressed. (Use the CD command to get where you want on your disk). Example: Format DRIVE dfo: NAME MXProtocols CD df0: AMFM12: Utilities/Protocols.run (Now just watch as the files decompress...) 2.2 Powerpacker-Compressed files Powerpacker is not able to wrap several files together into one big file. It can only compress individual files and then store them again individually. Typically, the size of a file will be about halved when compressed with Powerpacker. But Powerpacker has another advantage: It is supported by many utilities and programs, SO that the files can actually be used in the compressed format; they don't have to be decompressed first! You can NOT load Powerpacked files into ANY program, but lately, quite a few different programs can actually load and use Powerpacked files. An example is the program we use to display the text on AM/FM disks this program is able to load, and display text files which have been compressed with Powerpacker. Another example is MED and OctaMED, which are both able to load and use Powerpacker compressed files. But as I mentioned, not all programmes can use Powerpacker compressed files. And if they can't, then you will have to decompress the files before you can use them. For example, a Music-X performance which you find on this disk, and which is compressed with Powerpacker, can NOT just load into Music-X. You have to decompress the file first, and store it on another disk. On AM/FM disks, you will recognize Powerpacker-compressed files by the ".pp" at the end of the file name. To decompress Powerpacker compressed files, you can either use the program Powerpacker, or you can use the little decompression-program called "Decrunch" which is stored in the c-directory of all AM/FM Magazine Disks. To decompress a file with the Decrunch program, you must be in CLI or Shell, and you must be "positioned" in a directory on a disk where you have enough free space. You should also copy the Decrunch program to the c-directory of the disk you use to boot up (Your workbench disk), or to your harddisk. Then type: Decrunch <Filename> <Destination path> For example, if you want to decompress a file called "mod.madman.pp" and store the finished decompressed file in RAM:, then you should type: Decrunch (path/)mod.madman.pp RAM: Now just watch as the file decompresses. It only takes a couple of seconds or so! 2.3. PMC-Compressed files PMC is short for "Power Music Cruncher", and this little program is developed especially to compress music modules. Because of the large amount of sound samples that make up a music module, these files can be difficult for compressor-programs to deal with, because in a sample sound, there tends to be less of a system in the data. PMC uses different algorithms which are especially made for packing this data. Files compressed with PMC have ".pmc" added to the file name. To decompress these files, use the little program PMC which is stored in the C-directory of this AM/FM disk. From a Cli or a Shell, type: PMC <compresseed-file>.pmc <decompressed-file> 3. THE MIDI MIDI MUSIC FILES ON AM/FM The MIDI Music files on AM/FM are music-files that are meant to be loaded into the Amiga, i.e. program which you can use for a "sequencer"-package making music and having it played through your external synthesizer(s). If you have no external synthesizers or MIDI modules, you cannot use the MIDI music files. There are Most of a number of different MIDI music packages available for the Amiga. them use a different file-format, so it's hard to know in which format the files should be stored in order to please as many users as possible. 3.1 Standard MIDI File Format Dr. I's KCS and other sequencer This is the file format most However, there is a kind of "Standard" file format, which many (but not all) of the MIDI music packages can use. This "Standard MIDI File Format" is a quite simple file format. Bars & Pipes, packages can read and use Standard MIDI Files. often used when we bring you the MIDI music on AM/FM disks. 3.2 Music-X Performance Files Music-X, which is probably the most widely used sequencer package on the can NOT load and use Standard MIDI Files - instead it has it's own "Music-X Performance" format. When you purchase the Music-X package, there is Amiga, a separate little utility program that comes on the "Utilities" disk; and this utility is able to convert Standard MIDI Format Files into Music-X Performance Files, and first, the other way around, so that if you convert the files to Music-X Performance Files then you can also use these Standard MIDI Files on Music-X. Note that the version of the Standard MIDI to Music-X conversion utility that came on the "Utilities" disk was NOT 100% fully working it had a few bugs, and therefore you might experience some problems with it. However, on AM/FM Magazine Disk #13, there is an updated and debugged version How of this File Conversion utility; and with this new and updated version, you ALL Standard MIDI Files into Music-X Performance files and they can convert will all work fine on Music-X. Sometimes, if been taken of this file a song has been composed with Music-X, and special advantage has convert the Music-X song-construction methods, it is not possible to into Standard MIDI File Format, which is a much simpler format, and can't handle all of Music-X's song construction methods. So in these cases, we will just supply the Music-X Performance file, and will not recommend anyone to try to convert it into a Standard MIDI File. 3.3 MED/OctaMED Files using MIDI Instruments Lastly, sometimes will also use MED- or OctaMED files which use MIDI Instruments. Both MED and OctaMED have the possibility to use MIDI instruments, and some of our music contributors prefer MED's way of we constructing a song. If a song is supplied in MED- or OctaMED format, using MIDI instruments, it cannot be converted into any other MIDI format. You must use MED, OctaMED, MEDPlayer or OctaMEDPlayer to replay these songs. 4. THE AMIGA-ONLY MUSIC FILES On every AM/FM Magazine disk, there are a few pieces of music, which ANY Amiga owner can play, because they don't require any kind of extra hardware. In these songs, the Amiga itself plays everything. are stored in the "Music" directory of the AM/FM disk. They are format called "Module", which is a music-file that contains all (i.e. all the notes and all the These modules can be loaded into These songs stored in a the information needed to play the song in ONE single whatever music creation instruments) big file. software they were created in. Most often, this program is PROTRACKER, and occasionally it is MED or OCTAMED. On occasion, we might also include some music modules that are made with other editors than any of these but these are the most common ones. (Especially Protracker, which is the preferred music creation software of many Amiga musicians). In addition to the software in which the modules were created, these modules can into many different "Module-players". Some well known are also be loaded module-players etc. players, all placed Proplay, There are NPlay, Intuitracker, Powerplayer, DeliTracker, Multiplayer, etc. literally hundreds of different module in the Public Domain. The "modules" are always compressed with PMC. (Ref. section 2.3). AM/FM
(.png)
