Converting/Combining BMS music folder?

**bmah** · 03-12-2015, 07:52 PM

Re: Converting/Combining BMS music folder?

A few people have asked me this question, and so I'll just copy and paste the response:

There is a program to convert the bms files to .wav (and then to .mp3). Download the BMX2WAV software here: http://childs.squares.net/program/bmx2wav/index.html (it's bmx2wav101020.zip)

Open up bmx2wav.exe. The program will open, but the language is in Japanese (and if you don't have the proper language pack, it'll show up as gibberish).

The first text box is the input. Find the .bms file in the song's folder (could also be .bme or a few other formats).
The second text box is the output, so just choose the folder you want the .wav file to end up.
The bottom right button is the processing/OK button. This will convert the .bms/.bme file into a .wav file.

Please note that each song's folder should have all of the potentially hundreds of sound files inside, usually as .ogg or .wav. The .bms/.bme file MUST be in the same folder as all of the other sound files in order for the program to work.

Sometimes you may get an error in the conversion. Unfortunately I haven't translated them. There are two kinds of notifications you might get; one of them says something about a sound file too large to be divided (idk what that means). The other one though will tell you that a particular sound file that the .bms file requires is missing*. Sometimes you can't do anything about it, but other times you might realize that the .bms file is not in the same folder as all of the other sounds, so move the file to the proper location.

Also note that there'll often be many .bms files in one folder. They just correspond to different difficulties, just like Stepmania would have several difficulties for one song (but would fit all in one .sm/.dwi file). It usually doesn't matter which one you choose. Sometimes though, different difficulties will actually sound different. For instance, the hardest difficulty may sound more complex than the easier difficulties. The difficulties are often notated as: Beginner (B), Light (L) or Normal (N), 7keys (7k) or Hyper (H), Another (A), and Black Another (BA) [from easiest to hardest difficulty].

Hope this helps!

*I've found out that missing sound files are often due to the files having incompatible file names, namely uncommon characters and symbols. The files are usually indeed present, but their names need to be changed in order for your computer to recognize them. This also means that the main .bms file needs to be edited in notepad, as the corresponding file names are also listed there.
Considering how BMS is of Japanese origin, coming across characters your computer fail to recognize is not uncommon.