General metadata and filename extraction

[Unknowni123]

Hey guys. I've been working on several different ripping projects over the past month or so, and I keep running into the same problem: no filenames or metadata for the sound files once I get them into a vgmstream-compatible format.

Like, it's great to have 7,000 audio files to listen to, but I'll never be able to upload them to the Sounds Resource unless I find out what they all are and sort them. I have manually renamed some files in the past, but that is... exhausting, to say the least. Takes up a lot of time. Currently I'm in this situation with the files from One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows; I ripped all the .hca files from their .cpk files, but their names are just incomprehensible symbols.

So are there any general rules of thumb or tips for finding the filenames of audio files? (Besides hex editing?). Or is there a tutorial someone could point me towards? I'm still fairly new to sound ripping so I thought I'd check here for tricks that I may not be aware of yet.

[Quasi-Detective]

I'm having a similar issue right now with files from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, except it's XFBIN/NUB file dumps. Most of the BNSF files I get out of them require manual hex editing to remove empty data at the end to make them work due to the tools I'm forced to use to extract them, but all of their names are stored in a separate file, meaning at this rate, I'll have to rename every single file manually while I'm at it... 

I can't say that for most games, I know a method to get the accurate filenames out, but it really depends on the game I suppose. I feel like, for a lot of games, just being able to get the files out at all is probably the most you could ask for, unfortunately. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, as I'm rather new to taking sound ripping seriously, and I'm next to clueless when it comes to hex editing and whatnot.

However, as for the One-Punch Man game you're talking about, did those HCA files in the CPK come from AWB archives? If so, and if you have the ACB files that go with them, then you can drag and drop the ACB into VGMToolbox's ACB/AWB extractor and it should be able to dump the HCA files out of the AWB with their proper filenames (assuming the ACB has the proper filename data).

If they weren't from AWB files, or you don't have the corresponding ACB files, then I don't think there is any sort of automatic method to fetch the filenames. You'd have to do it manually. 

[Unknowni123]

I'm having a similar issue right now with files from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, except it's XFBIN/NUB file dumps. Most of the BNSF files I get out of them require manual hex editing to remove empty data at the end to make them work due to the tools I'm forced to use to extract them, but all of their names are stored in a separate file, meaning at this rate, I'll have to rename every single file manually while I'm at it... 

I can't say that for most games, I know a method to get the accurate filenames out, but it really depends on the game I suppose. I feel like, for a lot of games, just being able to get the files out at all is probably the most you could ask for, unfortunately. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, as I'm rather new to taking sound ripping seriously, and I'm next to clueless when it comes to hex editing and whatnot.

However, as for the One-Punch Man game you're talking about, did those HCA files in the CPK come from AWB archives? If so, and if you have the ACB files that go with them, then you can drag and drop the ACB into VGMToolbox's ACB/AWB extractor and it should be able to dump the HCA files out of the AWB with their proper filenames (assuming the ACB has the proper filename data).

If they weren't from AWB files, or you don't have the corresponding ACB files, then I don't think there is any sort of automatic method to fetch the filenames. You'd have to do it manually. 

Glad to see I'm not the only one constantly running into this problem when ripping lmao.

As for the One-Punch Man game, the way I extracted its .cpk files ended up with a bunch of extentionless files named things like "00f4ec1ba360e211" for example. I already used vgmtoolbox to extract the .hca files from them, and it just gave the files names like "00f4ec1ba360e211_000A" or whatever. Tried a bms script and got the same result. Fortunately, after comparing the voices to gameplay and to Behind the Voice Actors, I have managed to categorize them all by hand (doing it for the Japanese voices was especially difficult). Now I need to mass convert them to .wav and then likely rename the voice files themselves, so as to not incur the wrath of the Sounds Resource submission gods.

Good luck with Jojo's btw. There are mass-rename programs out there if you need them, such as Bulk Rename Utility. That really came in handy while I was working with Metroid Other M.

[Quasi-Detective]

I'm having a similar issue right now with files from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, except it's XFBIN/NUB file dumps. Most of the BNSF files I get out of them require manual hex editing to remove empty data at the end to make them work due to the tools I'm forced to use to extract them, but all of their names are stored in a separate file, meaning at this rate, I'll have to rename every single file manually while I'm at it... 

I can't say that for most games, I know a method to get the accurate filenames out, but it really depends on the game I suppose. I feel like, for a lot of games, just being able to get the files out at all is probably the most you could ask for, unfortunately. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, as I'm rather new to taking sound ripping seriously, and I'm next to clueless when it comes to hex editing and whatnot.

However, as for the One-Punch Man game you're talking about, did those HCA files in the CPK come from AWB archives? If so, and if you have the ACB files that go with them, then you can drag and drop the ACB into VGMToolbox's ACB/AWB extractor and it should be able to dump the HCA files out of the AWB with their proper filenames (assuming the ACB has the proper filename data).

If they weren't from AWB files, or you don't have the corresponding ACB files, then I don't think there is any sort of automatic method to fetch the filenames. You'd have to do it manually. 

Glad to see I'm not the only one constantly running into this problem when ripping lmao.

As for the One-Punch Man game, the way I extracted its .cpk files ended up with a bunch of extentionless files named things like "00f4ec1ba360e211" for example. I already used vgmtoolbox to extract the .hca files from them, and it just gave the files names like "00f4ec1ba360e211_000A" or whatever. Tried a bms script and got the same result. Fortunately, after comparing the voices to gameplay and to Behind the Voice Actors, I have managed to categorize them all by hand (doing it for the Japanese voices was especially difficult). Now I need to mass convert them to .wav and then likely rename the voice files themselves, so as to not incur the wrath of the Sounds Resource submission gods.

Good luck with Jojo's btw. There are mass-rename programs out there if you need them, such as Bulk Rename Utility. That really came in handy while I was working with Metroid Other M.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take a look at that program.

As for the CPK extraction, though you've already taken the time to sort the files yourself, have you tried running the CPK through YACpkTool? That's the program I use to extract CPK files. Of course, it is possible that maybe the CPK for this game does just contain extentionless files, but there might be a chance that you can still have the rest of the job done for you if it works. 

[Unknowni123]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take a look at that program.

As for the CPK extraction, though you've already taken the time to sort the files yourself, have you tried running the CPK through YACpkTool? That's the program I use to extract CPK files. Of course, it is possible that maybe the CPK for this game does just contain extentionless files, but there might be a chance that you can still have the rest of the job done for you if it works. 

I haven't tried YACpkTool. I'll give it a look. If names still don't come up then that's fine, since I've renamed most of the files by now and am about ready to submit them.

That is a good rule of thumb tho: sometimes the names aren't in the files themselves, but actually in the archives they belong to. For example, I recall that Metroid Prime 3 stores its filenames and metadata in files completely separate from the sounds, and that they need to be combined and/or cross-referenced. I believe there's Metroid Prime Level Editor that can automatically dump the sounds with the proper filenames attached, which is nice for them. Other games may not be so lucky.