Re: Transmitting MIDI Files (Digest 960317)
By Robbie Rhodes
Ron Yost wrote:
> Especially onerous are Macintosh sequencer programs. Most of them
> PREpend a 128-byte 'Mac Binary Header' to the file, thus making
> it incompatible with PC's.
Ron, I've been exchanging Mac MIDI files for a long time and haven't encounted this problem. It sounds to me like a careless user chose "Macbinary" transmission format, which can normally be received only by another Macintosh machine and which requires an 8-bit data path. All the Mac editor/sequencer programs I've used can create an output file format which conforms to International MIDI Association (IMA) specification.
[ Macbinary is, in fact, the culprit here. A Macintosh file actually
[ contains 3 pieces: The file "header" (which contains the date
[ created, date modified, name of the program which created it, and
[ the file type. These last two things help the finder to display
[ the correct "icon" for the file. Besides the header, Macintosh
[ files consist of a "Resource" section and a "Data" section. The
[ Macintosh programmer's documentation refers to these sections
[ as "forks". The "data fork" of a Macintosh file of type "MIDI" file
[ is supposed to be a "standard" MIDI file (either type 0 or type 1).
[
[ The PC is rather primitive by comparison (I will reserve judgement on
[ Windows 95, although it seems to me that Windows 95 equals Macintosh '87).
[ MS-DOS has only the last modify data and the file "extension" to work
[ with to encode all of the data that is in the header of the Macintosh file.
[ In Windows you can "associate" any application program as a processor
[ for a file with a given extension (extension is the 3 letter suffix of
[ a file name). Its easy to get it wrong, and you are very restricted to
[ naming conventions. The "resource fork" of a Mac file generally contains
[ preferences and other settings which are private data used by the application
[ program to deal with the particular file. For instance, the last location
[ of the cursor can be saved here. All of this can be transferred via
[ Macbinary to another Macintosh user. None of this transfers to a PC in
[ any meaningful way. Just select "binary", which just sends the "Data Fork"
[ and hope for the best at the other end :-(
[
[ That thing at the end of the last line is a "sad face".
[
[ Jody
The problem with "Muted Tracks" occurs because Standard MIDI files have no provision for storing this information; it exists only in the "native" format of the sequencer. They also seem to throw away "unimportant" text, such a copyright statements and lyrics.
[ The "Muted Tracks" information undoubtedly goes in the Mac Resource
[ Fork. However the text strings have a representation in a standard
[ MIDI file. There's no excuse for these getting trashed.
I heartily agree that most editors have some shortcomings and glitches when they create MIDI files. The only way to check is to TEST the MIDI file after it is created: simply "Open" the new MIDI file and verify that it's okay. Listen to the music, and observe the "piano roll" display to see that there are no notes which are continuously on! Like Jody says, "Test, Test Test!"
-- Robbie Rhodes
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(Message sent Mon 18 Mar 1996, 22:00:37 GMT, from time zone GMT-0800.) |
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