The Difference Between Proper and Non-Proper Rips
 

I've hear people use these terms quite often, but I've never had an explanation of what they are. Can someone explain (in detail) what the difference is?

There can't be an exact definition of what a proper rip/encode is, as this is really up to personal opinion (personal quality standards). Basically, I think most people would define a proper as being one that stands up to their own bare minimum requirements (or what that person might think of as being common sense). Be that use of a specific rippping program, a certain encoder, audio format, etc.

thanks for the explanation

Without wishing to become too technical or petty, I'll say it's more than that.

Quite well-known gamerippers at these forums have done what I'd call just stupid things, not an "improper" game rip, but rather, just an ill-informed one. More commonly, it's just little things as seanne said, like using the latest MP3 encoder, not some defunct one.
But I'll give you a more extreme example of what people can do when they simply don't know what they're doing.

For example. The Sonic Adventure PC soundtrack plays WMA files off the CD for music. Someone recorded the Sonic Adventure soundtrack, as it was playing (in WAV format) with their sound card. They then converted that to MP3 after editing and so forth. It doesn't take a genius to see why that's a bad idea.
The reason it annoys me is primarily because it was done by a popular gameripper, and was probably downloaded and accepted as a 'gamerip'. While it wouldn't sound like white noise, or total rubbish, the simple fact is that it could have been done in a smarter way, for the same/a similar level of effort.


A more common example would be emulators for chiptune 'rips'. If a console soundtrack is a gamerip, is it from the console, or is it from SNES9X or Nesticle or another emu? While I'm not particularly bothered (I'm too young to have played many older games on their original consoles), it's something someone could consider a problem if they're all called 'gamerip'.


I personally think there should be an unofficial GFF guideline for gamerips. Obviously, you can't dictate what programs people use, and that's largely irrelevant anyway (any WAV recorders and editers can be used to achieve the same result). But you can say things like- for MP3 encoding, only use LAME 3.98, only encode at this VBR setting or above, etc.

- Spike

I always took it as regarding only lossless rips. Hence, why there's a thread about proper lossless rips here:

http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/be...less-rips.html

That said, I never have heard much about proper rips in regards to MP3. Though, it seems most who want MP3, don't care as much for proper ripping than those who are into lossless only though. ;)

"But you can say things like- for MP3 encoding, only use LAME 3.98, only encode at this VBR setting or above, etc."

I thought LAME 3.98 was still beta, and that LAME 3.97 was still the recommended format. Also, not all games have the same level of complexity going on in the background music. A required -V bitrate may not be necessary since it would only increase size without any quality benefits in certain games, such as in GoldenEye 007 (N64) where most tracks don't need anything about ~128kbps (-V 5) (some tracks go as low as 80kbps such as Streets and Depot).

You could also apply the same concept to mainstream music. For example, from Metallica's ReLoad, Fuel doesn't need nearly as high a bitrate as The Unforgiven II, even though Fuel is a more "lively" track than the latter.

That's the nice the about -V VBR settings, it will automaticly lower the bitrate when possible. So when your music is easy to encode (few high frequencies, mono-ish, and/or has slow attacks) then the bitrate will automaticly drop to 128kbps.

Nice comment Slogra.

Also, LAME 3.98b3 is now out, and there's even a "LAMEDrop" version, which is very nice for a OggDrop user like me (works the same as OggDrop).

It came out 6th June. So all you MP3 users (myself included) should grab it!

- Spike