Importing songs

Import… on the start screen (or "Import a song…" in the palette, or a BMS file dropped on the window) makes an EZ2BMS song out of the game's own charts, a folder of BMS files, or a bmson. Every guess the reading makes is shown before anything is written, and can be changed. What could not come across is listed. It stays in Issues with the song until you choose "Forget what the import said".

A new song is written into a new folder, all at once: if anything fails, there is no half-written song. The folder is then opened.

The game's own songs

This needs the game folder (the one with sound/ and system/) set on the EZ2PORT panel. The songs listed are the ones the game's own song tables (system/<mode>/song.bin) offer, and titles come from EZ2PORT's text manifest (text/manifest.songs.ini, beside ez2play). The game has no titles as text, only the plate images; without the manifest a song goes by its folder name.

The tables and charts are encrypted with keys that live in your unpacked EZ2AC executable. EZ2BMS tries the one set on the EZ2PORT panel first, then every .exe in the game folder, and proves each: the chart keys against their digests, and the song tables by decrypting the game's own song.bin, which must then begin with EZSL (song.bin's tables have no digest, and any program of the era has memory at their address, so an address alone proves nothing). When none decrypts song.bin, the import says which files it tried; choose your unpacked executable on the EZ2PORT panel. Nothing of the game is kept by EZ2BMS: it reads your files when you import.

What a song becomes:

The new song gets a new key. Publishing under the game's own key would replace that song on the wheel, so the key comes from the title with a digit added until no sound/ folder has it. The original key is kept in the song file, for a cabinet export to write the song back.

Scroll-speed changes become the chart's own (x_scroll_events): the Play view scrolls with them, the Timing panel edits them, and they publish. Each keeps the track and second word it had, so a cabinet export writes the same record back.

The disc and the eyecatch live outside the song's sound/ folder, where the port's song select finds them (either name case; .abm, or .bmp in older installs). They become plain BMPs in the song folder, the same pixels, and the song manager's Art tab uses them (a difficulty's own disc under its button on the disc card, and on the wheel preview at that difficulty): all are already the size the game draws, so publishing cuts them to what they were. The Art tab also takes a .abm from the game folder for any song, and makes it a .bmp as it comes in.

Nothing is dropped, and Issues says what will not publish:

• track volumes, beats-per-measure, marks and the stops the engine ignores (kept in x_ez_records, shown as grey tags in the gutter and in the Timing panel, read-only);
• a background note's length (publishing writes background notes as taps, as the engine plays them);
• two .ezi slots naming one file, which become one voice;
• keysounds the folder does not have, and notes on slots the .ezi does not list.

Some old .ezi files name their notes like MIDI keys (C#0 1 mix-st.wav). EZ2PORT reads all of those as note 0. EZ2BMS reads them as notes (octave x 12 + semitone), so each note keeps its own sound (see ez2port-compat.md).

BMS, BME, BML

Choose (or type) a folder. Each .bms/.bme/.bml/.pms in it becomes one chart of the song. For each file the wizard shows:

• Text: its encoding. It is UTF-8 when the bytes are valid UTF-8, otherwise Shift-JIS or EUC-KR/CP949, told apart by the bytes; a guess is marked ?. If the title looks wrong, pick another.
• Random: each #RANDOM (and #SWITCH) block, with the value it takes. The default is 1; nested blocks are followed.
• Lanes: how BMS channels map to lanes:
  • EZ2 BME: EZ2's own channels (keys 11-15, turntable 16, pedal 17, effectors 18/19; the 2P side 21-29);
  • Keys in order: the IIDX/beat layout, each side's keys (1-5, 6, 7) onto that side's keys left to right; a double mode's keys are split into a left and a right half. It differs from EZ2 BME on SpaceMix's and Andromeda's 2P side (EZ2 puts the effectors between the sides), and leaves 17/27 (EZ2's pedals) to the background.
• Mode and tier: guessed from the lanes used (the smallest mode that has them all) and from #DIFFICULTY or the file name. Two files cannot be the same chart; the second is marked until you give it another tier.

Positions are exact. A measure's length (#xxx02) is read as the fraction it stands for (0.75 is 3/4, 0.333 is 1/3), and the song's resolution is the least that places every note on a whole pulse. Tempo comes from #BPM, channels 03 and 08; stops from channel 09. EZ2 has no stops, so publishing turns each one into a gap. Long notes come from channels 5x/6x (#LNTYPE 1 and 2) and #LNOBJ.

Left out, and said: hidden notes (3x/4x; an option makes them background sounds), mines, #SCROLL/#SPEED. BGA images are kept, but EZ2PORT plays only movies. #STAGEFILE becomes the eyecatch and #PREVIEW the preview.

Beside the BMS files writes the bmson and the song file into the BMS folder itself, copying nothing, for large packs.

bmson

A bmson opens as it is: open its folder.

• bmson 0.21 (BmsONE's older format) is read as 1.0, and saved as 1.0.
• Lanes numbered the BMS way (beat-7k, beat-10k) are moved onto EZ2's. beat-10k is written two ways; notes on x 9 or 10 mean the bmson spec's numbering.
• BmsTWO's bmson is already 1.0.
• circus2bmson's output (all background sounds, resolution 480 or the MIDI's) opens the same way.

Issues says what changed.

A MIDI file of the song

A stem's strip panel has Cut at a MIDI file's notes. The MIDI of the same song, exported from the DAW the stem came from, says where each hit is better than onset detection can. Only where notes start matters, not their pitch.

The MIDI's time 0 is the stem's first hit. Then either:

• keep the chart's tempo: each note is placed at its MIDI time; or
• take the MIDI's tempo from that hit on: each note sits on its beat. Changing the tempo moves anything else charted after the hit, and the panel says how many notes that is before you cut.

Cuts go on the nearest 1/48 beat (EZ2's finest) or the snap grid. The panel says how far the furthest one lands from its note. Like every slicing edit (slicing.md), a cut keeps the sound. The tempo change and the cuts are one undo step.

This page is synced from docs/importing.md in the EZ2BMS repo.