How to Convert Homeworld 2 Music to MP3 by gorillaman

This is how I got the music out

1. I opened up the "C:\Program Files\Sierra\Homeworld2\Data\Music.big" file with a Big Extractor.
2. I downloaded and installed Winamp 2.91 (I don't think 3.0 works for this).
3. I downloaded the AIF plugin, then placed it into Winamp's "Plugins" folder.
4. In Winamp, I went to options>preferences>plugins>output, then selected "Nullsoft Disc Writer" [sic] as the output plugin.
5. I went back to the folder [sic] containing the Big Extractor [sic] and opened up the "Music.big" file. Then I doubleclicked on every file that had "aifr" as its extension. As I did this, each file was converted to a ".wav" file.
6. I used CDEX to convert the wav's to MP3's.

Thats all folks!!! There is probably an easier way, but since I had most of this stuff already, this worked out great for me.

Note: instead of doubleclicking every file, build a playlist within Winamp (use the playlist "Add" feature to add a bunch of files, and hold down "ctrl" to multiselect files). Then select them all in Winamp and it'll write them all over to .mp3's while you're off doing something else. -Retro

Also: if the files are extracted as ".fda" instead of ".aifr" you can just change the extensions, as the formats are the same. -Apollyon470

More Info by ZaTcH.

• Open Winamp (3 or 5 preferrably, I'm not even sure the plugin works with 2.)
• Right click on the main window, click on "Options->Preferences..."
• Navigate to the "Plugins_Output" submenu, and select the "Nullsoft Disk Writer Plugin"
• Click on "Configure" (at the bottom of the window.)
• Select an output directory, do not enable the "Convert to format:" checkbox -- this can cause problems if you have improperly installed codecs, and you may lose some sound quality if you don't know what you're doing.
• Do not enable "Single file mode"
• For "Output File Mode" select "Force WAV file" -- this isn't always a good idea, but it works fine with the *.aifr files and it's the format you want anyways.
• Click "OK" and close the preferences window.
• Add all of the HW2 *.aifr song files to your playlist, disable repeating, and then double click the first file in the list to begin dumping the data into *.wav files. When the playing has finished (it reaches the end of the last song) you should have all of the HW2 song files converted into the *.wav format in whatever directory you specified when we configured the Disk Writer Plugin. Be sure to go back into "Preferences-->Plugins_Output" and reselect "DirectSound Output" so Winamp will play song files normally again.
• After all of that, you may choose to leave the files in *.wav format or convert them to *.mp3 files. If you choose to convert to MP3, I recommend using dbPowerAmp -- it's a free, fast music conversion program. I think you can find it at www.download.com

Related Pages:

• Tutorials
• Discussion
• Discussion