How to take a Snd resource from OS9 and use it in OSX or iPhone App?

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Level 1

66 points

How to take a Snd resource from OS9 and use it in OSX or iPhone App?

Ok, I have some old MacOS 9 classic applications that I am porting to MacOS/X and the iPhone (hopefully), and I've used Resorcerer/ResEdit to create individual files with each of the individual Snd resources for the sounds I want to use.

How do I turn those Snd resource files into .wav, .caf, or whatever other format so I can use them in modern applications?

Any suggestions will be appreciated!

-Carl

PB Ti G4 1Ghz 10.5.7 512MB/ 15" iMac G4 800Mhz 10.3.9 256MB DM9 1.6Ghz 2GB 10.5.7, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jul 30, 2009 2:54 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 30, 2009 3:55 PM in response to reststop

Last time I checked they still opened in QuickTime Player.

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Answer 2

reststop Author

Level 1

66 points

Jul 30, 2009 6:20 PM in response to Bang A. Lore

I can't get anything out of them with Quicktime Player... not on OS 9 with QTP 4.1.x or on OSX with QTP 7.x. Either the file type isn't recognized or it says it cannot open the file because it's not a movie file.

To be thorough, I even tried iTunes 😉 with no result.

I've not tried Garage Band, but I figure I need the .rsrc fork data translated by something to get it to work. The question is what is that something?

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Answer 3

Jul 30, 2009 8:13 PM in response to reststop

I don't seem to have that problem. How are you creating your files?

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Answer 4

K T

Level 7

23,889 points

Jul 30, 2009 9:05 PM in response to reststop

reststop wrote:
I can't get anything out of them with Quicktime Player... not on OS 9 with QTP 4.1.x or on OSX with QTP 7.x. Either the file type isn't recognized or it says it cannot open the file because it's not a movie file.
I've not tried Garage Band, but I figure I need the .rsrc fork data translated by something to get it to work. The question is what is that something?

Did you try adding them as system sound files in OS X? If they don't cooperate there, it seems pointless to expect them to function as expected otherwise, sorry.

At least 17 file types with the "SND" extension name:
.snd - AKAI MPC-series sample file
.snd - Amiga IFF/8SVX Sound
.snd - ATARI digitized sound file
.snd - internet sound format
.snd - Interplay/MusicStudio sound
.snd - Mime: audio/x-adpcm
.snd - Resource Fork sound
.snd - Software Toolworks sound
.snd - Unix sound file, similar to AU
.snd - Generic sound file
.snd - Sounder/Soundtools sound file
.snd - Wired For Sound file
.snd - Unsigned 8-bit PCM sound data
.snd - Heroes of Might & Magic 3 archive
.snd - Macintosh sound resource file
.snd - NeXT sound file
.snd - Sega FILM/CPK file format

You shouldn't have any issue using them on OS X, esp. since you plucked them from an OS 9 environment. W/cooperative files, conversion apps such as Audacity can be used to move to .cav, etc. for iPhone.

If they're not working as sound files, then all bets are off and only a hit/miss investigation stands a chance of finding out what they really are.

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Answer 5

red_menace

Level 6

17,066 points

Jul 30, 2009 9:23 PM in response to reststop

If nothing modern will handle those old resource files, you might try an old application - SoundApp can convert 'snd' resources into something more usable, such as AIFF.

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Answer 6

reststop Author

Level 1

66 points

Jul 31, 2009 10:11 AM in response to reststop

Ok, I guess I'm not saying what I mean to say clearly enough. I don't have a regular sound file such as sound.wav, sound.aiff, or sound.mid. If I did, then this would be a simpler process.

On MacOS 9 and earlier, applications had a resource fork and a data fork. So what I have is an old application file that can be opened with a tool such as ResEdit or Resorcerer to examine, edit or extract specific resources. There are also developer tools such as Rez and DeRez (which I have never used, and am not sure how to use) which can compile or decompile these resources. Those may be part of the answer, but I don't know.

What I want to do is extract those 'snd' resources, one by one and put them into the proper data files such as sound.wav mentioned above. The application file has lots of other resources mixed in, such as 'cicn', 'code', 'ICN#', 'icl8', 'pltt' and many others. I just want to extract/convert the 15 or so 'snd' resources to data-fork files which can then be used in my iPhone or MacOSX version of the same application.

What I have tried is opening the application file, using ResEdit and/or Resorcerer and copying the individual 'snd' resources into separate files, each a resource fork containing one 'snd' resource. I did this in the hope that some application could read the resource sound in and write it back out as a data file that CAN be read by QuickTime Player or iTunes, or even Safari. So, far, nothing seems to work, and since this seems more like a developer tool question, I am hoping someone here knows how to extract the sound clips and convert them to usable data files.

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Answer 7

Jul 31, 2009 10:10 AM in response to reststop

And what ID did you give that resource? What did you set the file's creator and type to? You don't just paste stuff into a random file and expect it to work.

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Answer 8

reststop Author

Level 1

66 points

Jul 31, 2009 10:34 AM in response to Bang A. Lore

Good questions Bang A Lore... Ok, here is what I did...

On my MacOS 9 system (a PM8600)
Drag "OS9App" to Resorcerer opening the file, or use Open from Resorcerer's file menu.

Open the 'snd' resource by double clicking.

Select one sound.
Copy sound using Cmd-C
Select New File from the menu.
Paste sound using Cmd-V
Save File As....

<repeat for each sound>

The finder says the files are of type: Resource file

I've been using OSX for so long now, I forget how to lookup the file type and creator on OS 9.

So, each 'snd' resource has the same id as it had in the original 'appl' file. I have not yet tried to repeat the same operation on OSX, however I do have the application file copied over to my 10.5.7 system so I can repeat the process, or run whatever other programs might do the conversion. I'd be happy if I could copy the snd resource to the clipboard and then paste it into some other app on OSX, as long as I know what apps to try it with.

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Answer 9

Jul 31, 2009 10:45 AM in response to reststop

Open a working sound file from OS 9 in ResEdit or Resorcerer and copy its settings exactly. Otherwise you aren't creating valid system sound files and nothing is going to open them.

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Answer 10

reststop Author

Level 1

66 points

Jul 31, 2009 11:54 AM in response to Bang A. Lore

Ok, some things are coming back to me now. I was able to change the file type and creator from 'RSRC'/'Doug' to 'sfil'/'movr' with ResEdit. and on the System 9 machine I could play the sound as a system sound, however, my OSX system tells me that I can't just play the sound because Classic is no longer supported, and QuickTime Player says it's not a movie file. And iTunes attempts to read the files in but comes up empty.

This is progress. Now to find a couple of my old OS9 audio programs to see what can convert the system sounds to .wav or .au, etc... I'll report back here what I find... and feel free to suggest any OSX programs that can read the .snd files directly and I'll see which ones I may have lying around in the meantime.

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Answer 11

reststop Author

Level 1

66 points

Jul 31, 2009 4:11 PM in response to reststop

That problem is now solved, as far as getting the 'snd ' resources converted to .wav/.au/.aif format.
Thank you all for your suggestions.

I used SndConverter to copy out all the 'snd ' resources, and it changed the IDs all to 128, oh well!

Then I used Sound machine to import all the sound files as Quicktime movies, and then convert each file to .aif, .wav and .au just to cover all the bases. All sampled at 44khz stereo.

Now, my only question is what sound format to use on the iPhone, and how to convert one of the formats I now have to .caf if that is the proposed format.

For that, I expect there is some modern application.

-Carl

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