[Solved] How to read wav-markers in Unity?

Unity Engine
,
1

Hello. I’ve been experimenting with making an interactive music system in Unity, and I think it would be really useful to be able to read markers within wav-files. In a DAW such as Reaper, I can put markers in a project like so:

I can then render the project as a wav-file, and Reaper will put the markers in the header of the file:

This is what it looks like if I import a wav-file with markers into Reaper:

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Is there any way to read the header information of wav-files, in order to retrieve these markers within a Unity script?

I’ve attached the test.wav file above for anyone who might want to experiment with solutions.

5672920–591340–test.zip (2.59 KB)

2

Did you ever find a solution for this? :slight_smile:

3

You might want to check out this: Audio-Video Markers

4

Oh hey Nikolaj. I’m Mordi. No, unfortunately I haven’t found a solution yet. Giving it another go now, to hopefully use this method for a dynamic game soundtrack.

This is a great lead. Thanks for posting!

5

Repear saves the marker metadata differently than audition, seems like the markers are saved as “Cue Points” which is binary data. You can extract that data with exiftool -b.

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Binary data, unknown how to extract time markers from that. Looks like the markers are saved in those 3 areas where is says “data”.

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Well I saved the file with Audition and can parse the markers just fine.

public void PopulateMetadata() {       
    wrapper.Run("F:/Users/Selzier/Documents/Unity5/SmokeAndChill360/Assets/_Music/test2.wav", false);
    Debug.Log("metadata done");
    foreach (ExifTagItem i in wrapper) {
        Debug.Log("Group: " + i.group + "; Name: " + i.name + "; Value: " + i.value);
    }
}
6

Aha, I see. I guess that exiftool won’t help in my case then. I actually managed to start reading a wav-file yesterday, by studying the wav-specification. This is a good source, as well as this one.

I’m literally just reading the file using a standard FileStream object.

FileStream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open);
for (int i = 0; i < x; i++) {
    int b = fs.ReadByte();
}

Something like this.

Hopefully I can manage to read the cue points today. I’ll post here if I have any breakthroughs.

7

Just going to throw down a shameless plug here for Koreographer. It provides Cue Point-like functionality… on steroids. The base edition is sufficient for basic Cue Point style work. The Professional Edition provides you with a MIDI Converter (convert MIDI events into Cue Points/markers), expanded Payload types, and added integrations with third party audio engines.

Regardless, best of luck finding a solution to parsing the Cue Points from your raw WAV files!

8

I managed to eat my way into my wav file even more today. I’ve gotten to the bext-chunk now, which I think is where the cue-chunk is hiding.

As a reference, I am using this specification - although it doesn’t mention a cue chunk.

Also, I stumbled upon this library (Audio Tools Library for .NET). Could be a good alternative to my method.

Edit: Aha! The cue chunk was after the data chunk. Success!

I used this page as a reference.

1 Like
9

Mission accomplished!

3 Likes
10

Someone messaged me to ask how this works, so I’ll just share the solution I ended up with here.

It’s fairly straightforward to use. Should be something like this:

using MordiAudio;

class Example {
    Wave.Metadata metadata = Wave.Reader.GetMetadata("Audio/whatever.wav");
}

The metadata object contains all sorts of info, including a list of cues.
I’ve tested it with a handful of wave files exported from various DAWs, and haven’t run into any issues yet.

7642879–952369–WaveFile.cs (26.2 KB)

11 Likes