I have a license for version 5.97. Can I install version 6 using the same license or do I need to buy a new key?

No matter where you get the songs, you'll need to import the song into Audacity or Goldwave and follow those steps to convert the song for best audio quality.

Yup, you can change the scores and any setting as well so you don't have to change after every update.

I've only done Mustang and Metallica, but should be the same as AC/DC. Just follow steps others have said, usually the longest song location is the one to change and it will update the shorter locations of the same song.

Has anyone changed Aerosmith songs using Pinball Browser? I used it all the time when I owned Metallica and Mustang and had fun changing up the songs.

Looks like it's much more involved with Spike 2, but I don't mind the effort as long as I'm not wasting my time. I probably just want to start with replacing Walk This Way with the Run DMC/Aerosmith version to change things up a little.

I'll respond to my own question. I had no problem changing songs on Aerosmith and it was the same process I used with Mustang and Metallica. Just had the extra long image reading and writing times, but I was using my old desktop all-in-one and not my gaming laptop. Not sure how much faster it could've been since the SD card reading/writing times probably are the bottleneck.

Anyways, I swapped out Walk This Way with the version featuring Run DMC. Songs times were identical, so didn't need to edit the song. I just applied "Compression" in Audacity and adjusted the volume level.

Also swapped out Rats in the Cellar with the 2014 Skid Row cover version, just to mix it up because the guitar solo is terrific and vocals are great. It's not Sebastian Bach on vocals - some other guys who made a few records with Skid Row.

I have a question about Aerosmith.

Rats in the Cellar is in two locations in its entirety.

Script 0x22 - 4min 04s 356ms
Script 0x23 - 4min 04s 356ms

Rats in the Cellar plays during game over for maybe 20 seconds. Is that why the song is listed twice? If so, does anyone know which location is for the game over music? Figured I'd ask before testing myself since each write of the image takes a long time.

I started working on adding videos to Aerosmith. Here's the results of my first test. I added Walk This Way; Dude Looks Like a Lady and Love in An Elevator. I like the results, so I'm going to keep going and add a video for each song.

What causes the image to get corrupted or go into a reboot loop? I've wasted so many hours only to find out the game goes into the Update From USB screen or a game starting reboot loop.

Because of that, I now close the image after every video replacement, test that it opens and then burn the image. Then test the game boots. I'm going to have to do that 9 times for Aerosmith (9 videos) and it's just so tedious.

Pinball Browser itself and Win32diskimager

Yup, doing exactly that. All my file sizes are smaller; same resolution; lower frames by a little; clipped a few seconds off the end of each video and lowered bit rate. I was able to complete updating all 9 videos last night by using the conversion, but then the videos stutter and the game slows down. No conversion makes the videos play fine or at least very acceptable. But it seems that's where the corruption happens when writing the image is when I don't use conversion.

Using last night's image, I went thru and replaced each video with a No Conversion Import. Went to the dog park and let the image burn. Just came home and the game displays the USB Update message. I can tell when it won't work now before wasting time writing to the SD card by re-opening the image after I close it. If I get Unknown Firmware, then I know I wasted my time.

As it stands now, I am unzipping a clean RAW image and now have to re-import them all again and start over. I now also use 2 SD cards so if an image works, I can at least keep a partial working copy and extract an image from the working card if needed.

Just now the fresh image corrupted. Fresh Stern image; replaced one song and imported two videos without conversion. Closed the firmware and opened it back up - Unknown FirmWare! error message. Now I have to extract a fresh image again and start over. WTF?

I'm using the original Stern 8gb SD card, don't know what that's rated. I checked my 16GB card and it's a class 4, so I'll get a few class 10 cards.

I do remove the audio from each video as well.

Bit rate seems fine on the No Conversion imports and I do make the bit rate lower than the original videos. Usually 6500-7000 bit rate on my imports and the originals range from 8000-12000+.

But I will try the class 10 card and that could be the issue with the Conversion imports stuttering, for sure.

Right now it's just frustrating with getting a corrupted "Unknown firmware" so often. I make a change, exit, re-open and if it works then I exit again and make a copy of the image to another location. Takes 8 min to make a copy each time.

I bought a handful of 16gb class 10 cards today. I used Rufus to make an image of the card with the stuttering videos that were imported using the conversion. Burned the image to the new class 10 card and had the same results on those same videos.

Starting over with importing without conversion and hopefully can get a few successful imports without corruption. Then will make a copy of the image and work off the original and add more videos. Can fall back to the copy if I get a corruption.

New plan of action after another USB Firmware error. I doublechecked the frames before importing these 3 videos without converting.

So, since I was able to get many completed and working WITH the conversion, back to that. But this time I'm dropping the bit rate much lower than the original video bit rate. I was staying lower before, but still in the neighborhood of the original. I'm going to stick with the bit rate of the videos I am using since it appears the bit rate is at least 1/2 - 3/4 lower than the Aerosmith stock videos. Maybe that will resolve the stuttering when I use the conversion.

For example, Back in the Saddle, stock bit rate is 9500. I was dropping down my video to 8000, but it's original bit rate was 4100, so let's see if that does the trick.

We shall see!

Was able to complete importing all 9 videos (with conversion) without getting any errors. Some improvement noticed with lowered bit rates around 4000 for each video. I went lower on one to see the difference and could begin seeing degraded video quality on it.

For the couple of videos I'm still seeing a lot off stuttering - which also slows down the game itself - I'm going to get new videos for those. Could be something just different about those couple of videos that do not play nice.

Going to try another attempt without converting on the lowered bitrate videos. Just see what happens.

I'm also going to switch over to Handbrake for re-encoding the videos. I've been using The old Windows Movie Maker from the Windows Essential 2012 package, just because I've always used it for basic video editing. What are you using to edit videos? I'll switch over to whatever you're trying just to eliminate a variable.

Sharing here, as well as the Aerosmith group. I finished version 1 of the live video replacement project. Gameplay video is below and shows all 9 songs having a new video instead of a Flash animation background of the band.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/j6KGSozYS6ZFE3WP9

Several videos have some stuttering or slowdown during these songs: Rats in the Cellar; Back in the Saddle and Same Old Song and dance
It's because of all the added animations/overlays on those screens - rats walking around; lots of targets shown on the screens.

I'll see if lowering the bit rate on those several videos resolves the stuttering, but I don't want to reduce the video quality much more. Those several songs are already down to 1500kbps bit rate

It's too bad I couldn't complete a version in Pinball Browser by importing all videos without conversion. Without conversion, the videos play smoothly, but I cannot get all videos replaced because the image becomes corrupted before all can be replaced. Been a pain in the ass and extremely time consuming because of that. So I had to just go back to importing and allowing a conversion, which works, but not to my 100% satisfaction. But still, light years better than the original background graphics.

Grab some cards from Walmart if you need to try another. Their "Onn" brand works just fine for me when working on my Aerosmith updates. I used 16gb and 32gb version with Pinball Browser and the pinball machine without any issues.

When I owned Metallica, I replaced a few longer tracks with several shorter songs combined to fill that song slot. Ultimately I did not like it because the game doesn’t know you spliced several songs into that track. It’s fine when you can make it deep enough into the song to hear your next song you added, but drain a ball and then chances are it rewinds far enough back to the first song. I just didn’t like that effect it had so I always replaced with tracks of the same length. Doesn’t mean I didn’t edit a song to make it fit, because I would remove long slow intros if I had to, or cut something off at the end to make a song fit.

Download the full SD card image from Stern if you are using an update version. Open the firmware in Pinball Browser and download the bookmarks when prompted. I don't know if ST has bookmarks yet.

In the Stern image, locate the sound you want to import into the Cleland version. Choose to export and save the file. Repeat if needed for other audio files.

Now open the Cleland image in Pinball browser. Locate the first audio file that is to be replaced with the stock file ou exported. Choose to import. Repeat if needed for other audio clips.

Close the firmware. It is now a modified version with your changes. Select the SmartDMD tab in Pinball browser and burn the image to an SD card.

Extract the zip file of the image that you downloaded. The size you end up with will be over seven gigs when it is extracted

Once you replace the sounds, close the firmware in Pinball browser and follow the instructions I posted about going to the smart DMD tab and writing the SD card. You don’t need or want to convert back to a.gz file.

Figured I'd share a recent Stranger Things project I'm finishing up. I've been adding attract mode videos to all the new Sterns I get my hands on and also finishing a major Aerosmith project (real videos replacing the flash animation). Well, I have about 8 finished versions, but never satisfied.

I finished creating a new Stranger Things attract mode/game over slideshow because I wasn't totally happy with my prior one. This makes 3 or 4 slideshows I've made, which is why I rarely release anything I make, since I'm never completely satisfied and keep making changes.

New attract mode slideshow:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/fn8zC8315DwUZsQC9

Game over slideshow (same as above) with Twist of Fate song that plays:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/FnKZkJeJSevgDYUs9

Cleland's soundtrack code with my attract modes and slideshow. This video shows game over with my slideshow and the track of the kids talking that everyone likes. He's going to be releasing his audio update mod with my attract mode mods included soon.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mWUs8KrjVF97fkWh6

I also have a stock audio version with only my videos added.

Thanks. I can change the transition time for each individual photo. Myself and Cleland have already come up with some tweaks that will work well with his soundtrack version of the Strange Impalas ending track.

I had timed the slideshow photo transitions to change to the beat of the edit I made with Twist of Fate as the game over song. So yup, the photo transitions as shown are not yet timed and paced for the Cleland ending track.

This video slot is 45 seconds long, but the game will loop it for another 10-15 seconds on its own. I can reduce the # of photos in the slideshow, slow down the transition times, etc, but the running length will still be 45 seconds and loop.

Yup, had that happen before when the image got corrupted somehow. When you open the image in the browser now, does it say Unknown Firmware?

Yeah, that royally sucks when it happens, and it did happen often to me. I did not notice a pattern of a certain change that caused it in my cases.

Now I manually backup the image file when making changes. After making a few changes, I got in the habit of exiting the image and then re-opening it again to be sure I didn't see the Unknown Firmware message. If you see that, it's hosed.

I have a folder named backup inside the image folder. Periodically copy the image in there to keep a safe backup.

I was planning on revisiting Avengers and music changes again. All my videos changes came out nice, but I remember the imported audio volume was much lower. I couldn't seem to boost that volume up to where it wasn't noticeably lower than the remaining stock music.

Anyone replace Avengers music lately?

Same here. Was just going to donate again.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-star-wars-midnight-madness-multiball-restored#post-6727189

I have at least 6 different SD cards for my Aerosmith video code. I just pop in whatever version I want to use. Last week I made a Led Zeppelin playlist for Aerosmith, so have a separate card just for that.

After you make your changes, close the firmware. Now open the SmartDMD tab, open the firmware, insert an SD card and write to that SD card drive letter.

I made a Led Zep and Motely Crue mix for Aerosmith and decided I'd like to try changing the song title graphics. Also getting my friend's Iron Maiden in a temp trade for Avengers and would like to do the same on that.

Anyone have a quick writeup or tips for importing the new images with a transparent background? I started experimenting, but it goes slow waiting for the image to write and test each change.

Thanks, I was certainly over thinking it.

When importing sounds, is the volume slider on the import window just for listening to the clip before importing? Or will increasing the volume there also bump up the volume when importing?

I normally increase the volume in Audacity, but if the process can be streamlined, great.

So what's the trick I'm missing with replacing images? I'm just trying to do basic image replacements on the Aerosmith song selection screen. I found the location of the song images, created my replacement transparent image, but the Import feature when right clicking the image does not save. I import, choose the image I made, which is the same pixel size as the original. But when I open the image, the original is still there.

If I open the image and draw shit all over it and save, that works. But on that editing screen, it won't let me select the original image with the selection tool to delete the image.

Selecting the Undo button on the Edit Image screen will open a select file browser and I can choose my new image and then it adds it over the original. WTF?

Yes indeed it did. I was making a Rush mix for Aerosmith and pumped the volume to 250% and I did nothing with Audacity. Worked and sounded great.

That sounds awesome! Let me know how you make out.

oga83 Could you tell us the correct steps so we can stop our trial and mostly error?

Importing a new image does not save. I can open an image and draw on it in the editor and those changes save. But import will not save the new image I want.

Thanks. I’ll double check, but pretty sure I saved my image with the same pixels as the original image said.

My friend has no chance of getting the GC on his Iron Maiden after I used Pinball Browser to keep my high score.

IMG_5284 (resized).JPG

It fucked up entering my normal high score which this was a long while ago and don’t remember what it was.

I did that when I had a Stranger Things. Message me and I'll send you the link, I should still have it if you're interested.

If anyone has an Iron Maiden Pro (Premium/LE version coming soon), then you'll want to check out my thread.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/iron-maiden-amp-the-monsters-of-rock-modded-code#post-6906819

I'm working on my version of Guardians of the Galaxy 1.09. I came across one track of static. It was the last of the three duplicate Cherry Bomb tracks. But I was able to import over it using an export of one of the other two. First time I've encountered this myself.

Yup, this happened with me too on Guardians.

I tried to "trick" 8.10 by setting the volume to zero on the static track. Didn't work.

I'll try with 8.12 since I have my project still open.

The fact is Stern left in in the code, but just turned the "switch off", for all those years. The Midnight Madness was turned off in an early .9x version. It remained there, unseen by everyone all the way to code 1.10, until I bought a Star Wars Pro months ago and began poking around.

Stern should've removed it correctly the first time.

Yup. Guilty as charged. I found something cool hidden in a game that NO ONE else did in the years prior. AND FREELY SHARED IT....so that's hardly "nothing", as you said.

Putting Star Wars up for sale this weekend. So you're right, I do not care that it's no longer in the code. Moving on to customizing the Led Zeppelin I'm getting tonight. If I find anything interesting or make something cool, I'll continue to share it.

You're welcome.

Correction, that did work enough for my needs. Was playing a few more games on the modified 1.09 code and reached the static track that I muted.

It played static and muffled audio for about 5 seconds and then went mute/silent with only the background scoring sounds audible. Totally fine in my scenario since that static-track is a random occurrence between modes and stops when you hit the scoop to start a new mode.

Oh shit, maybe I shouldn't have shared that?

Cool! I'll report back on the known track in Guardians 1.09

Lots of time when working on Aerosmith. Try importing the video without conversion, that worked on some videos in Aerosmith that would corrupt the image when making the video change.

Always be backing up too prior to making a change. Can get frustrating.

Same static track on Guardians remains.

Guardians Pro.

Script 0x41
Length 2min01s929ms

Will do, I'll start over with a fresh image. Thanks.

Close the firmware then click the SmartDMD tab. You'll pick the firmware and destination drive and write it.

Ran into a lot of those issues with Aerosmith. You're going to have to take it slow and import one video. Then close the firmware and open to test for the Unknown Firmware corruption error. If it opens, close it and back up the image. Re-open the original and test with the next video and repeat the backup.

Have you tried the option to import without conversion. That was what I needed to do with two of the stubborn Aerosmith videos.

I'll download the Rush image and test. Which model of the game? Have you been successful importing videos with other game images?

I found some static audio tracks in Led Zeppelin Pro 1.15 with Pinball Browser 8.13.

Scripts:
0x61
0x20B
0x1B5
0x145

There are others too, just happened across two of them and then checked a few others. Was brand new extracted code, not yet used in any version of Pinball Browser.

Just an FYI. I will be returning my friend's Guardians Pro soon. Here's my final personal mod of the code.

Attract mode videos begin at start. 6:20 starts gameplay and new music soundtrack.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/guardians-of-the-galaxy-pomc-remix#post-6951116

Please share the knowledge!

Are you able to add those codecs like you did for Rush...or whatever other game recently had static tracks?

What game and code is doing that?

I just use Pinball Browser to burn the images. I started telling anyone who downloads any of my code changes to use PB when writing the image.

When you first open Pinball browser, click on the smart DMD tab. Then choose the firmware file you want to use and the destination drive your memory card is in.

Right, I just overwrite my SD cards and do not prepare them in any way when writing the image.

You can quickly check if your bottom cabinet speaker is "blown". Just had it happen last week on my Jurassic Park. Only some dialogue and some sounds, they would were really distorted. I thought it was an image issue too because I coincidentally just upgraded the software shortly prior.

Unplug the head speaker connection from the CPU board so that only the cabinet speaker plays. Still hear the sound? Then tap on the paper speaker cone and I bet it's not drum tight and is loose (which vibrates on certain frequencies or whatever and causes the distortion).

djreddog any update?

Like someone else already replied, you actually should not be using a USB stick at all during this process. SD card all the time. You need to use the full SD card image file from Stern, not the update.

Here's an easy way to make sure you are working on the right file. Updates have an .spk file extension and the full SD card image has a .raw extension after unzipped. You want to use the full SD card image to edit.

Stock Pro 1.05 code for Jurassic Park.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:41b8955161571ea26719423dbb60c0440754327a&dn=jurassic_park_pro-1_05_0.Release.8G.sdcard.raw.zip

At this point, just play the stereo while playing pinball for custom soundtracks. I'm betting stuff is being worked on behind the scenes and why release any fix just for Stern to patch it in the following release? Wait until Stern has shown their cards.

Sweet!

Achievements are neat the first two weeks you have the game in your house. After that, big fucking whoop.

Would be cool if there was an app to easily review all the possible achievements. I'd kinda like to have something to shoot for and reach. But right now it's just playing the game and then achievements pop up when you do shit. It's like, ok, I did that without realizing I was doing something worth an achievement.

Novelty quickly wore off for me. A friend gave me an insider connected kit for free. So I'd swap it between my games and that didn't last long. Even on my games with it built-in, I rarely remember to sign in before starting a game.

Just an FYI that Bond .84 code is "Unknown firmware" to PB.

I have not yet.

Yup. Any sounds that are static cannot be replaced.

Really? I haven't had that happen ever.

Bond has that also, but luckily were all very short length clips. There was one brief clip I would've liked to change that was static (assuming it was since I couldn't find it and many of those short clips were static.)

I might prefer static than some Foo Fighters songs.

Here are my notes from checking Guardians of Galaxy code yesterday:

Still have static played on smaller audio clips (meaning the speech dialogue):

0x8df - 4s244ms
0x689 - 3s854ms
0x3f6 - distortion instead of static
0x80d
0x163 - distortion

Here's a new big deal though. Distortion on 0x32 2m58s815ms, 0x6c and 0x68, all instances of the Jackson 5 song. I stopped searching for more instances once I found this song broken. No point in changing anything now if the main song is FUBARed.

Deleted. My error.

Stern released Jurassic Park code 1.11 today and Pinball Browser will need an update to open it. Unknown firmware message.

Yes, I have that on 8.33 and 8.34 and had to allow access.

Any ideas about this error I receive when trying to import a video?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SvmDbZ0GVGAKmdVa4p0HAulx3xjSjKlU/view?usp=sharing

I'm not sure, but I know to identity it as the same when I see another image with the same suffix.

I always choose Close Firmware and wait a few seconds before either closing Pinball Browser or switching to the SmartDMD tab to write the image. Try just writing the image with Pinball Browser, I never use anything else to write the images.

When the Walking Dead file opens, are you asked if you want to search online for bookmarks? You might get lucky and someone already bookmarked them.

Rush Pro code had those pops in some clips that I wanted to silence. This was the "shooter lane" callouts added recently and then on the latest code it's allowed to disable those shooter lane callouts, so moot point with what I was trying to do. But yeah, fucking annoying.

Did not have any pops when updating Led Zep or Jurassic code though.

He’s not yet writing the image to the SD card thought, right? Just replacing a video and then the other videos disappear?

I have to work on my updates to the newest codes and will see if something similar happens.

I could use those tips as well. I remember trying to make some changes on a game, can’t remember which one, but ran into the same issues you did.

Download the image file from Stern again. I had that happen with another firmware recently.

Bond .99 works.

And of course Stern release Foo Fighters 1.02 yesterday, so that will need to be added.

That was fast! Thanks!

I wanted to get to work on Foo Fighters Live code and now I can. Replacing the songs with their live versions to mix it up. The band is supposed to be playing live in all the cities during gameplay anyway.