EOF Manual - Menu Functions p {text-indent: 1cm}

A song editor for "Frets On Fire"

Table of Contents

Menu Functions

EOF contains many useful functions which can be accessed through various menus. Many functions also have a keyboard shortcut to expedite the song editing process. Let's get to it.

[ File ] [ Edit ] [ Song ] [ Track ] [ Note ] [ Beat ] [ Help ]

File

[ New ] [ Load ] [ Save ] [ Save As ] [ Quick save ] [ Load OGG ] [ Import ] [ Export chart range ] [ Export audio range ] [ Export Guitar Pro ] [ Export image sequence ]
[ Settings ] [ Preferences ] [ Display ] [ Controllers ] [ Song Folder ] [ Link To FOF ] [ Link To Phase Shift ] [ Link to RocksmithToTab ] [ Exit ]

New

Create a new EOF project. You will select an audio file (in OGG, WAV or MP3 format), choose a destination for the new project, and enter some information about the song. If the selected audio file contains tag information, the song artist, title and year will be automatically entered into the song's properties from the audio file's ID3v1/ID3v2 tag or OGG Vorbis tag comments if available. The album information will be similarly read into an INI setting if it is available. When choosing a destination for your project you have three options. "Use Existing Folder" requires you to point to an existing folder where EOF will create your project files. "Use OGG Folder" will place the project files in the folder with the audio file you selected. "Create New Folder" will create the folder you specify in EOF's own song folder (see File>Song Folder).

Wherever you choose to store the project, the OGG file you chose will be copied to "guitar.ogg" (required by "Frets On Fire"). If you choose an MP3 file, and you have LAME and Vorbis Tools installed (included in Windows version of EOF), EOF will convert it to "guitar.ogg" using the average bitrate you specify in the "OGG Settings" dialog, automatically re-sampling the audio to 44khz if necessary. A copy of the MP3 file will also be saved as "original.mp3" in the project folder, for use with the Leading Silence feature. If you do not have LAME and Vorbis Tools installed, you will not be able to use the built-in MP3 conversion.

Load

Load an existing EOF project. EOF will look for a "guitar.ogg" file in the same folder as the EOF project file you loaded. If it cannot find one you will be asked to locate an OGG (or MP3, which will be converted to OGG format) file for EOF to load. If you cancel the prompt to browse for chart audio, EOF will open the project without any audio and playback controls will be disabled, and audio will not be saved with the other chart files during Save/Save As. If no audio is loaded, File>Load Ogg can be used to allow playback and the saving of the loaded audio during save operations.

Save

Save the current EOF project. When saving a project EOF automatically generates all the files needed for the song to work in "Frets On Fire."

Save As

Save the current EOF project to a new location. Subsequent "Save" requests will write the song files to the new location. If no "guitar.ogg" exists in the destination folder, EOF will create one using the currently loaded OGG file.

Quick save

Save the current EOF project and creates any additional files enabled in File>Preferences, but without all of the prompts and warnings that the Save and Save as functions present. Error messages are still displayed if problems are encountered during quick save.

Load OGG

Load a new OGG file into the current project. At this time, EOF will only allow you to load OGG files that are in the same chart as the folder. This is for privacy reasons, so if somebody shares an EOF project file, it won't expose the person's folder names on the author's computer. If your song has separate audio for the guitar or other instrument you are fretting you can use this function to switch out the audio.

EOF keeps separate "Delay" settings for each differently named OGG file you load. This allows you to use tracks of differing length without having to adjust the delay and notes each time you swap OGG files. This is useful if you have two different versions of the same song, perhaps a karaoke version without vocals and a normal version. Setting up the "Delay" for each file will automatically move the beats and notes to the correct place each time you use "Load OGG" to swap them out.

Import

[ Sonic Visualiser ] [ MIDI ] [ Feedback ] [ Guitar Hero ] [ Lyric ] [ Guitar Pro ] [ Rocksmith ] [ Bandfuse ]

Sonic Visualiser

Sonic Visualiser is an audio analysis program that supports a large selection of plugins to process sound and while the beat estimation generally isn't as accurate as painstakingly syncing beats manually, the results are very impressive for an automated process. This feature would probably work best when you are first creating a chart instead of after you have authored your notes, but it's up to you if you want to use it after. To use this feature, download Sonic Visualiser (http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/download.html) and the Queen Mary plugin set (http://www.vamp-plugins.org/download.html) and install both of them. The simplest way to install the Queen Mary plugin set in Windows involves extracting qm-vamp-plugins.dll, qm-vamp-plugins.cat and qm-vamp-plugins.n3 and placing them at "C:\Program Files\Vamp Plugins\" (or at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Vamp Plugins\" instead if you're using a 64 bit version of Windows).

Once installed, open Sonic Visualiser and have it open your chart audio (ie. guitar.ogg) and you should see it begin to draw a waveform graph of the audio. Once it finishes, open the Transform menu, select "Analysis by category>Time>Tempo>Tempo and beat tracker: Beats". You can adjust the plugin parameters in the window that pops up if you want to experiment, otherwise just click OK and wait a minute. You should see lines plotted over the waveform that represent each beat of the song and a new layer tab will open on the side where you can change the line color. You can even change the plot type to segmentation to get a better view of the detected beat positions. If you are satisfied with the results, you can export the beat positions to a file that EOF can import. To do so, make sure that layer is still in the foreground (it is the selected layer tab on the side of the program) and use "File>Export annotation layer" and choose a place to save the file (your project folder would be a good place). Then in EOF, while your project is open, use "File>Sonic Visualiser Import" and select the file you just exported from that program. The project's tempo map will be updated to reflect the information in the file, but if the results aren't to your liking, you can undo the changes and trying other settings in Sonic Visualiser's beat estimation. Sonic Visualiser's "Tempo and beat tracker" plugin also has a "Tempo" estimation function, but in my brief testing, its results were not anywhere near as good as the "Beats" estimation, but you can certainly have the plugin run both estimations separately and just export whichever one you think is more correct, just make sure the tab for the one you want to export is active before you go to export the annotation layer.

MIDI

Create a new EOF project from an existing MIDI file. This function is useful if you want to edit a song which was not created in EOF or if you want to alter a chart where the EOF file is not available. Tracks are imported from the MIDI file and song properties are loaded from "song.ini" if it exists. A Rock Band Audition (RBA) file contains a chart that was authored for Rock Band Network (RBN). EOF provides the ability to open the MIDI data from this type of file the same way as a normal Rock Band MIDI. EOF will look for a "guitar.ogg" file in the same folder as the MIDI file you loaded. If it cannot find one you will be asked to locate an OGG (or MP3, which will be converted to OGG format) file for EOF to load. If you cancel the prompt to browse for chart audio, EOF will open the project without any audio and playback controls will be disabled, and audio will not be saved with the other chart files during Save/Save As. If no audio is loaded, File>Load Ogg can be used to allow playback and the saving of the loaded audio during save operations.

If bass notes in lane 1 are found to have forced HOPO on phrases, EOF will prompt about whether to import these as open strum bass notes (see Enable open strum). If the "sysex_open_bass = True" tag is found in the imported MIDI's song.ini file, such notes will be imported as open strum bass notes automatically without prompting.

If an imported MIDI has yellow, blue or purple drum notes and no tom phrases, EOF will import them as cymbals instead of toms if the "pro_drums = True" tag is found in the imported MIDI's song.ini file. This tag allows a chart with all cymbals to be correctly identified and differentiated from a chart with all tom drums. This serves as a workaround to Harmonix's goof that in pro drums, all yellow, blue and green drums are treated as cymbals by default, which introduced a significant amount of Rock Band Network charts that do not play correctly in regards to pro drums.

If any unsupported (yet recognizable as Rock Band related) MIDI tracks are encountered (pro keys, harmony vocal tracks), EOF will offer to store them into the project instead of just ignore them. Each event in the stored MIDI tracks is stored in high precision millisecond timing, and is saved to the output MIDI during project save conforming to the chart's tempo map. This functionality should be useful for importing a MIDI that uses unusual tempo mapping (like ones with mid-beat tempo/TS changes) for the purposes of adding a pro guitar upgrade, adding new instrument/harmony tracks to a chart or simply synchronizing a chart with audio. The stored MIDI tracks can be listed/deleted via the Songs>"Manage raw MIDI tracks" menu function.

If the imported MIDI file has any tempo or time signature changes that occur BETWEEN beat markers, EOF will alert you of this and offer to store the tempo and beat tracks into the project. If you intend to modify an existing chart for use in Rock Band, such as creating an upgrade containing pro guitar, the upgrade automatically uses the original chart's tempo map when played in-game. Originally this was problematic because by design, EOF would insert extra beats when mid beat tempo or time signature changes were found, so that each change could occur on a beat marker. These extra beats would cause the upgrade file's timing to be different enough from the original imported chart to cause synchronization discrepancies. However by allowing the original tempo map to be stored into the project, during MIDI export, all events are written with the stored tempo map's timing, eliminating this problem.

If the MIDI being imported is in the format of the rhythm game "Power Gig", the five difficulties for each the guitar and drum tracks and the vocal track are imported. The fifth difficulty of these instrument tracks is stored in the BRE difficulty. Most rhythm games only support four difficulties though, so to remove the difficulty you don't want, make that difficulty active and use the Track>Delete active difficulty function. This will remove the active track and move all the higher difficulties' notes down one difficulty to result in four populated difficulties.

If Guitar Hero 1 or 2 style drum animations are encountered, they are imported as drum notes where applicable. These drum animations weren't authored as accurately as actual drum charts from later Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, but they are a good starting point.

Feedback

Create a new EOF project from an existing Feedback chart file. This type of file (typically has a ".chart" file extension) is a chart format generally created using the Feedback chart editor and was originally intended for creating custom charts for Guitar Hero. Various conversion utilities have been created previously allowing people to convert these charts into a MIDI file usable in Frets on Fire. This function allows Feedback charts to be imported. It will look in the chart's folder to try to load whichever audio file is specified by the chart (MP3, WAV and OGG are supported). If that file is not present, it will try to open guitar.ogg. If that file is not present, if the chart's folder only has one OGG file in it, it will try to open that file. If there is no OGG file in the folder, or if there are multiple OGG files to choose from, EOF will have you browse for the audio file to use. If you cancel the prompt to browse for chart audio, EOF will open the project without any audio and playback controls will be disabled, and audio will not be saved with the other chart files during Save/Save As. If no audio is loaded, File>Load Ogg can be used to allow playback and the saving of the loaded audio during save operations. Feedback charts containing non-standard 5 lane drums are supported. Section markers that are imported will be altered as necessary to make them comply with the "[section SECTION_NAME]" naming convention. Any [solo_on] and [solo_off] events that are imported are converted into solo sections for guitar (PART GUITAR) and lead guitar (PART GUITAR COOP). A note that starts less than 11/128 measures from the beginning of the previous note will be treated as a forced HOPO note. Notes that aren't forced HOPOs are imported as forced strums. If either the "N 5 #" or "E *" unofficial toggle HOPO notations are encountered during import, these will change non-HOPO notes into HOPO notes and vice-versa. If the "N 6 #" unofficial tapping notation is encountered, slider phrases are created to define these notes. If the "N 7 #" or "E O" unofficial open note notations are encountered, affected notes are imported as open notes.

5 lane chords in guitar/bass tracks are converted to open strum notes, but this behavior can be prevented by enabling the "Don't auto-name double stops" import/export preference.

Guitar Hero

Create a new EOF project from an existing Guitar Hero note file (generally GH World Tour or newer), which are generally one of two formats depending on the source game (ie. NOTE format from GH5, Band Hero and GH: Warriors of Rock and QB format from GH World Tour, GH Metallica, GH Smash Hits, GH Van Halen). Older formats may require using a utility like GHTCP to export it to db chart (dbc) format. These types of file (often with an extension such as .pak.ngc) are common when working with custom charts for Guitar Hero and usually contains guitar, bass and star power phrases. It can also contain slider guitar sections, drum notes, drum rolls/swells and pitched lyrics. Some songs contain an additional "aux" instrument section that will be imported into the keys track. The aim for this import function is to get a true one to one conversion, and forced HOPO notes are optionally imported as such. In Guitar Hero, all notes that are not explicitly HOPO on must be strummed, but EOF will prompt about whether or not such notes will be imported with HOPO off notation. Drum rolls/swells are conceptually similar to drum rolls and special drum rolls in Rock Band standards, but in Guitar Hero, these phrases are marked as long drum notes instead of phrases containing drum gems. Lyric phrases will also be trimmed to fit the lyrics they contain, and empty phrases will be removed. When EOF finds practice sections in a Guitar Hero file, it will display the sections of each included language one language at a time and allow the desired language to be selected. EOF will look for a "guitar.ogg" file in the same folder as the MIDI file you loaded. If it cannot find one you will be asked to locate an OGG (or MP3, which will be converted to OGG format) file for EOF to load. If you cancel the prompt to browse for chart audio, EOF will open the project without any audio and playback controls will be disabled, and audio will not be saved with the other chart files during Save/Save As. If no audio is loaded, File>Load Ogg can be used to allow playback and the saving of the loaded audio during save operations. If the imported Guitar Hero file is in QB format (ie. pre GH5), EOF will add a "drum_fallback_blue = True" INI entry if any drum gems are imported. This tag will be used in future versions of Phase Shift to decide how to down-chart a 5 lane drum chart to play on a 4 lane drum kit (ie. to mimic how Guitar Hero would handle it).

Lyric

Imports lyrics from an existing file into the current EOF project (this menu function is grayed out if no project is loaded). Beats are appended to the chart if it is not long enough to contain all imported lyrics. See the Lyric import section of the vocal tutorial for details.

Guitar Pro

Import a drum track or replace the active pro guitar track or track difficulty in the current EOF project with one from a specified Guitar Pro file, with as much notation kept as possible (the number and tuning of guitar strings, vibrato, harmonics, tremolo picking, tapping, up/down strumming/picking, hammer ons, pull offs, bends, slides, palm mutes and trills). Guitar Pro is a music transcription program, and its file format is arguably the most popular electronic format for guitar tablature. Some third party programs (most notably the free program "TuxGuitar") also allow you to view and author files in this format.

To import a Guitar Pro drum track into your project, import the file and select the appropriate percussion track from the list. You will be asked whether to import that track to the normal drum track, the Phase Shift drum track or both.

To import a Guitar Pro guitar/bass track into your project, change the active track to any of the five pro guitar or pro bass tracks (this menu function is grayed out if a pro guitar/bass track is not active), invoke this function from the File menu, select a Guitar Pro file (format 5.x or older), select one of the listed instrument tracks and click the import button. By default, if the EOF project's active pro guitar track had any contents, they are discarded and replaced with the imported track. If the "GP import replaces active track" import/export preference is not enabled, the imported GP track will instead only replace the active track difficulty and leave the other difficulties in the active track as-is. If a pro guitar/bass track's difficulty limit has been removed (see Track>Rocksmith>Remove difficulty limit), or if the user preference is not configured to replace the active track (instead replacing only the active difficulty), tremolo picking notation imported from the GP file will be made track-specific and will only appear while the track's difficulty limit remains removed (while the difficulties are numbered instead of named). This is because in Rocksmith, tremolo notation is defined on a per-difficulty basis, and in Rock Band 3, it equally applies to all difficulties in a track. The best way to determine which track to import is to open the Guitar Pro file in a program that supports the format (Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar are likely the two best options) and compare the contents of the tracks to determine which one you're interested in. Or you can simply undo the import if it doesn't turn out to be the track you wanted. To import different Guitar Pro tracks to different tracks in the EOF project, finish importing one Guitar Pro track, change the active track in EOF to one of the other pro guitar/bass tracks, and perform Guitar Pro import again (importing from the same Guitar Pro file, or a different one if desired).

When the Guitar Pro file is processed, you are given the option to import the time signature changes from the Guitar Pro file, overriding any that exist in the EOF project. This is only important if you want the imported notes to appear verbatim, measure by measure, to the original transcription in the Guitar Pro file. If the Guitar Pro file has multiple voices authored for a track (a feature in the Guitar Pro 5 format), only the default voice (lead) is imported. If the Guitar Pro file uses any 7 string tracks, EOF will prompt whether to drop either the highest or lowest string, since only 6 strings can be imported. If the GP file contains tie notes that overlap each other, these notes are truncated during import because Rock Band doesn't support this and Rocksmith likely doesn't either. If the imported track uses a capo, the capo position is imported and the fret values of the imported notes will remain the same as they are defined in the GP file. If the Guitar Pro file has bends notated, the bend definition is imported as tech notes (see Track>Rocksmith>Enable tech view), to accurately recreate the bend for use in Rocksmith 2014.

Even though EOF can't import a GPX (Guitar Pro 6 format) file, there are websites (such as http://www.webtabplayer.com/TabConverter) that can convert these tabs to a supported format (like GP5) for free.

This function can also import an exported Go PlayAlong XML file, which combines Guitar Pro files with synchronization information. To do so, select an appropriate XML file, which needs to be in the same directory as the related GP file. Importing a Go PlayAlong file will force the time signatures to import, since GPA sync points reference measure numbers. EOF has logic to try to handle various different ways the Go PlayAlong project is synchronized, but for best results, make sure to sync the first measure of the tablature. If the tablature is synchronized in a way where one or more beats are positioned with a negative timestamp (are before the start of the audio), those beats are omitted from import. This cannot be avoided if you synchronized the file this way, but the worst side effect would be that the imported notes won't begin at the same measure as notated in the original Guitar Pro file.

Rocksmith

Replace the active pro guitar track in the current EOF project with the contents of a specified Rocksmith XML file. To import a Rocksmith arrangement into your project, change the active track to any of the five pro guitar or pro bass tracks (this menu function is grayed out if a pro guitar/bass track is not active), invoke this function from the File menu and select a Rocksmith XML file. The active project's beat markers are synced to the information in the XML file. In addition, song properties (ie. song title), arrangement name/type, phrases, popup messages, sections, events, difficulty levels (including notes, chords and fret hand positions) and the tuning are imported.

Bandfuse

Create a new EOF project from an existing Bandfuse chart file. This type of file (often with an extension such as .rif) is a binary chart format used by Bandfuse. Like Rocksmith, this game offers gameplay with real guitars and like Rock Band it supports a microphone for pitched vocal scoring. The difficulty system is different than both of those games though. It uses static (doesn't change dynamically based on the user's performance) difficulties, but the number of difficulties per instrument varies. The rhythm guitar and bass guitar arrangements can each have up to 5 difficulties, but for simpler songs some difficulty levels are omitted. The lead guitar arrangement is authored as difficulty level 6 of the guitar track.

Export chart range

Saves a user-defined portion of the active project as a new project file, with the corresponding portion of the chart audio being exported as a new OGG file. For best results, use the Set start point and Set end point functions to mark the part of the project you want to export.

Export audio range

Similar to "Export chart range", but just exports an OGG file to the specified name and location. For best results, use the Set start point and Set end point functions to mark the part of the project you want to export.

Export Guitar Pro

Uses the command line RocksmithToTab utility (available at http://www.rocksmithtotab.de/) to be used to create a GP5 file of the active project in the project's folder. This function requires you to have installed the utility and linked EOF to it (see File>Link to RocksmithToTab).

Export image sequence

If you wanted to create a video of your chart, you may be worried about lag when using screen recording software. EOF has a solution to that problem by allowing you to create an image sequence (one PCX format image file for each frame of the chart, at a rate of 30 FPS). The PCX files are created with incrementing file names in a "sequence" sub folder of your chart's project folder. You can use the free VirtualDubMod (http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/) application to create a video out of this sequence:

1. Open the image sequence (in VirtualDubMod, open File>Open video file and select the lowest number PCX file in the sequence. It will automatically load the other PCX files (as long as you don't disable the "Automatically load linked segments" option) as raw video frames.
2. Open Video>Frame Rate and change the source rate to 30 to match the 30FPS that EOF exported with.
3. Select your desired compression/filter/etc. settings in the Video menu. I usually go with the Xvid codec and perform two passes. For the first pass, select "Twopass - 1st pass" in the Xvid configuration options and then select "Save as" from the file menu. Then for the second pass, without changing any other settings, go back to Xvid configuration options and select "Twopass - 2nd pass". This time, you have to specify a target bitrate. Sometimes if I feel too lazy to pick a bitrate, I use the average bitrate given by the Xvid status window from the first pass, but you can pick any valid bitrate you want and then use File>Save as to overwrite the file created in the first pass of the compression. When it completes, you will have a video file without audio.
4. Use your favorite video editing application to "mux" in the audio for your chart. I usually go with one of the other VirtualDub releases (http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/) or (http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/stable/) for this because handling audio streams in VirtualDubMod just seems more complicated to me. You may need to convert your chart's audio to regular WAV format for this step, depending on the tool you are using. In VirtualDub, you would open the Audio menu, select "WAV Audio" and select your chart audio file. If you do provide the audio as a WAV file, make sure to enable the audio to be compressed again by selecting Audio>Full Processing Mode, then Audio>Compression and select your desired codec and settings. I usually use LAME MP3 and a constant (CBR) bitrate setting, constant bitrate is more reliable for audio/video synchronization in general.
5. You can show the finished video to your friends, upload it someplace like Youtube or whatever you want.

Settings

Change the program settings. See Configuring EOF for details

Preferences

Change the user preferences. See Configuring EOF for details

Display

Changes display options. If a pro guitar/bass track's difficulty limit has been removed (see Track>Rocksmith>Remove difficulty limit), more than 5 difficulty tabs will be allowed to display, depending on the program window's width.

Display: Changes the size of the EOF window to one of the pre-set sizes. Also provides an option to use a software based cursor instead of the normal cursor in your Operating System, in case it's not working properly. Also provides an option to run in 8 bit color mode, in case there's a reason you need to do so, but this will lower performance unless your computer is running in 8 bit color mode to match.

Set display width: Allows you to increase the program window's width to a value above the default width for the active pre-set window size. If the specified width cannot be set (such as if it's wider than your computer's current display resolution), EOF will revert to the default width for the active pre-set window size.

x2 zoom: Doubles the size of everything displayed in EOF except for the menus and dialog functions.

Redraw: Rebuilds the EOF window in unusual cases where it stops updating, such as if you leave it running after a Remote Desktop session.

Benchmark image sequence: Tests and reports the render speed of EOF for the current project and display settings, allowing the user to easily check the effectiveness of different customizations or build options.

Set 3D HOPO image scale size: Specifies the size to render HOPO gems in non GHL mode tracks in the the 3D preview. By default, such HOPO notes will display 75% the size of normal notes.

Enable Notes panel: Hides or shows an additional panel of text below the piano roll, resizing EOF's program window width if necessary for the panel to be displayed (the resize is skipped if either the Into panel or 3D preview are disabled in File>Preferences>Preferences). The contents of the Notes panel is defined in notes.txt file in EOF's program directory, which can be edited to display things like your favorite keyboard shortcuts, to-do items, etc. Disable and re-enable the notes panel to reload any changes you have made to the file while EOF is already displaying the notes panel. The notes panel will be allowed to take up all space on the bottom half of the EOF window that isn't in use by the Info panel or 3D preview. Please see the Notes panel documentation for more information on customizing the Notes panel.

Controllers

Configure guitar and drum controllers. These can be used in tandem with the "Guitar Tap" and "Guitar Strum" edit modes.

Song Folder

Tell EOF the base folder where to save new projects. New projects created with the "Create New Folder" option will be created in a folder inside of the base folder. For example, if you select "C:\games\fof\wipsongs" for the base folder and create a new project with "Create New Folder" and "my new song" as the new folder name, the project will be stored in "c:\games\fof\wipsongs\my new song\"

Link to FOF

Allows you to link EOF to "Frets On Fire" if you are using a mod which allows starting a song from the command line (RF or FoFiX for example). You will first locate "FretsOnFire.exe" and then select the location of the song library (the base song folder). If done correctly, you will be able to launch FOF with the currently open song for testing (see Song>Test In FOF).

Link to Phase Shift

Allows you to link EOF to Phase Shift, which will start a song from the command line. You will first locate "Phase Shift.exe" and then select the location of the song library. If done correctly, you will be able to launch Phase Shift with the currently open song for testing (see Song>Test in Phase Shift).

Link to RocksmithToTab

Allows you to link EOF to RocksmithToTab (available at http://www.rocksmithtotab.de/), allowing the project's pro guitar and bass tracks to be manually exported to Guitar Pro 5 (gp5) format (see File>Export Guitar Pro). Make sure to link to the command line program (RocksmithToTab.exe) for this feature to work as expected.

Exit

Close EOF. If you have unsaved changes you will be prompted to quick save the project.

Edit

[ Undo ] [ Redo ] [ Copy ] [ Paste ] [ Old Paste ] [ Paste From ] [ Grid Snap ] [ Zoom ] [ Preview Speed ] [ Playback Rate ] [ Preview HOPO ] [ Metronome ] [ Claps ] [ Clap Notes ] [ Vocal Tones ] [ MIDI Tones ]
[ Bookmark ] [ Selection ] [ Set start point ] [ Set end point ]

Undo

Undo the previous operation. You can undo up to 100 operations.

Redo

Redo the previously undone operation.

Copy

Copy the currently selected notes to the clipboard (see Editing Songs). The clipboard is shared between all instances of EOF. If you copy notes in one instance, you can paste them into another instance. If you copy notes in both instances, only the most recently copied notes will be in the clipboard. Copied notes' statuses are kept on the clipboard and are applied to the pasted notes accordingly. If the first note that is selected is between 1 and 10 milliseconds before a beat marker, EOF will note that it appears to be off and offers to adjust the note's position so that it lines up with the beat marker.

Paste

Paste notes from the clipboard. Note positions and lengths are pasted relative to the beat markers meaning pasted notes will stretch and shrink depending on the BPM of the beats being pasted into. Pasted notes will begin at the current seek position and continue on through subsequent beats. You can use the Song>Seek menu's functions to seek by beat and grid snap to effectively control where the notes are pasted. This allows pasted notes to retain their original grid snap positions even when you are pasting into beats that have different tempos than the copied notes. By default, pasted notes merge with any notes that already exist, with the pasted notes winning any contention for statuses (ie. if a normal yellow gem is pasted onto a yellow cymbal, the result is a normal yellow gem). Alternatively, if the "Paste erases overlap" preference is enabled, any note that is within the range of the chart that would be altered by a paste operation are deleted. If any notes being pasted use a lane higher than the active track supports (ie. pasting 5 lane bass notes into 4 lane pro bass), the gems on the exceedingly-high lanes are dropped, unless this causes the note to have no gems, in which case the note is converted to a chord using all lanes. This helps identify places where pasted notes would need particular attention for note consistency, etc. If the copied notes have arpeggio or handshape phrases when paste is performed, those phrass are created to encompass the pasted notes.

Old Paste

The same as "Paste" except the note positions and lengths are not scaled to fit into the beats. The notes will remain exactly as they were copied and the first note will be pasted exactly on the position line.

Paste From

Paste notes from another difficulty in the active track. "Paste From>Supaeasy/Easy/Medium/Amazing/Difficulty" copies all notes from the specified difficulty to the currently selected difficulty (useful for downgrading songs to lower difficulties). "Paste From>Catalog" pastes notes and their statuses from the currently selected catalog entry. If the "Paste erases overlap" preference is not enabled, paste from catalog will stop pasting notes early if it reaches a beat that has notes in it, to prevent notes from being overlapped. If Paste From is used on a pro guitar/bass track, EOF will offer to also copy the arpeggio sections, fret hand positions (both of which are defined on a per-track-difficulty basis) and difficulty-specific tremolo phrases if there are any in the specified difficulty.

Grid Snap

Change the current grid snap setting. Grid snap forces note placement to the specified setting. If you have created a tempo map for your song, turning grid snap to an appropriate setting will save you lots of time when placing notes.

The built-in grid snap settings assume 4/# (4 beats per measure) time signature, so a grid snap setting of 1/4 means that each grid snap position occurs at 1/4 of a measure intervals. With this setting you can fit up to four separate notes into one measure. A grid snap setting of 1/8 means that each grid snap position occurs at 1/8 of a measure intervals and so on and so forth. Using a custom grid snap level, you can define the number of intervals per beat or per measure. Keep in mind that if you supply a custom "per measure" grid snap, you must also place time signatures where appropriate, in order to define the number of beats per measure. Otherwise, one beat per measure will be assumed. Currently, a limit of 96 intervals is in place, because using higher values will rarely be practical.

The "Display grid lines" function toggles the display of each grid snap position based on the current grid snap setting. When grid lines are being displayed, any note that isn't at a grid snap position will have its vertical line rendered in red instead of gray, making it obvious that it doesn't line up with a grid line.

Zoom

Change the zoom level of the fretboard editing area. For faster songs, zooming in can help with note placement. Zooming out can allow you to see more of the song at once, such as when comparing repeating parts of a song. The custom zoom option allows you to indicate how many milliseconds each pixel of the editor window represents. You can use the zoom in/out shortcuts (+ and - on the numberpad) to zoom in and out of a custom zoom level. If a custom zoom is in effect when EOF closes, it is restored when re-opening EOF.

Preview Speed

Change the speed of the fretboard in the 3D Preview.

Playback Rate

Change the speed of the audio playback. For fast solo sections it can be useful to play the song back at a slower speed to make it easier to hear the notes in the song. You can play the song back at 50% speed without changing the setting by holding the Ctrl key while beginning playback. You can play the song back at 100% speed without changing the setting by holding the D key while beginning playback. You can play the song back at 25% speed without changing the setting by holding both the Ctrl and Shift keys while beginning playback. You can also specify a custom playback by specifying the percentage of full speed it should play back, such as 30 or 200. By default, any time a playback speed other than 100% is initiated, EOF uses the time stretch feature. This feature leverages the rubberband library to use phase vocoding techniques to allow chart audio to be played back slower than full speed without changing the pitch. This is more processor intensive so you may need to increase your audio buffer (and AV delay) to compensate, but you can disable this feature by unchecking the "Edit>Playback rate>Time stretch" option.

Preview HOPO

Select the algorithm used to determine which notes display as HO/PO notes in EOF's 3D preview panel. RF is equivalent to "Guitar Hero 2." If you are using RF-Mod or FoFiX you should use this setting. FOF is for standard "Frets On Fire." Manual will only show notes within forced HO/PO On phrases as HO/PO notes, making it more useful for authoring in Rock Band or other rhythm games that may support this notation, as well as to future-proof your chart should FoFiX eventually support forced HO/PO On/Off phrases. An important note: HO/PO notes are determined by an algorithm in all current versions of FOF, FoFiX and all current mods, so what EOF shows is not necessarily what the user will see in-game in regard to HO/PO notes. What the players receive for HO/PO notes depends on their settings and what version of the game they are using. In order for a note to be a HO/PO note in FoF, it normally has to be within 1/12th measure or less of the previous note. Turning on the "Eighth Note HO/PO" setting in "Song Properties" will change the HO/PO note threshold to 1/8th instead, for mods that support the "Eighth Note HO/PO" song.ini file setting.

Metronome

Toggle the metronome. When the metronome is on, a tick will sound at every beat marker during audio playback. This feature is useful when you are creating a tempo map for your song. See Creating a Tempo Map for a demonstration of how to use this feature.

Claps

Toggle note claps. When note claps are on, a clap will sound at every note during audio playback. This feature is useful to ensure your notes are synchronized with the audio in the song. If your notes are placed correctly, the clap should sound at the same time each note is audible.

Clap Notes

Select a specific gem color you want to trigger claps.

Vocal Tones

Enables or disables the sounding of piano tones in PART VOCALS. See the Testing and editing lyric pitches section of the vocal tutorial for details.

MIDI Tones

Enables or disables the sounding of MIDI notes through your computer's default MIDI device to play a synthesized version of pro guitar/bass notes during playback. If a capo is placed on the track, the capo is taken into account. When this feature is enabled, clicking on a pro guitar/bass note will sound the tones for the note. A MIDI tone delay value can be specified in File>Settings that will allow MIDI tones to play back earlier than notes, in order to compensate for MIDI lag from factors outside of EOF. You can change what MIDI voices are used for the pro guitar and bass tracks by closing EOF, opening eof.cfg in EOF's program folder and changing the MIDI instrument number given for the eof_midi_synth_instrument_guitar and eof_midi_synth_instrument_bass entries. eof_midi_synth_instrument_guitar_muted and eof_midi_synth_instrument_guitar_harm entries can also be edited to define a different MIDI instrument number used to play back for palm muted or harmonic pro guitar notes. The numbering used for this begins with 1, as in instrument number 1 indicates "Acoustic Grand Piano".

Bookmark

Place a bookmark at the current location of the position line. You can seek directly to your bookmarks (see Song>Seek) at any time. If you are going to be seeking to a specific part of a song multiple times, having a bookmark there can save lots of time.

Selection

Select or deselect notes based on various criteria.

Select All: Selects all the notes in the current track difficulty.

Select Like: Selects notes in the current track difficulty that match any of the currently selected notes. If a vocal track is active, notes match if they have the same pitch. If an instrument track is active, notes match if they use the same lanes. If a pro guitar/bass track is active, the fret values must also match.

Precise select like: Is similar to "select like", but also requires notes to have the same statuses (ie. both forced HOPO) in order to match. If a pro guitar/bass track is active, the ghost status for each gem must also match.

Select Rest: Selects all notes from the currently selected note to the end of the song.

Select Previous: Selects all notes from the beginning of the song to the currently selected note.

Deselect All: Deselects all notes.

Invert selection: Makes notes in the active track difficulty that aren't selected become selected and vice versa.

Conditional select / deselect: Allows you to specify criteria to select/deselect notes based on the gems they do or don't have. If the active track is a drum track, it will allow you to specify whether or not the specified gems in lanes 3, 4 or 5 must be cymbals or toms to be selected/deselected. If the active track is a pro guitar/bass track, it will allow you to specify whether or not the specified gems must be normal, muted or ghosted in order to be selected/deselected.

Select / deselect

Chords: Applies to notes that have more than one gem.

Single notes: Applies to notes that have only one gem.

Toms: Applies to notes that are tom notes (gems in lanes 3, 4 or 5 that are not marked as cymbals).

Cymbals: Applies to notes that are cymbal notes (gems in lanes 3, 4 or 5 that are marked as cymbals).

Grid snapped: Applies to notes that are grid snapped with the current grid snap value.

Non grid snapped: Applies to notes that are not grid snapped with the current grid snap value.

Shorter than: Prompts for a threshold length in milliseconds, and then applies to all notes in the active track difficulty that are shorter than that length.

Longer than: Prompts for a threshold length in milliseconds, and then applies to all notes in the active track difficulty that are longer than that length.

Of length: Prompts for a threshold length in milliseconds, and then applies to all notes in the active track difficulty that are exactly that length.

On beat notes: Applies to notes that are on a beat marker.

Off beat notes: Applies to notes that are not on a beat marker.

Highlighted: Applies to notes that are highlighted.

Not highlighted: Applies to notes that are not highlighted.

One in every: Applies to one out of every specified number of selected notes. Which note in the sequence is affected can also be specified, so you can select/deselect the first out of every two notes, the second out of every three, etc.

Set start point
Set end point

Defines the current seek position as the start or end points for the Create preview audio, Export chart range and Export audio range functions.

Song

[ Seek ] [ Track ] [ File Info ] [ Audio cues ] [ Display semitones as flat ] [ Waveform graph ] [ Spectrogram ] [ Highlight non grid snapped notes ] [ Catalog ] [ INI Settings ] [ Properties ] [ Leading Silence ]
[ Lock tempo map ] [ Disable click and drag ] [ Pro Guitar ] [ Rocksmith ] [ Second piano roll ] [ Manage raw MIDI tracks ] [ Create preview audio ] [ Test In FOF ] [ Test In Phase Shift ]

Seek

Perform various seek operations, which move the position line to the desired location. The rewind function, for example, seeks to the position of the last time playback started. If grid snap is enabled, the seek previous/next grid snap functions are enabled, otherwise they are disabled. There are two seek to end style functions, one seeks to the end of the currently loaded audio, and the other seeks to the end of the chart. If a file was imported without suitable audio, those two end positions may be different.

Track

Select a track for editing. PART GUITAR is the default track. Tracks containing notes will have an asterisk (*) displayed next to them. All tracks are edited in a similar way. Some tracks such as PART DRUMS and PART DANCE will appear differently in the piano roll and the 3D Preview.

File Info

Display various information about the current project.

Audio cues

Opens a dialog window allowing you to change the volume for the chart audio and any of EOF's audio cues: Clap, metronome, vocal tone and vocal percussion. This will affect the volume of the cue when it is sounded during playback or when the chart is stopped (such as when clicking on a lyric or vocal percussion note). This dialog allows you to select the sound that will be used for a vocal percussion note (See Percussion sections in the vocal tutorial for details). This dialog also allows you to choose whether ghost notes (pro guitar or drum notes) or string muted pro guitar notes will trigger the clap sound cue.

Display semitones as flat

Displays piano note (see the Advanced topics section of the vocal tutorial for details) and pro guitar chord names with flat notation instead of sharp notation.

Waveform graph

Provides the ability to show, hide and configure a waveform graph for the currently active OGG file. To generate the graph, use the "Show" item in this menu or simply press the F5 key when the chart is not playing. After a few seconds, the graph will be displayed as per the settings in the "Configure" dialog menu. For each vertical slice (one pixel wide) of the graph, the minimum amplitude in that portion of the audio (rendered in dark green by default), the peak (maximum) amplitude (rendered in light green by default) and the root mean square (think of this as the average) amplitude (rendered in red by default) are displayed. In the "Configure" menu item, you can specify whether the left audio channel, the right audio channel or both audio channels will be graphed. You can also specify whether the graph will be scaled to fit within the fretboard area or the entire editor window (the area above the scroll bar and the below the playback control buttons). When both the left and right channels are being graphed, the left channel is drawn on top of the right channel. Once the waveform graph has been initially generated, you can show/hide it with the F5 key. If you load another OGG file (see File>Load OGG), the waveform graph will not be recreated until it is hidden and shown again. This will, for example, allow you to generate a graph for a drum track and then load another audio file. If you load or import a chart, any existing waveform graph will be discarded and will need to be created again by showing the graph.

The default colors can be altered by editing the eof.cfg file that EOF creates in its program folder when it exits. The colors are defined in hexadecimal in standard RGB format where each color intensity is a two digit value from 00 (none) to FF (maximum). The first two digits are the red intensity, the second set of two digits are the green intensity and the third set of two digits are the blue intensity. If an RGB value has leading zeros, they can be omitted, so "00FF00" will be considered the same as "FF00". As an example, the color fuchsia can be defined with a red intensity of 255 (FF in hexadecimal), a green intensity of 0 (00 in hexadecimal) and a blue intensity of 255 (FF in hexadecimal). To have EOF render the peak amplitudes of the waveform graph in fushsia, edit the value of the "eof_color_waveform_peak" entry in song.ini to "eof_color_waveform_peak = FF00FF". The trough (minimum) and RMS amplitudes can have custom colors defined the same way. There are various hex color charts and calculators available on the Internet that may help you find interesting colors, such as http://welcowebdesign.com/color.html. To reset to the default waveform graph colors, just delete the waveform color definitions under the [colors] section of eof.cfg and save the file. Do note that you must save your changes after EOF is closed, because the program will rewrite the current colors when it exits, and this would otherwise overwrite your changes.

Spectrogram

Provides the ability to show, hide and configure a spectrogram for the currently active OGG file. A spectrogram is a 3D graphical representation of audio, where the X axis is time, the Y axis is frequency and the color is amplitude. The window size in the spectrogram's configuration determines how much of the audio is represented by each column (pixel) of the graph. To generate the graph, use the "Show" item in this menu. Displaying the spectrogram is much more processor intensive than the waveform graph, so unless your computer is very powerful, you may get a lot of stuttering if you try to play back the chart while the spectrogram is being displayed. Increasing the buffer size dramatically may help counter this, but playback lag might be unavoidable without using Song>Spectrogram>Show again to hide the spectrogram.
By default, the bottom of the graph is approximaely 0Hz, and the top is half the sample rate of the sound file - for your typical 44kHz rate, it will be 22KHz. Each vertical block of color represents a small range of frequencies, and is color coded to indicate how much of that particular pitch is present in that section of the sound. Depending on how much other noise there is, you may be able to see individual tones or notes in the graph. If you want to learn more about spectrograms, Wikipedia is a great place to start.

In the "Configure" menu item, you have options for controlling the graph, similarly to the Waveform Graph. In addition, you can choose a color scheme (currently just color or grayscale), whether the vertical scale should be logarithmic (helpful for music, as the musical scale is logarithmic in frequency), and window size, and note range.

Window size is a parameter used when generating the spectrogram, and specifically is the width of the sample used for each column (or slice). Due to how spectrograms are created this also determines how many slices the frequency spectrum will be sliced into (how many "bins"), or how many rows are in the column. Effectively, higher window sizes get you better resolution on the vertical (frequency) axis, lower window sizes get you better resolution in the horizontal (time) axis.

The note range option, if activated, limits the graph to show only the chosen range of frequencies (given in 12-tone musical note names, use # and b for sharp/flat), so as to better see parts of the graph you are more interested in.

In order to save processing time, the program selects a single amplitude value from each frequency bin. This generally doesn't cause a noticeable difference, but you can enable the "Avg Freq" option to average the values in each bin instead.

Highlight non grid snapped notes

Dynamically highlights notes that aren't on any grid snap position, indicating they may need to be manually moved/resnapped. If a custom grid snap value is in effect, its positions are also checked. The highlighting updates when notes are moved/resnapped or the grid snap value in use changes to/from a custom setting.

Catalog

Perform various catalog related operations. The catalog contains portions of your song which you can play back or paste into other parts of the song (see "Edit>Paste From"). "Show" toggles the catalog display. "Add" adds the currently selected notes to the catalog. "Delete" deletes the current catalog entry. "Previous" selects the previous catalog entry. "Next" selects the next catalog entry. "Find previous" and "find next" will find the previous or next instance of the current fret catalog entry in the current track difficulty. It is considered a matching instance as long as the notes' gems are the same pattern (ie. red, red+green, blue), the notes' length and spacing doesn't matter. Optionally, increase the fret catalog's width so that it takes up the full width of EOF's window. The name and timing of the catalog entry can also be edited if desired. See the Catalog section of Editing Songs for more details about the fret catalog.

INI Settings

Define additional INI settings which are not available in Song Properties.

Properties

Change the song properties for the current project.

"Song Title" is the name of the song.

"Artist" is the artist the song is attributed to.

"Frettist" refers to the person who created the "Frets On Fire" note charts.

"Album" is the name of the album the song is on, which can help people tell different versions of a song apart.

"Delay" is the delay or MIDI offset value which tells "Frets On Fire" how much time to delay the notes. Changing the "Delay" setting alters the position of all the beat lines in the current project and optionally adjusts the note positions as well.

"Year" refers to the year the song was released.

"Diff" refers to the band difficulty (tier) of the song as a whole.

"Lyrics" refers to the optional song.ini parameter that indicates to FoFiX that it should display Script style lyrics during chart playback using the file script.txt. If this checkbox is checked, and your chart has lyrics defined, EOF will create the script.txt lyric file (as well as a simplified plain text lyrics.txt file) automatically during a save operation and enable it in the chart's song.ini file. This will provide subtitle style lyrics for various versions of Frets on Fire, even those that did not support scrolling lyrics. Since script.txt requires the lyrics to be line synced, the script.txt file will not contain lyrics that are not defined within lyric lines, and EOF will present a warning if there are any lyrics with this problem. The script.txt export will not work if the project folder's path contains Unicode of extended (ie. accented) ASCII characters.

"8th Note HO/PO" refers to the optional song.ini parameter that overrides FoF's default Hammer On/Pull Off settings, specifying that a single note (probably not chords, but this may vary between versions of FoF) in any guitar track that is 1/8 of one measure apart or closer to the previous note will be a HOPO note and not require a strum. This song.ini parameter should work in RF-Mod based versions of FoF, such as RF-Mod, Alarian and FoFiX.

"Use fret hand pos of 1 (pro g)" refers to an advanced feature relating to authoring custom pro guitar content for Rock Band. When this option is enabled, EOF will export the MIDI so that a single fret hand position of fret 1 is written for the 17 and 22 fret pro guitar tracks, instead of writing a fret hand position for each note in the expert difficulty of each of the two tracks. This allows dislike guitar parts to be authored in different difficulties of the same guitar track, which would otherwise have fret hand markers written based on the notes in the expert difficulty, but if the fret numbers used get too high, it can lead to RB3 displaying incorrect fret numbers for those gems.

"Use fret hand pos of 1 (pro b)" refers to an advanced feature relating to authoring custom pro guitar content for Rock Band. When this option is enabled, EOF will export the MIDI so that a single fret hand position of fret 1 is written for the 17 and 22 fret pro bass tracks, instead of writing a fret hand position for each note in the expert difficulty of each of the two tracks.

"Use accurate time signature" specifies whether to use updated logic that properly changes the length of a beat takes the time signature's denominator (the "beat unit") into acount as it does in music theory. To prevent unwanted alteration for existing projects' beat timings, this is not enabled by default for existing projects, but can be enabled or disabled by going into Song>Properties and toggling the "Use accurate time signatures" option. When this option is changed, if the project uses any non #/4 time signatures, EOF will offer to alter tempos so that beat positions remain the same. Time signature changes that change the denominator are forced to be anchors, to prevent the ability to accidentally corrupt the tempo map. File imports have been updated to handle this setting being enabled for new projects, and GPA import will forcibly enable this option because the Go PlayAlong format writes its timings in a way where time signatures must be taken into account. Functions in the "Beat>Time signature" menu are now disabled as appropriate if the tempo map is locked, to ensure the beat positions remain unaltered.

"Loading Text" is the text that appears on the loading screen while your song is loading in "Frets On Fire" (currently only supported in FoFiX). If this field is populated, it is used to create a message box displayed at the beginning of the song when used for Rocksmith. You can put date/time tags in the loading text and they will be expanded to the current date/time values (see http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ctime/strftime/ for usable tags) for the Rocksmith message box.

EOF stores all these settings in the ".eof" project file and exports relevant options to "song.ini" when saving for compatibility with "Frets On Fire."

Leading Silence

Allows you to insert silent audio at the beginning of the chart audio, for purposes of allowing enough time before the first beat marker or simply give the chart a polished look by easily adding a controlled amount of leading silence before the first beat marker without having to alter the audio in another program such as Audacity. Unless necessary for syncing purposes, it's best to sync the first beat marker for your chart (see the EOF Tutorial for details) before using this feature. When you access the Leading Silence feature, you have the option of adding a specified number of milliseconds' or beat's (based on the first beat's tempo) worth of silence (only positive, whole numbers) to beginning of the chart via two different options: The first option (Add) simply adds the specified amount of silence whereas the second option (Pad) will take the first beat marker's position (MIDI delay) into account to adjust the chart so that the amount of silence added moves the first beat marker to the specified position from the start of the audio. The appropriate amount of silent audio is created and the currently loaded OGG file is joined to it. For example: If you have synced a chart to have a MIDI delay of 225, adding 100ms of silence will result in the chart having a MIDI delay of 335 afterward. If you pad to 500ms of silence instead, it will result in the chart having a MIDI delay of 500ms afterward.

EOF takes precautions to preserve the original audio, making this function safe to use. When this feature is used to add silence to the beginning of a chart, the original audio for the currently loaded OGG file (see Load OGG for details) is saved with a ".backup" file extension, allowing you to restore the original audio file manually if necessary. The undo and redo features are also compatible with this function, so you can simply undo and redo the adding of leading silence as desired. If you have already made enough changes so that there are not enough undo states to revert the addition of leading silence, you can open the leading silence feature again and add 0 ms of silence, and the original audio will be restored. That will also wo