Ripping

Ripping, in the context of video games, is the process of extracting songs from a game, therefore "ripping" the songs from the files of the game, completely unmodified.
On the SiIvaGunner channel, however, instead of being straight video game music, the songs featured on the channel are generally remixed, or involved in a mashup with other songs or memes. These "rips" are submitted to the channel and vetted by members of the SiIvaGunner team.
== Making rips ==
=== The SiIvaGunner Official Ripping Guide ===
In July 2017, Matsu Muhō released the official guide to making rips in the Reddit thread "At long last, I proudly present: The SiIvaGunner Official Ripping Guide!".Matsu Muhō. "At long last, I proudly present: The SiIvaGunner Official Ripping Guide!". Reddit. 5 July 2017. The guide mostly deals with melody changes and ripping.
The guide is hosted on Matsu's website at https://wildmatsu.xyz/ripguide. It is also backed up on SiIvaGunner's official website at https://highquality.rip/ripguide, but the content is not properly formatted and still presented from Matsu's point of view.
Matsu's guide is divided into seven parts:
* Part 0: Ethics – concerning the moral and legal implications of ripping, transcribing and music production, and the concept of the MIDI slap
* Part 1: The Idea – concerning the process of creating a workable idea for a melody swap, the basic technical elements involved in harmonically and structurally matching melody and accompaniment, and testing beforehand whether an idea will work
* Part 2: Tools – concerning software used in the ripping community for music production, including DAWs (digital audio workstations) like FL Studio and REAPER, and other editing tools like Audacity and Sekaiju
* Part 3: Getting Editable Music – concerning the difference between streamed and sequenced music, and the methods and software used in editing sequenced music from several consoles (as well as a handful of specific games with specialized tools)
* Part 4: Identifying Key – concerning methods of identifying tonality and changing the tonality of a melody
* Part 5: Quality – concerning note lengths, accuracy, and the process of exporting audio files
* Part 6: Conclusion – suggestions, further reading and acknowledgements
Matsu's guide is fairly limited in scope, and omits certain details, such as the processes involved in making arrangements, mashups, non-mashup rips of streamed music, and visuals.
=== The High Quality Ripping Checklist ===
On September 30, 2022, SiIvaGunner released another official ripping guide through the video "Capybara Coconut Doggy". The guide is hosted on Google Docs under the title "The High Quality Ripping Checklist". SiIvaGunner's official website also has a URL dedicated to redirecting to the checklist at https://highquality.rip/checklist.
The checklist is divided into five parts:
* Concept of the rip – concerning the concept of rips and basic quality standards
* Audio export – concerning bitrates, sample rates, volume, looping, and fadeouts
* Melody, harmony and rhythm – concerning syncing and pitching sources, transcribing melodies and chords in terms of pitch and rhythm, matching melodies to chords, using third-party MIDIs for reference, and editing two-part harmonies
* Accuracy – concerning accurately emulating and recreating music and preserving the timbre of instrument samples
* Mashup-specific – concerning pitch-shifting, DIY vocal isolations, mixing vocals with instrumentals, and editing together different parts of sources
=== Other resources ===
Other team members have also occasionally published information and software related to ripping.
* SilvaGunner Starter KitPosted by Hisa in the Official SiIvaGunner Fan Server.
* "Accurate SNES Ripping Guide" by pedipanol
* The High Quality Podcast: "Episode 4 - ft. 123zc" (discussion of ripping from 56:02 to 59:18) by New Guy and 123zc
=== Resources for rippable material ===
* GBA Mus Ripper fork (Windows) by berg8793
* Obtaining sources for creating a high quality rip by overcast07
* Remixpacks.club stems index (February 25, 2022) - Spreadsheet for lossless downloads of song stems, endorsed by overcast07 in the previous resource
* Donnie's Mashup Resource Pack - Google doc containing FLP's for song recreations, among others by DonnieTheGuy.
== Submissions ==
In order to get rips uploaded onto the channel, contributors who are not part of the SiIvaGunner team submit their rips to the channel via email. It usually takes a while for rip submissions to get responses; often more than a month. However, if a submission fits for an upcoming or ongoing channel event, it may be reviewed and receive a response sooner.
Part of the SiIvaGunner team, QoC ("Quality of Control"; named such as an in-joke), performs quality checks on new submissions from both team members and fans. Often, email submissions do not receive a response due to not meeting quality standards, but rip submissions that are judged to be high quality enough may be accepted, with the submitter receiving an acceptance email. If a rip submission is considered to have fixable issues, the submitter may receive an email with suggestions or instructions for improvement, and they may respond with an updated submission once they have tried to fix the issues in question.
=== History ===
Although the channel technically always accepted fan submissions, the subject was never formally addressed until the release of "Main Theme - Superman 64" in August 2016. In that video, the SiIvaGunner channel explained their submission rules. These rules were later expanded, first in December 2016 with "YOU can join the fight! - A Recruitment Video from The Voice", then in March 2019 with "The Haltmann Works Co. Training Video (Emailing Rips, Art, and King for Another Day Contestants!)", and again in September 2022 with "The High Quality Emailing Guide", which was released through the video "Capybara Coconut Doggy""The High Quality Emailing Guide"
In July 2017, Matsu Muhō posted a Reddit thread called "At long last, I proudly present: The SiIvaGunner Official Ripping Guide!", which linked to the Voice's recruitment video and included several more tips on submitting to the channel.
=== Basic rules ===
*Contributions should include the following Non-Disclosure Agreement: "I understand that this is an anonymous submission and I will not be credited." Despite the broad wording of this agreement, the team only expects that you do not promote yourself as the rip's creator in the YouTube comment section and that you do not publish the rip to any personal accounts until after it goes up on SiIvaGunner..
*Emails must follow the following format:
**To: highqualityrips@gmail.com
**Subject: Main Theme (OST Version) - Mario
**Body:
Main Theme (OST Version) - Mario
Music: Main Theme (OST Version)
Composer: Toby Fox
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL0CQjrcN8D0rppfaIAJLryr17QSnJJsg
Platform: PC
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_PKsbeKFBTzyGEWKN9vqGmAUyNpZCtaW/view
Joke: The Flintstones theme.
I understand that this is an anonymous submission and I will not be credited.
*The preferred formats for submissions are MP3 for audio (with a quality of 320kbps) and MP4 or other similar compressed video formats for video.
*It is highly recommended that the link is a file sharing link and not an email attachment. It is recommended to upload it to either Google Drive or Dropbox.
*If the contributor wants to update a submission, it should be sent as a reply to the original email.
==== The “Discouraged” List ====
The following elements are not outright banned from submissions, but rather discouraged, and should be used carefully in rips:
* Rips that contain any elements that are off-key (unless that’s the joke)
* Rips that go out of sync or offbeat (unless that's the joke)
* Rips that contain low quality audio (unless that’s the joke)
* Ripping a track which has already been ripped multiple times (more than 4) on the channel. In general, the more times a song has been ripped, the higher the standards are for it. This includes reused tracks (such as some tracks included in the games).
** These stricter standards don’t apply to rips of “Slider - Super Mario 64”, “Circus - Five Nights at Freddy's”, “Wood Man Stage - Mega Man 2” or "Raft Ride - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening"."Raft Ride" was added to this list on May 19, 2023, after "Raft Ride" became a frequently ripped track following Raft Ride Day.
* Any audio or footage that will get your rip blocked in a lot of countries, such as songs by Kanye West or Drake. If you use these songs, the team recommends privately uploading them to your own channel beforehand to test if YouTube’s copyright system causes the video to be blocked.
** Due to cases of copyright strikes on other channels, the team recommends avoiding the use of music published by Bushiroad, such as the soundtracks of , BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! and .
* Rips of music that doesn’t originate from video games, even if the music technically appears in a video game.
==== The Banlist ====
These elements are banned from submissions, and any rips containing them will be automatically rejected.The banlist originally included "Anything related to the Protegent Rap." This was removed after the submission guidelines for The SiIvaGunner Halloween Horror Special Part VI: The Cult of Proto were published, in which rips featuring "The Protegent Rap" were accepted.
*Rips of these specific tracks: “”, and “”. (This only refers to the titles! You're still allowed to use these sources in rips that don't have those specific titles.)
* Rips labeled under fake games, except for already established cases such as .
* Rips that are just unedited audio.
* Rips that are (reused, unedited MIDI data with the instruments swapped out).
* Anything related to The Jetsons.
* Anything that should not be published on YouTube according to its community guidelines, such as gore, shock imagery, porn imagery or hate speech.
Additionally, the following types of rip are banned for copyright-related reasons:
* Rips of songs by Morimori Atsushi.
* Rips using any direct audio from Hiroyuki Sawano soundtracks (Kill la Kill, Re;CREATORS, etc.) unless modified heavily.
* Rips featuring sentai show footage.
* Rips containing any music by Scattle (including his music for and ).
* Rips containing any music by Chris Christodoulou (including , Risk of Rain 2 and Deadbolt).
=== Other notes to remember ===
* Don’t submit your rip to multiple places! If the team finds that your rip’s already been published on another YouTube channel or on any other media platform, in “rip” format or otherwise, then the rip will be rejected.
* If you'd like to withdraw a submission for any reason, please let the team know in a reply to your original email. Doing so allows them to save time and process other submissions faster.
* If you aren’t sure what source to use for the track title of your rip, SiIvaGunner normally uses these sources/methods to determine the title: GilvaSunner > Official Soundtrack > Sound Test > In-Game Name > Commonly Agreed Name > Best Guess. (GilvaSunner takes precedence over the official soundtrack, which takes precedence over the sound test, and so on.)
** Due to the deletion of GilvaSunner’s channel, it’s a bit harder to find the metadata he used for his videos. If you can find an archive of a song he ripped and base your submission off that, it’s appreciated, but don’t worry about it otherwise.
* SiIvaGunner prefers believable mix names such as Beta Mix, Alpha Mix, OST Version, In-Game Version, and other mix names that are already commonly used on the channel. The only exceptions to this are for rips of “Slider”, “Circus” and “Wood Man Stage”, but in those cases you should still avoid using a mix name that easily reveals the joke. The team may change the mix name if they think it doesn’t fit the channel or if it has already been used for another rip of the same track.
* If a game has never been ripped before, the contributor is welcome to make their own thumbnail for it, though this is not required. If they submit a thumbnail, they should keep the following in mind:
** Make sure it is at least 1080p resolution.
** Make sure it is high quality, of course; meaning it’s not blurry, makes use of accurate assets, is properly centered, and uses proper pixel art scaling (i.e. nearest-neighbor) if applicable. 
** Please refer to existing thumbnails on the channel for examples of how to put together a thumbnail image. Examples of thumbnails that were created by SiIvaGunner using in-game/promotional assets include , , , and .
* When sending the thumbnail image, don’t add it as an attachment to the email; upload it to a file hosting service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. If you use a different service, please make sure the image hasn’t been compressed and is the same file as the one on your computer.
=== What happens after submitting? ===
* After the team receives a submission, they can choose to accept it, reject it, or ask the contributor to make some changes. It can take a while for the team to respond to submissions, since they get a lot of them.
* Since the team receives a lot of submissions, they typically don’t send emails about rejections, but they do read all email submissions.
* If the contributor receives an email that describes changes that they need to make, they're on their way to getting the rip accepted. Contributors are free to ask the team (or people in SiIvaGunner's official Discord server) for clarification if they don't understand something. Once they're done, send them the new version of your rip. (If the team hasn't asked them to change anything yet, they can still send them an improved version of their rip at any time.)
** When sending an updated version of their rip, they should keep everything in the same email thread by replying to the most recent email regarding said rip (even if it means they're replying to their own email).
** If they use Google Drive or Dropbox, it is recommended that they update their file without generating a new link, to avoid confusion. On Google Drive, they can right-click the old version of the file, select "Manage versions", and press the "Upload new version" button to replace the file. On both Google Drive and Dropbox, they can replace the old version of the file by renaming the new file to have exactly the same name, then uploading it into the same folder as the old file.
** Even if the file link is still the same after they update the file, they should send an email so that the team knows that the rip has been improved.
* If the contributor receives an email saying their rip has been accepted, they can look forward to seeing it on the channel.
* After a rip is accepted, SiIvaGunner may tell the contributor that they can have their rip published on a future album on Bandcamp. If this is the case, there are two things they will need to provide: a lossless version (in FLAC or WAV format) of their rip, and an artist credit and a track title for the track list of the album.
** As usual, they should upload the FLAC or WAV file to a file sharing site like Google Drive or Dropbox, and send the team the link, again not as an attachment.
** The artist credit and track title may be formatted like this: “Barney Rubble - My Awesome Rip”, with the artist credit before the track title. While the contributor can make their credit basically anything they want, they shouldn't include personal information like their real name unless they're sure they want it to be publicly known.
** At the start of some events, SiIvaGunner may publish an announcement video that includes an email submission template. For those events specifically, the contributor should include the lossless version of the rip and their preferred credit and track title in the initial rip submission, as instructed in the announcement video. In all other cases, it's not necessary to send lossless audio or album information before the team asks them to.
== See also ==
*Rip - for a list of jokes and analysis of high quality rips.
== References ==
== Notes ==
Category:Content