Info File for the "DelFirst" Standard MIDI File Utility ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1991 Slim Heilpern & Magnetic Music DelFirst is a simple utility that rewrites any Format 1 Standard MIDI File (SMF) and deletes its first track in the process. To invoke DelFirst, type "delfirst " where is the name of the file you wish to rewrite. DelFirst assumes that the file you wish to rewrite has the file extension ".MID" unless you specify a different extension or type the filename with a "." but no extension. DelFirst renames the original file using the ".BAK" extension. If a file already exists with this backup filename (such as "thissong.bak"), it will be overwritten! If you invoke DelFirst without specifying a file name, DelFirst will display some basic help information and take no action. Why did we write this silly utility? Some MIDI software packages assume that the first track of a SMF contains conductor information only, others don't (we won't attempt to pass judgement on which is correct - obviously the spec is a bit ambiguous in this regard...). When we updated the Standard MIDI File implementation for our Texture 4 software, we decided that it was WAY too inconvenient NOT to write a separate conductor track because certain pieces of software were dumping the non-conductor MIDI data in track one. After releasing Texture 4 we were confronted with a new problem: A certain piece of software was crashing because it had a maximum of 24 tracks, and Texture was now writing 25 including the conductor track. People who used to be able to import their SMF files created with Texture 3 now found it crashing with their new SMF files created with Texture 4! Even though this is not a Texture bug, we decided to write this utility so they could easily import these files while they wait for the other vendor to fix their product. There are probably other situations and software that would benefit from having this baby around, so here it is. This is a one job only utility and while we realize that a more general purpose utility would be useful and fun, this one was needed and very simple to write, relatively speaking. Because this utility requires no user input once invoked, you can run it from a batch file that in one user step converts the file in question and then loads the application of your choice. Remember that the track-removal affect is cumulative, so don't run it twice on the same file unless you want to remove more than just the first track. MAGNETIC MUSIC 647 W. Orange Grove Pomona, CA 91768 (714) 865 0407 FAX (714) 625 0894 =========================================================================