Ok you all know me as BlackGuy aka T.B.K.G, but since my simfiling days are coming to a small close I figured I would leave a small guide for the best tools to making a simfile lil more easy. Note: some of tools mentioned may take a lil work to get while some can be easily gotten through our favorite search engine...Google.
Sims or way more easier to make then anything they describe with a few tools. Depending on how much siming material you have (movie, music, bg, etc.) you can make just a decent sim as some you see around here such as DM Ashura. From here i'll show you the steps starting from the beginning.
Simfile ( .sm, .dwi )
Before you do anything create a folder with all your material needed for your simfile then put it in a folder in your stepmania songs folder named somthing like "project" or somthing. ALWAYS DO THIS TO SHORTEN THE HASSLE ON CREATING YOUR SIMS.
First off this file is needed for all stepmania simfiles to run, just putting a movie, bg and mp3 in a folder means nothing if you dont have this file. I've seen a tutorial around here that describes on how to make one...but instead of reading all that and whatever im going to use a tool long forgotten that still has a great use, XSTEP.
Xstep is a tool used to make DWI for stepmania with little complications if used right. It can be found here (
XStep DWI Maker).
When you first start it, It will ask where your stepmania folder and winamp folder are located. Lead it straight to your stepmania folder and screw your winamp folder if you dont use it and or dont want to point it to it (makes no difference). Then once its started it will give you an interface that doesnt take a monkey to figure out.
If your smart you would have created a folder with all your materials in it ahead of time for the simfile you are creating, mp3, bga, bg...etc. Just Checking...
Ignore everything besides the few things that do matter (mp3 location, etc...), Md5 hash you ignore along with anything below the #File Tag option besides bpm. That is useless and won't be needed. Fill in the blanks with the information that is needed, bg should be in the same folder as your mp3 so just copy the location of your mp3 and paste it in your bg slot, remove the mp3 file name and replace it with your bg name along with its file type (bmp, jpeg...etc). So it should be somthing like (C:\Program Files\Stepmania\songs\PROJECT\"simfile folder"\ then the name of the file like "background.jpeg". We'll do banner later.
OPTIONAL: In xstep it has a play sample feature so you can play a small cut of music when your song is highlighted in stepmania. Using Winamp or any other player that shows the time played and type in the first section where it says "Start Sampe At" type in the second where its at then add three zeros to it ( 23 seconds into a song would be 23000). Then on the line below type how many second you want it to play (want it to play for 10 seconds? then type 10000) and thats it.
Now were gonna do somthing that everyone usually complains about finding..BPM. Theres two ways to do this, use the built in bpm finder in xstep, or use a program that can measure the bpm of that song and any other song in a folder. MxMeister BPM Analyzer, get it here : (
MixMeister BPM Analyzer)
This baby will find "any" base bpm as long as its in 1/4 beat, may be off on other time signatures but not much. Anyway run this baby then point it to your project folder by using the file find command on the top right. Once you get the mp3 analyzed type the exact bpm down to the decimals into the bpm section of xstep (hopefully you havent closed it...) and then once its in there close the analyzer, click file on Xstep and choose "export to DWI". It will ask if you want to save a .xstep file...say no, name the file and save it in your song folder.
And as far as making the simfile thats needed, it's done. Remember though, although it does say .DWI on the end, once you save it in stepmania after editing it will save it in the .DWI format AND export and save it as a .SM file. So dont worry about that.
Now on to the goodies of the file that many people will find very interesting.
Video and BG changes
Ok, so we all love movies in our sims but i'll give you a small lowdown, any video file not encoded in divx and or sized below or at 512x384 format might and or will experience lag. Since Stepmania is only use to files encoded with divx it limits us to how much quality in a file we can have. And since it also take up some good proccesor work to run the video file, the encoding for video has to be right. Now I can tell that some of your are saying "Encoding?", yes all videos are encoded with a video codec that differs depending on quality vs size. Now Im not gonna get complicated with this so ill just be blunt, depending on how long the video is and how much quality is in it depends on its size. You cant have HDTV quality from a movie like LOTR and have it at 3mb...but we can still wish. Anyway theres a few tools i do use for encoding and certain codecs but ill start you small.
AutoGK (
AutoGK Homepage - THE tool for XviD / DivX conversion)
This can convert mpeg and avi to a different codec format by encoding it with a codec different from the one its using. With this you can also resize, remove audio, or even determine the size of the video. Remember though this is a converter so if you want to edit it then you'll have to look elsewhere. It also has a guide on how to use it if you can't pick up on it easily or you want to know certain things about it. Xvid comes with the package so ou will also have to download DivX from the website (
DivX Video Player - DivX Video Codec - DivX Converter).
As far as i can explain, the tools I shown you can really speed up on how fast you get your sims done. This guide is based off me thinking you already know how to use the edit mode in stepmania. If theres anything you need questions on (Dual encoding, Advanced tools, ripping videos, etc) just give me a buzz through my messenger and or give me a message through the forums.
Speed Filing Tools For The Begginer And The Veteran 
