"midi 1" vs." midi 1 riff" files

[mdiemer]

What is the difference between these two types of midi files? I always save as midi1. That gives me all my midi tracks on separate tracks, with all the CC events, velocities etc. Would the midi 1 riff be better in some way?

[slartabartfast]

Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) is a general file format that is capable of containing a variety of types of data, including MIDI data, although it is more commonly used for other multimedia data. MIDI 1 is a MIDI file specification in which the tracks' information are recorded separately--so, as you note the file contains the information needed to recover the individual tracks. MIDI 0 is a MIDI file that contains all of the tracks' information merged, but including channel information that allows some reconstruction of the original by channel to track mapping. The limit to reconstruction from MIDI 0 occurs when multiple tracks are assigned to the same channel, as the information to separate such tracks is not encoded.

Standard MIDI software and devices usually expect a MIDI specified file structure and not the same information in a RIFF wrapper, so unless you are planning to do something unusual, there is no benefit to RIFF. They should both have the same MIDI information, but extracting it from the RIFF format may be problematic.

[mdiemer]

19 minutes ago, slartabartfast said:

Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) is a general file format that is capable of containing a variety of types of data, including MIDI data, although it is more commonly used for other multimedia data. MIDI 1 is a MIDI file specification in which the tracks' information are recorded separately--so, as you note the file contains the information needed to recover the individual tracks. MIDI 0 is a MIDI file that contains all of the tracks' information merged, but including channel information that allows some reconstruction of the original by channel to track mapping. The limit to reconstruction from MIDI 0 occurs when multiple tracks are assigned to the same channel, as the information to separate such tracks is not encoded.

Standard MIDI software and devices usually expect a MIDI specified file structure and not the same information in a RIFF wrapper, so unless you are planning to do something unusual, there is no benefit to RIFF. They should both have the same MIDI information, but extracting it from the RIFF format may be problematic.

Thanks, that's very helpful.