The High Quality Emailing Guide

If you're looking for guidance on submitting high quality rips to highqualityrips@gmail.com, the email address of the SiIvaGunner YouTube channel, you're in the right place! This guide will take you through the steps of writing and submitting an email. We've tried to answer many questions that you might (or might not) have about the process.

Before you send your email…

Consider perusing the High Quality Ripping Checklist to make sure you've made your rip truly high quality! If you need help with your rip, or with the ripping process in general, feel free to ask for help in the #ripping_help_and_feedback discussion channel in the Official SiIvaGunner Fan Server on Discord.

Formatting your email

After you've produced your high-quality rip, it's important to make sure your submission email is legible and complete, as that makes the team's job easier!

Here's what a typical email to us should look like. Let's break down its features…

First of all, the subject line. This should be the title of the rip, as it would appear on the SiIvaGunner channel, in the format of the track name and then the game name, separated by a hyphen. If you'd like the rip to have a specific mix name, such as "(OST Version)", include that as well. (Note that in some special cases, such as submitting to an event, you may wish to include information like the event name in the subject line, e.g. "[Grand Dad Event] Track - Game".)

The next essential part of the email is the body: the actual content of the email. The first part of the body should be the metadata: the rip's title and description, which will be used on YouTube. Make sure you include the following:

• The track name (with mix name if needed) and game name, separated by a hyphen, just like in the subject line.
• The Music field, containing the track name, as well as the mix name if you've chosen one.
• The composer of the track you're ripping. If you don't know the composer or there wasn't a composer credit in the game, just omit the composer.
• The playlist, followed by a link to the playlist if it exists. If it doesn't, just leave it blank.
• The platforms the game is on. Typically, we list only the platforms that the game was FIRST released on.

You can often take some of this information directly from existing rips of the game, but be careful not to introduce errors – for example, if the game has multiple composers, make sure you haven't copied the wrong names. And if the text of the playlist link ends in "playlist?list…", then you might need to click the link to be able to copy it correctly.

After you put the metadata, the most important part is the rip itself! Include a file sharing link to your rip where we can easily preview and download it. (Please don't attach any files directly to the email, as that wastes our Google account's storage space.)

We would recommend uploading your rip to either Google Drive or Dropbox. Please make sure that anyone with the link can view the file, as shown below, or we won't be able to access your rip. If you need more detailed instructions on enabling link sharing, refer to Google Drive Help or Dropbox Help.

We prefer the following formats for submission: MP3 for audio (make sure that the audio quality is 320kbps), and MP4 or other similar compressed video formats for video. It doesn't hurt if you submit using other file formats, but these are the most common and most convenient to preview.

After this part, you need to explain the joke of your rip. Be as clear and concise as possible, and make sure you explain every joke no matter HOW obvious it may seem! It can also be helpful to include timestamps for each of your changes, and to link to an upload of the original track that the rip is based on.

Finally, at the end of the email, you need to include the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) by adding the following line:

"I understand that this is an anonymous submission and that I will not be credited."

This means you agree to not promote yourself as the creator in the comment section of the rip. We here at SiIvaGunner like to maintain a sense of kayfabe to keep the channel's magic going! Of course, you are free to upload the rip to your website or other public platform – but you may only do this after the rip has been published. Keep it a surprise!

And of course, if you've sent an email and you notice its formatting has a minor flaw, don't worry about it. What matters is that we can hear your rip and understand what the sources in it are. Even if there's a mistake in the audio, you can always send an improved version of the rip at any time, even if we haven't responded yet. If you do decide to update your submission, please reply to your original email when sending it.

Once you've got everything down and have double checked your email for any errors, you are finally ready to send your rip to SiIvaGunner!

…or are you?

The Banlist

While we accept a wide, diverse range of musical video games and genres, we do not allow certain types of submissions. Here are just a few examples of types of rips which we do not allow and which will be rejected:

• Rips of these specific tracks: "Title Theme - The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy", and "Snow halation - Love Live! School idol festival". (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 Maroon GO.
• Rips that are just unedited audio.
• Rips that are MIDI-slaps (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 Hotline Miami and Super Meat Boy).
• Rips containing any music by Chris Christodoulou (including Risk of Rain, Risk of Rain 2 and Deadbolt).

If your rip falls into any of these categories, it is very likely you will get no response.

The "Discouraged" List

There are also a few things we discourage but that are not outright banned. Tread carefully with these, and remember that you're less likely to get a response if you submit the following:

• 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 our channel. In general, the more times a track has been ripped, the higher the standards are for it. This includes reused tracks (such as some tracks included in the Super Mario Maker 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".

• 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, we recommend 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, we recommend avoiding the use of music published by Bushiroad, such as the soundtracks of Project Sekai, BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! and D4DJ Groovy Mix.

• Rips of music that doesn't originate from video games, even if the music technically appears in a video game.

Other notes to remember

• Don't submit your rip to multiple places! If we find 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 us know in a reply to your original email. Doing so allows us to save time and process other submissions faster.
• If you aren't sure what source to use for the track title of your rip, we normally use 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 his upload and base your submission off that, it's appreciated, but don't worry about it otherwise.

• We prefer 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. We may change the mix name if we 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, you're welcome to whip up a thumbnail for it! It's not required, but we certainly do appreciate it! If you DO submit one, please keep these rules 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 us using in-game/promotional assets include Cyberpunk 2077, Luigi's Mansion 3, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Mario's Time Machine and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• When sending us 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 we receive your submission, we can choose to accept it, reject it, or ask you to make some changes. It can take a while for us to respond to submissions; we get a lot of them, but we'd still like to be thorough and fair.

Since we receive a lot of submissions, we typically don't send emails about rejections, but rest assured we do read all of your emails! If you don't get a response on your rip, don't worry – you are always welcome to send more rips in.

If you receive an email that describes changes that you need to make, you're on your way to getting the rip accepted! Feel free to ask us (or people in our official Discord server) for clarification if you don't understand something. Once you're done, send us the new version of your rip. (If we haven't asked you to change anything yet, you can still send us an improved version of your rip at any time.)

• When sending an updated version of your rip, please keep everything in the same email thread by replying to the most recent email regarding said rip (even if it means you're replying to your own email).
• If you use Google Drive or Dropbox, we'd prefer that you update your file without generating a new link. This helps us avoid mix-ups. On Google Drive, you can right-click the old version of your file, select "Manage versions", and press the "Upload new version" button to replace the file. On both Google Drive and Dropbox, you can replace the old version of your 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 you update the file, please send an email so that we know you've improved the rip.

If you receive an email saying your rip has been accepted, you can look forward to seeing it on the channel!

After a rip is accepted, we may tell you that you can have your rip published on a future SiIvaGunner album on Bandcamp. If this is the case, there are two things you will need to provide: a lossless version (in FLAC or WAV format) of your rip, and an artist credit and a track title for the track list of the album.

• As usual, you should upload the FLAC or WAV file to a file sharing site like Google Drive or Dropbox, and send us the link. Please don't send it 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 you can make your credit basically anything you want, please don't include personal information like your real name unless you're sure you want it to be publicly known.
• At the start of some events, we may publish an announcement video that includes an email submission template. For those events specifically, you should include the lossless version of the rip and your 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 we ask you to.

Conclusion

Well, you are now ready to email to SiIvaGunner.

If you find that you enjoy it, why not try ripping more? Make what you'd love to see on the channel a reality. If you need more specific help on submitting or just ripping in general, feel free to ask in the channel designed for it in our official Discord server.

Thanks for reading this guide, and we hope you have fun submitting to our channel!

Appendix – Email body template

[Track Name] - [Game Name]

Music:

Composer:

Playlist:

Platform:

[link to rip]

Joke:

I understand that this is an anonymous submission and that I will not be credited.