Shntool frontend

[uhclem]

There's a frontend by Speek (the author of Multi-frontend and FLAC-frontend) that can now run shntool for you. It's called BatchEnc (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/batchenc.htm).

BatchEnc (which stands for 'batch encoder') is a frontend similar to Multi-frontend, but instead of picking the encoder from a list then selecting or adding in options, you type in the entire command line and save it, and it runs that command line over whatever files you've added to the list. Here's what it looks like:

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/speek_files/Batchenc.png

This means it's not as easy to use as FLAC-frontend or Multi-frontend, but it now will work with shntool, whereas no other Speek frontend will. This is because you tell BatchEnc to work with any command line program you want, i.e. shntool, and, thanks to a change made earlier this month, you can now use the new <allfiles> argument which will tell BatchEnc to pass all the files in your file list to a single instance of the command line, instead of one file at a time.

This, of course, is essential when fixing sector boundary errors, the main purpose of shntool. For instance, if you want to fix the sector boundaries on a set of files you would use a command line such as this:

shntool fix <allfiles>

and BatchEnc will now pass all the files in your list to the command line as one group, in the order they are placed in your list. So make sure you have the files in the right order. Previously BatchEnc could only pass one file at a time to the command line so shntool would have ended up padding the end of each file, which is pointless.

You can also now use BatchEnc for all other shntool modes as well, such as len, md5, etc.

I'm not saying everyone should run out now and learn how to use BatchEnc for this purpose, and I don't think Speek even intended this purpose, but I thought many of you might be interested in checking it out. I've been doing some testing and so far it's working just fine.

[Neilyboy]

very clean interface.. thx much man.. ill give it a go

neil

[pmonk]

Works very nice!

[Five]

excellent!

This absolutely rocks! Got it working in about 10 seconds.

type

shntool -h

in the command line to get more commands. to use the examples replace *.shn (for example) with <allfiles>

eg:

shntool info <allfiles> > shntool_info.txt
shntool len <allfiles> > shntool_len.txt
shntool md5 <allfiles> > shntool.st5

[DeepElem]

There's a frontend by Speek (the author of Multi-frontend and FLAC-frontend) that can now run shntool for you. It's called BatchEnc (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/batchenc.htm).

BatchEnc (which stands for 'batch encoder') is a frontend similar to Multi-frontend, but instead of picking the encoder from a list then selecting or adding in options, you type in the entire command line and save it, and it runs that command line over whatever files you've added to the list. Here's what it looks like:

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/speek_files/Batchenc.png

This means it's not as easy to use as FLAC-frontend or Multi-frontend, but it now will work with shntool, whereas no other Speek frontend will. This is because you tell BatchEnc to work with any command line program you want, i.e. shntool, and, thanks to a change made earlier this month, you can now use the new <allfiles> argument which will tell BatchEnc to pass all the files in your file list to a single instance of the command line, instead of one file at a time.

This, of course, is essential when fixing sector boundary errors, the main purpose of shntool. For instance, if you want to fix the sector boundaries on a set of files you would use a command line such as this:

shntool fix <allfiles>

and BatchEnc will now pass all the files in your list to the command line as one group, in the order they are placed in your list. So make sure you have the files in the right order. Previously BatchEnc could only pass one file at a time to the command line so shntool would have ended up padding the end of each file, which is pointless.

You can also now use BatchEnc for all other shntool modes as well, such as len, md5, etc.

I'm not saying everyone should run out now and learn how to use BatchEnc for this purpose, and I don't think Speek even intended this purpose, but I thought many of you might be interested in checking it out. I've been doing some testing and so far it's working just fine.

I guess I'm missing something, but if I can type: shntool -fix , or -pad, -strip, or -md5, or whatever, why would I need or want this?
If I can't type the shntool commands, it won't work anyway, right?
Think I'll stick with shntool, just another useless frontend IMO.

[pmonk]

why would I need or want this?
Because once you get all the useful commands saved it is simple and easy to use

If I can't type the shntool commands, it won't work anyway, right?
It accepts all the shntool commands and works fine in all the shntool modes

Think I'll stick with shntool, just another useless frontend IMO.

Actually - I find this frontend very, very useful (with some help from Uchclem)
:)

[pmonk]

Bump!

[uhclem]

I guess I'm missing something, but if I can type: shntool -fix , or -pad, -strip, or -md5, or whatever, why would I need or want this?
If I can't type the shntool commands, it won't work anyway, right?
Think I'll stick with shntool, just another useless frontend IMO.
If you have to ask this then you don't really know how to use shntool to begin with. You sound like one of those people who just runs shntool over every file in the directory all at once, w/o any consideration for set breaks or other interruptions between tracks which render track shifts unnecessary and even undesirable.

And BatchEnc is far more useful than quoting my entire original post.

[DeepElem]

If you have to ask this then you don't really know how to use shntool to begin with. You sound like one of those people who just runs shntool over every file in the directory all at once, w/o any consideration for set breaks or other interruptions between tracks which render track shifts unnecessary and even undesirable.

And BatchEnc is far more useful than quoting my entire original post.

No, I actually do know how to use it. I had trouble at one time getting it to open ape files, and I wrote Jason, the author, and he gave me upload to his site. It ended up being a bug with win98 and win2k, which is now fixed.
You just seem to like to push frontends like multi frontend, saying mkwACT is outdated. It may be, but it is one of the most simple tools to use. Maybe you just like to impress ppl with your frontends you find, but you tend to try and sway ppl to your views.
My point was only, unless it has the -fix,-pad,-conv,-md5,-strip, etc built in, whats the point.
Using shntool I can do most everything I need to do, without opening another appl.
BTW, Jason is a really nice guy, he replied to me witnin about 4 hours of my writing, he had already at that point tested some ape files and they opened ok for him, thats why he wanted me to upload to him.
I just think that the ppl that make these tools, that work btw, deserve credit, and just because someone happens to want to try and improve it, which in most cases that I've seen, doesn't happen, is wrong to try and sway ppl to them. If Jason had not written shntool, I'd bet that frontend would not have even been thought of.

[Five]

ummm... the frontend is pretty generic. it just stores commands and generates .bat files on the fly for any command line prog.

[uhclem]

No, I actually do know how to use it. I had trouble at one time getting it to open ape files, and I wrote Jason, the author, and he gave me upload to his site. It ended up being a bug with win98 and win2k, which is now fixed.
You just seem to like to push frontends like multi frontend, saying mkwACT is outdated. It may be, but it is one of the most simple tools to use. Maybe you just like to impress ppl with your frontends you find, but you tend to try and sway ppl to your views.
My point was only, unless it has the -fix,-pad,-conv,-md5,-strip, etc built in, whats the point.
Using shntool I can do most everything I need to do, without opening another appl.
BTW, Jason is a really nice guy, he replied to me witnin about 4 hours of my writing, he had already at that point tested some ape files and they opened ok for him, thats why he wanted me to upload to him.
I just think that the ppl that make these tools, that work btw, deserve credit, and just because someone happens to want to try and improve it, which in most cases that I've seen, doesn't happen, is wrong to try and sway ppl to them. If Jason had not written shntool, I'd bet that frontend would not have even been thought of.

First let me say that dropping Jason's name into the discussion doesn't add to your credibility. I too have emailed Jason about shntool and received replies and even helped him iron out a bug in shntool. Yes he is a nice guy. So I guess that means we are even on that score.

But what has this got to do with anything? Where did I take away any credit from Jason for coming up with shntool by suggesting that people try out BatchEnc to run shntool? I am a big fan of shntool, which is one of the most useful tools out there for audio enthusiasts.

The biggest problem that many people have using shntool is that they want to fix only a portion of the files in a directory at one time, which means using a simple wildcard like *.shn won't work because that will fix ALL the files. The solution is either you specify more precisely what files you are working with (which is tough for ppl who already have trouble with the command-line (:wave: @ Five)), or you have to split the files up into separate directories. BatchEnc solves this problem by allowing you to pick the files you want to work with in a simple GUI interface, which is what most people prefer. You have not addressed this point at all in your tirade against me. But it is the key point for why someone would want to use BatchEnc. If anyone is doing any bashing here it is you when you called BatchEnc 'just another useless frontend'. Btw as I pointed out above, BatchEnc was apparently NOT even written with shntool in mind. It was written as a general frontend encoder. I was merely pointing out another use for it. And judging by peoples' replies, they have found it useful. I am sorry that this conflicts with the politics of thanking the coders of binaries by always using the command line.

I advocate the use of frontends b/c they are incredibly handy tools for people who want to work with binary files but who don't want to fuss w/ the command line each time. I do not advocate frontends as a way of bashing the programmers of binaries by suggesting that they have not done a complete job. As a matter of fact, I do most of my encoding with batch files that I wrote myself, NOT with frontends. But I am trying to offer advice to the average TTD'er (not to experts like you) who probably don't want to learn how to make a batch file.

And MKW IS obsolete for a number of reasons: 1. It doesn't produce revision 1 seektables, only revision 0; 2. It has serious issues with Win XP SP2 which can render it inoperable. In addition, it is buggy: 1. the tendency to produce .bak files for inexplicable reasons; 2. its default production of .mkw files which has led more than one person to seed such files w/o knowing why they chose that format. The fact is MKWAct is no longer in active development due to the illness of the author (against whom I have nothing, and I wish him all the best), so I think it only makes sense to conclude that it's now obsolete.

But with Multi-frontend you can take advantage of the LATEST developments in SHN because all you have to do is switch to the latest binary. AND it works with flac.exe and even ape too, i.e. one frontend for ALL formats accepted at TTD. But that being said, if MKWAct works for you then keep using it. I've never suggested that anyone should stop using it for decompressing SHNs if they are having no issues with it.

Of course I tend to try to sway ppl to my views. Should I be trying to sway them towards a viewpoint that I don't agree with? That's just plain absurd. Explain to me how what you do is any different.

I've noticed that you seem to have a real chip on your shoulder regarding people who give advice and have opinions, e.g. wazoo2u. And yet you offer very little useful advice yourself; just pointless criticism ('useless frontend') and selfish tirades against people (i.e. wazoo2u) who are only trying to help you. Next time you need help just email your buddy Jason and don't bother posting here.

[Five]

Yes, I'm one of those commandline-impaired users. :wave: Call it a phobia.

I'm sure there are many more out there. Only after using Batchenc did I finally get a handle on how it works. So I'm very grateful that this thread was started.

Both you guys have done me some good turns in the past and I deeply appreciate it. So please stop fighting. Charlie, why don't you post your SHNtool tutorial you were working on up here in a new thread instead of slamming Uhclem's efforts? I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it.

Bambi is being released on DVD for the first time... remember what Thumper says: "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."

[pmonk]

I agree. Its the use of the frontends and a little help from some friends that made me more competent to use shntool.

Shntool is great but going thru the command process suck (especially of you can't spell or type)!


What takes me 1 minute to do on shntool takes 5 seconds on a frontend!

[range_hood]

Thanks uhclem. looks promising. Now I can get rid of all the batch files/summarize it in one textfile.
Would be cool if there was a context field (on/off switch?) where you can give in some text for every command explaining that command, for documentational or learning purposes.

[Shakes]

Is it possible to input an already FLAC encoded file and once placing it in the frontend... just fixing the SBE on that encoded flac file to a new flac file?

So basically, can I do -- FLAC > SBEfix > FLAC?

If I were to do FLAC > WAV > SBEfix > FLAC that would...

1. Have me have to re-generate flac fingerprints that differ from the original.

2. Compress the wav more?

I know FLAC is a loss-less encoder but if I had a FLAC already and decoded to WAV then encoded back to FLAC wouldn't that just make the audio worse, or no?

[Ted]

I know FLAC is a loss-less encoder but if I had a FLAC already and decoded to WAV then encoded back to FLAC wouldn't that just make the audio worse, or no?

I'm still far from knowledgable about this stuff but I'd think that since flac is lossless, converting it to wav (the uncompressed version), and then back to flac, it should still be lossless - and no degradation to the sound would appear, though the finger print would be different betwen the two flac versions if you SBEfix'ed it in the middle of the conversion process.

EDIT: BTW, I'm refering to the "FLAC > WAV > SBEfix > FLAC" process, NOT the "FLAC > SBEfix > FLAC" process - I'm not sure about that one. I don't think it would compress more and I'm really not sure if the SBEfix would be "allowed" or even possible, since it's compressed.

[kotti]

I love Speek's frontends! I have no trouble with command line but this certainly speeds up the process a lot. I just (re)checked something like 1500 SHN, APE and FLAC files for SBEs with a couple of mouse clicks :)

[range_hood]

So basically, can I do -- FLAC > SBEfix > FLAC?Yes, you can.
Drag and drop the files in the window that run into each other and try:
shntool fix -o flac <allfiles>

If there is something to fix, the fingerprints will differ from the original ones.


I know FLAC is a loss-less encoder but if I had a FLAC already and decoded to WAV then encoded back to FLAC wouldn't that just make the audio worse, or no?No. If you just convert between formats like: Wav>flac>wav>flac>shn>ape>flac(compressionlevel7)>flac(lvl3) the fingerprints and quality will not change.

[Shakes]

Thanks for the help and information, range_hood. :)

[uhclem]

Before you go and do this, why do you want to fix just one file? Are you sure that's all that needs to be fixed?

[Shakes]

Before you go and do this, why do you want to fix just one file? Are you sure that's all that needs to be fixed?

I put my files into foobar2000 and I notice that some shows only have a file with a sector bound error.

I only have a few shows that have sbe's in only one file.

[Five]

if the SBE is anything but the final track of a disc then padding the end with silence will be a disaster. Also, if the audio is continuous from disc to disc (i.e. end of d1 to beginning of d2) you wouldn't want to pad even the end track of a disc with silence. :nono:

can you please post a shntool len check for one/more of these shows?