Trader's Little Helper

[Thulani]

It doesn't work with TLH. The pin menu it doesn't appearing and the drag n drop function is not working.

[roann]

It doesn't work with TLH. The pin menu it doesn't appearing and the drag n drop function is not working.Will try to test/fix next weekend. Not sure if I'll have time for this.

[Thulani]

OK man. Thanks for support.

[feralicious]

@ feralicious:

:wtf: Never experienced this weirdness... totally confusing, especially as µTorrent is reported to be involved. :hmm: Things I'd try to localize the problem:

- Check for viruses and other malware.
- Check whether there are any instances of flac.exe running when TLH is closed.
- Check whether .flac file extension is associated with µTorrent.
- Uninstall Webroot, TLH and µTorrent completey. Re-install all three programs (latest TLH release here (http://tlh.easytree.org)).


Thanks for the fast reply.

I always hear that bolded response from the techs that have to come fix my Avid at work. Somehow I always manage to get problems no one has ever seen before! :cool:

I will try all that later today, after I'm fully awake. I shouldn't have any virus or spyware as I'm running Webroot, SuperAnti-Spyware (real time) and then run AdAware and Malwarebytes Antimalware scans as well.

Does TLH ever want anything to connect for updating? I believe this was the first time I've used it since installing Webroot. It will be interesting to see what happens when I reinstall all.

Side note: I'm running Vista that came with my laptop. I'm thinking of downgrading to XP since I have that already, do you think it's worth it to go to Win 7 instead?

[Spelunker]

OMG Someone pinch me. Please.

Go to windows 7.

[roann]

... Does TLH ever want anything to connect for updating?...TLH comes with a Check for update function that can be called via the Help menu. This function uses port 80 (most often used by browsers / HTTP). I don't know the specifics of your firewall but you may need to create a port rule so TLH isn't blocked when you want it to check for an update. Note that TLH _never_ tries to connect to the web automatically (you always have to go to Help > Check for update for that).

... Side note: I'm running Vista that came with my laptop. I'm thinking of downgrading to XP since I have that already, do you think it's worth it to go to Win 7 instead?If you like Windows Vista as a whole (new look, new functions, and so on), IMO it is worth to upgrade to Win 7 (it's the _real_ Vista). But if you don't need all the new stuff I'd prefer XP.

[Thulani]

I just find out how you can pin TLH in the Win7 taskbar. Just rename the Traders Little Helper.exe to something else. It seems that the word 'Help' is one of those words in Win7 that can't be pinned.

[roann]

I just find out how you can pin TLH in the Win7 taskbar. Just rename the Traders Little Helper.exe to something else. It seems that the word 'Help' is one of those words in Win7 that can't be pinned.I know about this Microsoft weirdness. But it's _not_ the reason for the pin problem (at least at first/second sight) because the TLH executable is named tralih.exe from the very beginning. I guess that Win 7 not only looks for the help string in the name of the executable but in other properties of the executable too. Until now I do not have a solution for the pin problem. And AFAIK you cannot "force" a program to be pinable via code (but maybe someone here knows the magic trick (if there is any)).

[Thulani]

I think that happens because in the start menu the program is named Trader's Little Helper.

[roann]

I think that happens because in the start menu the program is named Trader's Little Helper.No, that's not the (only) reason, unfortunately. Go to the TLH installation folder, right-click tralih.exe, and select the Pin option from the context-menu. Absolutely nothing will happen :mad:. BTW, Microsoft claims that only the name of the executable is searched for the help string. I really don't get it.

[Thulani]

Though it works if you make a shortcut on the desktop then pin the program. It's very weird indeed.

[TomB]

This might be a question that has been answered, but for the life of me I cannot find. If so, please forgive me!

I think I know of someone who is testing .flac files converted to .wav files for evidence of MPEG... can you speak to why a genuinely recorded .wav file that has been converted to flac, then back to .wav might produce a report that the audio came from MPEG??

Thanks !!

[Drgiggles1]

This might be a question that has been answered, but for the life of me I cannot find. If so, please forgive me!

I think I know of someone who is testing .flac files converted to .wav files for evidence of MPEG... can you speak to why a genuinely recorded .wav file that has been converted to flac, then back to .wav might produce a report that the audio came from MPEG??

Thanks !!
Most likely a false positive. That's why it is recommended when checking for lossy you use Cool Edit Pro to check the spectral and frequency analysis preferably zoomed in on a 2 second area of the file. Also a file that has been recorded on a DAT recorder with a 16K drop off may be confused for a lossy file when indeed it is not.

[TomB]

Most likely a false positive. That's why it is recommended when checking for lossy you use Cool Edit Pro to check the spectral and frequency analysis preferably zoomed in on a 2 second area of the file. Also a file that has been recorded on a DAT recorder with a 16K drop off may be confused for a lossy file when indeed it is not.

Interesting... is there any information to tell what TLH actually tests?? If there is a likelihood of false-positives, then this would not necessarily be a "go-to" tool for testing if FLACs are sourced from MPEG then would it?? as you say, the only way to truly tell is to see where the freq. roll-off exists....
So in your opinion is spectral analysis the ONLY definitive way to test?

Do you think the false positive comes from the codecs involved in going wav>flac>wav and are leaving some sort of artifact that TLH is sensing??

There is a site right now that is promoting the TLH test on files that have gone wav>flac>wav to test if they are not from MPEG.... I posted a recording that went from wav to flac, using the TLH codecs, and that very recording tested positive for MPEG in the TLH test!!

I might be the only one, but I stand by my statement that flac is NOT lossless and converting it back to a wav for anything other than a qualitative exam is worthless....

This is very bizarre and I am trying to decide if I should challenge this method since it seems very flawed to be the definitive test for their overall QC....

Any thoughts??

[rspencer]

False positives usually occur due to the source material. Something with little upper frequency info appears to be lossy. And even a spectral isn't a fail-safe, it can be subjective.

Were you the source for the wav files you tested? If not, there could have been a lossy step in the lineage in the past.

[TomB]

yes the files came off my tape into soundforge, went up to 24/96 for some eq and loudness and then dithered back to 16/48 wav. since soundforge is sector boundary friendly, I divided the files there then batch converted them in TLH into flac and seeded.... someone then took those files, turned them back into wav and tested... almost ALL of them reported MPEG ! crazy !!
If you read some of my comments, I am thinking that the double conversion is going to flaw pretty much anything you try.... I've read endless reports of lots of people here getting different results even from the subjective spectral... seems there is NO definitive test after all ??

[Thulani]

It's not that for sure, I've just tested with 3 different sources. CDDA first conversion, CDDA second conversion

[roann]

... is there any information to tell what TLH actually tests??...TLH uses the free command-line tool auCDtect to test wav files for MPEG. The decisions this tool makes are based on some sophisticated math formula. All info about the algorithm details can be found here (http://en.true-audio.com/Tau_Analyzer_-_Aucdtect_Algorithm_Details). Note that auCDtect is intended / was developed for testing studio recordings for MPEG (commercially available audio CDs, for example). Because it's impossible to develop a math formula for testing live recordings auCDtect will fail on many live recordings (depends on a lot of things).

... If there is a likelihood of false-positives, then this would not necessarily be a "go-to" tool for testing if FLACs are sourced from MPEG then would it?? as you say, the only way to truly tell is to see where the freq. roll-off exists....
So in your opinion is spectral analysis the ONLY definitive way to test?...On live recordings TLH / auCDtect only should be used as a first hint whether or not the audio data is lossy sourced. The real deal always is frequency and spectral analysis. In most cases you'll get the right result, but sometimes you cannot tell for sure whether the audio data is lossy sourced. So there is no definitve way to test things.

... Do you think the false positive comes from the codecs involved in going wav>flac>wav and are leaving some sort of artifact that TLH is sensing??...

... I might be the only one, but I stand by my statement that flac is NOT lossless and converting it back to a wav for anything other than a qualitative exam is worthless...FLAC definitely is a lossless codec. So wav > flac > wav will result in the same audio data (as can be proved) - nothing is lost, no artefacts are added.

... There is a site right now that is promoting the TLH test on files that have gone wav>flac>wav to test if they are not from MPEG.... I posted a recording that went from wav to flac, using the TLH codecs, and that very recording tested positive for MPEG in the TLH test!! ...Can you provide an URL please?

... yes the files came off my tape into soundforge, went up to 24/96 for some eq and loudness and then dithered back to 16/48 wav. since soundforge is sector boundary friendly, I divided the files there then batch converted them in TLH into flac and seeded.... someone then took those files, turned them back into wav and tested... almost ALL of them reported MPEG ! crazy !!...So you compared your original files with the processed ones? In particular equalizing and dithering up to 24/96 and back to 16/48 will alter the audio data in a way that may cause auCDtect to get wrong test results!

[rspencer]

Any software is just an aid, your eyes & ears will be needed to help be sure.

In general, you'll only get false positives. So if it says it's MPEG-sourced, you'll have to look into it further. If it says it's not lossy, you're good.

[TomB]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, but I wanted to be sure and thank you not only for TLH, but also for being so readily available. I am now well informed and able to mentally move on... it was just one of those things, call it OCD :wave::whistle:

Thanks again for your help!

[Seth01]

I'm wondering if anyone has successfully used the MULTIPLE tracker feature on TLH when creating a torrent? Does this mean that I can upload the same .torrent file to several different private trackers and seed all of them at the same time? Has this worked for anyone?

Thanks for any replies and of course a HUGE thanks to roann once again for developing this amazingly helpful tool. :cool:

[mike1061]

Not quite what you are looking for but I'm able to do it with just downloads. As you know I use a "seedbox" and with your Robert Plant torrent I was able to DL the torrent from here. Then as you posted it to dime, I DL'ed that torrent, re-named the dime torrent, it checked the existng dated and started seeding. All I do is add a "1" in front of the second torrent and it works every time.
Thanks Mike

[tonebloke]

Does this mean that I can upload the same .torrent file to several different private trackers and seed all of them at the same time?


Not sure about the multiple torrents, BUT, your max upload speed will be cut due to the number of sites you up the torrent to. The more sites, and leeches, the slower the speed.
"Not good" waiting weeks to finish downloading a show !

[mike1061]

He doesn't have that problem. The speeds he gets are great.
Thanks Mike

[Seth01]

Not quite what you are looking for but I'm able to do it with just downloads. As you know I use a "seedbox" and with your Robert Plant torrent I was able to DL the torrent from here. Then as you posted it to dime, I DL'ed that torrent, re-named the dime torrent, it checked the existng dated and started seeding. All I do is add a "1" in front of the second torrent and it works every time.
Thanks Mike

OK, but then you're just uploading to one tracker at a time, right. :hmm: Just switching back and forth? As I'm the original seeder, I'd like to be able to seed the same torrent to a few private trackers at the same time. I don't think it'd be possible as each one requires it's own passkey. So even though I can create a .torrent file with all of the trackers' announce url's in it, I can only actually upload to one at a time. Unless I'm not getting it.

Not sure about the multiple torrents, BUT, your max upload speed will be cut due to the number of sites you up the torrent to. The more sites, and leeches, the slower the speed.
"Not good" waiting weeks to finish downloading a show !

Yeah, tonebloke, I appreciate the feedback but Mike's right. That's not a problem for me as I get good speeds. Nobody waits a long time to download from me unless they're unconnectable. :D

[tonebloke]

Fair enough.

[tunic]

I'm wondering if anyone has successfully used the MULTIPLE tracker feature on TLH when creating a torrent? Does this mean that I can upload the same .torrent file to several different private trackers and seed all of them at the same time? Has this worked for anyone?

yes, that's exactly how it works. I've used it (for download only) on other trackers. But I seem to recall that Dime disallows this feature. You could double-check it with the mods though.

Not quite what you are looking for but I'm able to do it with just downloads. As you know I use a "seedbox" and with your Robert Plant torrent I was able to DL the torrent from here. Then as you posted it to dime, I DL'ed that torrent, re-named the dime torrent, it checked the existng dated and started seeding. All I do is add a "1" in front of the second torrent and it works every time.
Thanks Mike

There's a much easier way than that: when you download the second torrent a popup shows up asking you if you want to load the tracker into the existing torrent. At least that's how it works in utorrent. So then you can download it from two trackers at the same time, and give you a bigger download speed

[mike1061]

Seth
I am uploading to two different trackers at the same time. I only downloaded the files from the first tracker. By the time you posted to the second tracker, the speeds on the first were slow. But I don't see what difference that would make, the upload speeds are per torrent, not per file set.

tunic
I'm not using utorrent, so I don't have the pop up window.

Thanks Mike

[tunic]

I had some more thought on this. It is indeed not possible to use the multi tracker feature when you create the .torrent file because of the passkey. However the manner I described to download the same fileset from two trackers should also work for you to upload it.

[johnlennon696]

I DL some files that had SBE's, are these settings ok to fix them using TLH:

http://i53.tinypic.com/i5vmua.jpg

[roann]

I DL some files that had SBE's, are these settings ok to fix them using TLH:

http://i53.tinypic.com/i5vmua.jpgYes, they are ok.

Note that the names of the fixed files will have the string -fixed appended (the fixed version of track01.flac will be named track01-fixed.flac, for example). If you don't want this: _un_check the Target file names option Append string '-fixed' (see Options > Preferences > Fix SBEs) _and_ choose another output location than the source file directory.

[johnlennon696]

Thankyou mate, that is great...

[Unidecker]

EQ'n tracks ruins the archives... dont do it leave the tracks as is and seed let the people EQ for there own needs. dont do it pre processing. NO NO

[roann]

EQ'n tracks ruins the archives... dont do it leave the tracks as is and seed let the people EQ for there own needs. dont do it pre processing. NO NOFixing SBEs has nothing to do with equalizing.

[mstaggerlee]

I've recently downloaded the earliest Dispatch show posted on the llama (dispatch1996-04-16), in .shn format. A notice on the page this show was posted on stated that the files should not be converted to mp3, by request of the band.

I have a strong preference for .flac files over .shns (winamp's flac performance is far better than with .shns, and Nero will convert flacs to CDDA on the fly when/if you want to burn a disc), so after running the checksums (they all passed) I tried to convert the shns to flac format, using TLH v 2.6.0, build 168 (pretty sure this is the latest). Of the 19 files, only 2 generated error messages (child encoder process had non-zero exit status), but I only found 8 flac files in the folder after conversion!

Amazed, I repeated the conversion. Sure enough, several files simply vanish just as the next file is being written. Never one to give up easily, I decoded the .shns to .wav. This process seemed to go very smoothly. No error messages, and on testing all but 5 .wav files were all found to look like CDDA with 100% confidence, the remainder with 99%, and I noted no correlation between the 99%ers and the shns that wouldn't convert.

But anyway, now that the files are in .wav format, it should be a simple matter to simply convert them to .flac, right?

Well, not so much, as it turns out. All 19 files did indeed convert, but the 11 tracks that would not convert directly from shn to flac all produced an error message (file is truncated or otherwise corrupt). These 11 flacs seem to play just fine in winamp, but I still felt kinda hinky about them.

So, I tested them and all 11 produced the following error -
file is decodable without error, but flac fingerprint cannot be checked, since it was unset in the streaminfo block.

Also, if I attempt to decode these .flacs back to .wav, for the same 11 tracks I get the same error message, and those .wavs vanish just like the flacs did on direct conversion.

So ... any ideas about what's goin' on here?

[Thulani]

Did you try to run the .md5 file to see if fingerprints match?

[roann]

I've recently downloaded the earliest Dispatch show posted on the llama (dispatch1996-04-16), in .shn format. A notice on the page this show was posted on stated that the files should not be converted to mp3, by request of the band.

I have a strong preference for .flac files over .shns (winamp's flac performance is far better than with .shns, and Nero will convert flacs to CDDA on the fly when/if you want to burn a disc), so after running the checksums (they all passed) I tried to convert the shns to flac format, using TLH v 2.6.0, build 168 (pretty sure this is the latest). Of the 19 files, only 2 generated error messages (child encoder process had non-zero exit status), but I only found 8 flac files in the folder after conversion!

Amazed, I repeated the conversion. Sure enough, several files simply vanish just as the next file is being written. Never one to give up easily, I decoded the .shns to .wav. This process seemed to go very smoothly. No error messages, and on testing all but 5 .wav files were all found to look like CDDA with 100% confidence, the remainder with 99%, and I noted no correlation between the 99%ers and the shns that wouldn't convert.

But anyway, now that the files are in .wav format, it should be a simple matter to simply convert them to .flac, right?

Well, not so much, as it turns out. All 19 files did indeed convert, but the 11 tracks that would not convert directly from shn to flac all produced an error message (file is truncated or otherwise corrupt). These 11 flacs seem to play just fine in winamp, but I still felt kinda hinky about them.

So, I tested them and all 11 produced the following error -
file is decodable without error, but flac fingerprint cannot be checked, since it was unset in the streaminfo block.

Also, if I attempt to decode these .flacs back to .wav, for the same 11 tracks I get the same error message, and those .wavs vanish just like the flacs did on direct conversion.

So ... any ideas about what's goin' on here?
I've downloaded the whole show for testing purposes. Unfortunately I have to confirm all the strange things you've described.

If you run TLH's Show audio files details function (see Analysis section) you get this:

length expanded size cdr WAVE problems fmt ratio filename
1:51.47 19690986 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.3994 dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.shn
9:35.05 101440826 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5647 dispatch1996-04-16d1t02.shn
6:05.62 64531018 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5640 dispatch1996-04-16d1t03.shn
8:46.22 92837512 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5500 dispatch1996-04-16d1t04.shn
8:40.55 91858472 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5111 dispatch1996-04-16d1t05.shn
7:27.25 78910668 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6009 dispatch1996-04-16d1t06.shn
1:51.37 19666510 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.4773 dispatch1996-04-16d1t07.shn
3:10.38 33605592 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.4569 dispatch1996-04-16d1t08.shn
7:29.32 79277808 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6277 dispatch1996-04-16d1t09.shn
6:03.66 64188354 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5758 dispatch1996-04-16d1t10.shn
8:31.59 90279770 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5509 dispatch1996-04-16d1t11.shn
7:12.21 76255022 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5602 dispatch1996-04-16d2t01.shn
7:04.13 74823176 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6008 dispatch1996-04-16d2t02.shn
5:38.47 59733722 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.6189 dispatch1996-04-16d2t03.shn
8:27.37 89521014 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.6070 dispatch1996-04-16d2t04.shn
3:45.36 39773544 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5428 dispatch1996-04-16d2t05.shn
4:03.44 42967662 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5694 dispatch1996-04-16d2t06.shn
5:01.07 53112964 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6205 dispatch1996-04-16d2t07.shn
0:05.15 917894 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.1982 dispatch1996-04-16d2t08.shn
110:51.66 1173392514 B 0.5679 (19 files)

For all files that cause trouble there is an a in the problems column. This is for audio data is not block-aligned.

The shorten decoder (not written by me) decodes those files without any error message - that's why TLH tells you that all files were decoded successfully. Note: if the audio data of the shn file is not block-aligned the audio data of the decoded wav file isn't block-aligned either.

If you encode to flac now (or shn > flac using Convert encoding format) the flac encoder gives you as encoding result, for example:

dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: 96% complete, ratio=0,385
dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: ERROR: got partial sample

So TLH is right when logging dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: file is truncated or otherwise corrupt. TLH deletes such erroneous files per default. That's why the encoded/converted stuff vanishes into thin air.

[Rodiebluez1]

Does Anyone know a new link for this Tapers Little Helper? The link in the threads are all dead. Thanks.:wave:

[mstaggerlee]

So, roann, is there any way that one can force the audio data to be block-aligned? Can the .wav files be manipulated in any way to fix the alignment, or am I going to have to keep 2 copies of this show - one to listen to and one to burn?

Thanks for your help!

[mstaggerlee]

DUH! Guess I hadda write it down, post it, & read it again. How can I manipulate a .wav file? WITH A WAV EDITOR, DUMMY! Decode the .shns, copy & append each .wav file into one BIG file, re-slice & save new .wav files. Betcha THOSE will convert properly! :)

Sorry to waste your bandwidth.

[tunic]

Does Anyone know a new link for this Tapers Little Helper? The link in the threads are all dead. Thanks.:wave:

http://tlh.easytree.org/

So, roann, is there any way that one can force the audio data to be block-aligned? Can the .wav files be manipulated in any way to fix the alignment, or am I going to have to keep 2 copies of this show - one to listen to and one to burn?

Thanks for your help!

Instead of messing with them yourself, you could also try to contact the taper / uploader and notify him that he's sharing corrupt files.

[mstaggerlee]

http://tlh.easytree.org/

Instead of messing with them yourself, you could also try to contact the taper / uploader and notify him that he's sharing corrupt files.

I'd love to, but neither the Taper nor the Uploader is identified on the LMA. If I get ambitious, I may try to find out who administers the LMA's Dispatch collection and suggest that he either replace what's currently posted with the fixed fileset I've created, or just post mine up there as well.

[roann]

I'd love to, but neither the Taper nor the Uploader is identified on the LMA. If I get ambitious, I may try to find out who administers the LMA's Dispatch collection and suggest that he either replace what's currently posted with the fixed fileset I've created, or just post mine up there as well.It's a bad idea to put out your fileset because most likely your files aren't fixed at all.

The audio data is not block-aligned error message indicates that the WAV data is truncated. It's hard to tell how this happened. One reason may be that some files have been truncated from cutoffs during FTP. Another reason may be a faulty shn compression (Shorten doesn't have much error detection). Or the original shn files were created from truncated wav files. Or the errors were introduced when burning/ripping the files to/from silver.

If you use an audio editor to join tracks d1t02 and d1t03, for example, you can clearly see a skip in the waveform at the position where the files were put together (see attachment). This skip will stay when encoding to flac though you won't get the not block-aligned error message anymore.

So, if you put out your "fixed" fileset, a lot of people will think it is ok - but it is not, it's still a corrupt fileset (it's just harder to detect this corruption now). Better you post a comment over at the Archive and tell people that the shn fileset is corrupt (though the skips may not be audible; I didn't check this).

[tunic]

I'd love to, but neither the Taper nor the Uploader is identified on the LMA. If I get ambitious, I may try to find out who administers the LMA's Dispatch collection and suggest that he either replace what's currently posted with the fixed fileset I've created, or just post mine up there as well.

that's what I don't like about the LMA, that there's no way to see who uploaded the show or send that person a private email (or PM). You can still post a comment, that way you can also find out the uploader's email: post a comment, then you'll get to a confirmation page, you'll see somewhere a link (on the top bar I think it was) to look into the log of the past actions for that show. Found that out last week by accident.

[gluttony]

Does anyone have an older build of TLH? This new one is just horrifically awful. Looking specifically for any build that will let me right click and pass multiple directories for decoding -- who decided that removing batch processing was a good idea? Ugh.

[roann]

Does anyone have an older build of TLH?...I have all builds of TLH.

...This new one is just horrifically awful...Which new one do you talk about?

...Looking specifically for any build that will let me right click and pass multiple directories for decoding...To my knowledge TLH was never able to do this.

...who decided that removing batch processing was a good idea? Ugh.Most likely this was my decision - I coded TLH.

[gmm6797]

Most likely this was my decision - I coded TLH.

:clap:

[gluttony]

Which new one do you talk about?

I'm currently using 2.6.0 build 168, which has a completely different GUI from the one I used before.

To my knowledge TLH was never able to do this.

It did, and marvelously. I was able to select up to 15 folders, right click, and have it pass all of them for decoding/encoding. Now, it complains if I try to pass more than one directory, which slows me down immensely. It's enough to make me stop using the program altogether, which I pretty much have. The batch function was what sold it for me. Can I have it back? :(

[roann]

Which new one do you talk about?

I'm currently using 2.6.0 build 168, which has a completely different GUI from the one I used before.

To my knowledge TLH was never able to do this.

It did, and marvelously. I was able to select up to 15 folders, right click, and have it pass all of them for decoding/encoding. Now, it complains if I try to pass more than one directory, which slows me down immensely. It's enough to make me stop using the program altogether, which I pretty much have. The batch function was what sold it for me. Can I have it back? :(The latest release is v2.6.0 build 168, the first release with the new GUI is v2.0.0 build 142, the last release with the old GUI is v1.1.1 build 90. Starting with v1.1.1 build 90 (or v1.1.0 build 89; not sure about that) no release is able to process more than one folder.

But you're right, v1.0.0 build 72 (released in October 2005) actually is able to process multiple folders. I don't remember why I changed things back then (there must be a reason). So I have to take a look at the source code of both releases. But do I still have the files for releases prior to build 90? Where the hell are my old backup DVDs...

Anyway, there will be a new release soon (probably next week). If there's a way to get your most wanted feature back to work it will be included. Stay tuned...

[gmm6797]

Anyway, there will be a new release soon (probably next week). If there's a way to get your most wanted feature back to work it will be included. Stay tuned...

Is there any way to have the "Create Checksum File Type" saved from session to session?

Thanks

[roann]

Is there any way to have the "Create Checksum File Type" saved from session to session?

ThanksOptions > Preferences > Create checksum file. Choose the type using the Type of checksum file to create box, and press the Apply button.

[gmm6797]

Options > Preferences > Create checksum file. Choose the type using the Type of checksum file to create box, and press the Apply button.

I have it set to MD5 in there, but when I encode, it always defaults to FFP

[roann]

Options > Preferences > Create checksum file. Choose the type using the Type of checksum file to create box, and press the Apply button.

I have it set to MD5 in there, but when I encode, it always defaults to FFPSo the checksum to create is related to encoding. Here the type of the checksum file to create cannot be saved from session to session.

[gmm6797]

So the checksum to create is related to encoding. Here the type of the checksum file to create cannot be saved from session to session.

Well, I am no programmer, but isnt there at least a way to "flag" the item in the dropdown menu that could be coded into the preference section of the tool?

[roann]

So the checksum to create is related to encoding. Here the type of the checksum file to create cannot be saved from session to session.

Well, I am no programmer, but isnt there at least a way to "flag" the item in the dropdown menu that could be coded into the preference section of the tool?
Sure; added to the list...

[gmm6797]

Sure; added to the list...

Thats all I can ask, thanks!

[ncalsurfer]

Hi Roann,
I would like to echo gluttony's sentiment about the multiple folder processing. If its possible to bring it back, I would really appreciate it. I haven't used TLH in a long time and was disappointed to find this feature missing in the latest version.

Thanks for all your hard work and support on this incredible tool!

[jerry1970]

How can I add TLH to File Menu Tools so I can click on a single file or list of selected files and send it to the TLH interface?

I have TLH integrated in explorer, but it only works on folders, not files. I need TLH to work on one or a few files a lot of times, so I wanted to add it to File Menu Tools. I need a program and the arguments.

Program is easy:
C:\Program Files\Trader's Little Helper\tralih.exe

But what are the arguments? If I send the filename(s) with or without paths, TLH says the parameters are incorrect. I assume TLH expects an option like -in or -files or something, but I cannot find the documentation for that...

Any help is appreciated for this otherwise marvellous tool!

[roann]

How can I add TLH to File Menu Tools so I can click on a single file or list of selected files and send it to the TLH interface?

I have TLH integrated in explorer, but it only works on folders, not files. I need TLH to work on one or a few files a lot of times, so I wanted to add it to File Menu Tools. I need a program and the arguments.

Program is easy:
C:\Program Files\Trader's Little Helper\tralih.exe

But what are the arguments? If I send the filename(s) with or without paths, TLH says the parameters are incorrect. I assume TLH expects an option like -in or -files or something, but I cannot find the documentation for that...

Any help is appreciated for this otherwise marvellous tool!It's a little trickier than you might think because it depends a) on the OS you're using and b) on other programs who have registered for the same file types as TLH.

Please start TLH and try Options > Restore shell integration. If this doesn't help you'll have to wait for the new release that among other things fixes all the issues with integration into Windows Explorer context menus. The new installer will be available (most likeley) around the next weekend.

[greens]

Is the user manual for TLH still available? When I try to access it it says its only available in the older versions.

I'm very much interested in learning all the in's and out's of the program as I am currently quite ignorant on the subject.

[roann]

Is the user manual for TLH still available? When I try to access it it says its only available in the older versions.It's not available anymore because lots of things were changed/added since v1.1.1.90. A new user manual needs to be written ... (any volunteers out there? chm format, or perhaps a wiki?).

I'm very much interested in learning all the in's and out's of the program as I am currently quite ignorant on the subject.Well, you can try the old user manual if you want to (but be warned). PM or email me if you're interested.

[roann]

After some trouble getting it together the new release of TLH is now available: download it here (http://tlh.easytree.org/) or let TLH do the job (Help > Check for update...).

v2.7.0.172 fixes a few things, adds two options to the Preferences dialog, and enables TLH to process multiple folders passed via Windows Explorer context menus or Drag & Drop (details see changelog.txt). It's weird, very early versions of TLH were able to process multiple folders, but somewhere along the way from v1.0.0 build 72 to v1.1.1 build 90 this ability got lost. I still don't know why I removed this - even the well documented source code didn't help to find the reason. Anyway, here it is in all its glory. Enjoy!

Robert

PS: Note that this time you need to uninstall an existing version before the new installer can be executed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[germain]

I am having trouble accessing preferences and setting TLH defaults on my new computer (Windows 7 64 bit).
I am receiving the error message:
"User does not have administrative privileges.
The default setting can not be changed."

I have attempted to change permissions without success.
c:\program files\TLH -> properties -> security

As I am the only one on my computer, only 1 user was created and he has administrative permissions. However the security instructions are most confusing. Any guidance will be appreciated.

[roann]

I am having trouble accessing preferences and setting TLH defaults on my new computer (Windows 7 64 bit).
I am receiving the error message:
"User does not have administrative privileges.
The default setting can not be changed."

I have attempted to change permissions without success.
c:\program files\TLH -> properties -> security

As I am the only one on my computer, only 1 user was created and he has administrative permissions. However the security instructions are most confusing. Any guidance will be appreciated.Even if you are logged in as an administrator - Win 7 doesn't allow you to do everything you want (writing to certain parts of the registry, for example). But there is a solution: right-click on the TLH desktop icon and select "Run as administrator". That's all. Note that this is only needed if you want to change the default settings or want to restore the integration of TLH into Windows Explorer context menus.

[germain]

Worked like a charm!
Thanks:)

[woff]

Even if you are logged in as an administrator - Win 7 doesn't allow you to do everything you want (writing to certain parts of the registry, for example). But there is a solution: right-click on the TLH desktop icon and select "Run as administrator". That's all. Note that this is only needed if you want to change the default settings or want to restore the integration of TLH into Windows Explorer context menus.


Thanks for this response - I too had that problem, now resolved.

[Seth01]

Thanks for this response - I too had that problem, now resolved.

Same here...grateful for the response. :)

[Crumbo]

After some trouble getting it together the new release of TLH is now available: download it here (http://tlh.easytree.org/) or let TLH do the job (Help > Check for update...).

v2.7.0.172 fixes a few things, adds two options to the Preferences dialog, and enables TLH to process multiple folders passed via Windows Explorer context menus or Drag & Drop (details see changelog.txt). It's weird, very early versions of TLH were able to process multiple folders, but somewhere along the way from v1.0.0 build 72 to v1.1.1 build 90 this ability got lost. I still don't know why I removed this - even the well documented source code didn't help to find the reason. Anyway, here it is in all its glory. Enjoy!

Robert

PS: Note that this time you need to uninstall an existing version before the new installer can be executed. Sorry for the inconvenience.


thanks a ton for this! :)

any chance you can implement verifying checksums (md5s/ffps/sts) in subfolders via windows explorer by right clicking on the main folder?

someshow.flac16
-disc 1
-d1.ffp
-disc 2
-d2.ffp

right now if I right click on someshow.flac16 and select TLH, then the option box opens up and I select verify checksum files, another box pops up and says- The folder is empty or does not contain files with the file extension(s) required

I see that there is a subfolder setting for creating checksums but not to verify them

maybe I'm doing something wrong

thanks! :cool:

[Drgiggles1]

Thanks for the updated version.

[roann]

thanks a ton for this! :)

any chance you can implement verifying checksums (md5s/ffps/sts) in subfolders via windows explorer by right clicking on the main folder?

someshow.flac16
-disc 1
-d1.ffp
-disc 2
-d2.ffp

right now if I right click on someshow.flac16 and select TLH, then the option box opens up and I select verify checksum files, another box pops up and says- The folder is empty or does not contain files with the file extension(s) required

I see that there is a subfolder setting for creating checksums but not to verify them

maybe I'm doing something wrong

thanks! :cool:There is no subfolder setting for verifying checksum files via Windows Explorer. Added to the to-do list...

[Crumbo]

thanks a ton for this! :)

any chance you can implement verifying checksums (md5s/ffps/sts) in subfolders via windows explorer by right clicking on the main folder?

someshow.flac16
-disc 1
-d1.ffp
-disc 2
-d2.ffp

right now if I right click on someshow.flac16 and select TLH, then the option box opens up and I select verify checksum files, another box pops up and says- The folder is empty or does not contain files with the file extension(s) required

I see that there is a subfolder setting for creating checksums but not to verify them

maybe I'm doing something wrong

thanks! :cool:There is no subfolder setting for verifying checksum files via Windows Explorer. Added to the to-do list...

very cool, thanks!

[noseshine]

Regarding "needs administrator permission to change preferences":

Wait a second - are you guys joking???

This is a security nightmare! NO piece of software needs admin rights today to set user preferences. There are only two reasons why current software would ask you to run it with such elevated rights:

- The programmer does not know a thing about programming on Windows
- The programmer wants to trick you into letting you into YOUR machine as admin - and it is unlikely that their intentions are pure.

BEWARE OF THIS SOFTWARE, it may be dangerous. (or, option 1, the programmer is incompetent to a high degree)

[roann]

Regarding "needs administrator permission to change preferences":

Wait a second - are you guys joking???

This is a security nightmare! NO piece of software needs admin rights today to set user preferences. There are only two reasons why current software would ask you to run it with such elevated rights:

- The programmer does not know a thing about programming on Windows
- The programmer wants to trick you into letting you into YOUR machine as admin - and it is unlikely that their intentions are pure.

BEWARE OF THIS SOFTWARE, it may be dangerous. (or, option 1, the programmer is incompetent to a high degree)Finally someone who knows which way the wind blows...

[Seth01]

Finally someone who knows which way the wind blows...

Hahahaha. :D

Noseshine, seriously? You must be joking, right?

This is an amazingly useful piece of software! I really don't know what I'd do without it. Obviously you're not a taper or much of a trader. I use this piece of software pretty much every day. The developer has provided it free of charge and unlike most "free" software, not only does he not ask for anything in return but is EXTREMELY amenable to changes, suggestions and quickly implements them. Development hasn't stopped after a few months either. This is an obvious labour of love and roann is a trusted member of this community. Maybe you ought to hang back a bit or at least do some research before insulting TLH with your first post.

Sheesh, some people. :disbelief

[tonebloke]

Hahahaha. :D

Noseshine, seriously? You must be joking, right?

This is an amazingly useful piece of software! I really don't know what I'd do without it. Obviously you're not a taper or much of a trader. I use this piece of software pretty much every day. The developer has provided it free of charge and unlike most "free" software, not only does he not ask for anything in return but is EXTREMELY amenable to changes, suggestions and quickly implements them. Development hasn't stopped after a few months either. This is an obvious labour of love and roann is a trusted member of this community. Maybe you ought to hang back a bit or at least do some research before insulting TLH with your first post.

Sheesh, some people. :disbelief


I'll second this statement. For those serious about their audio TLH is indispensable (not casting aspertions on other software) and most, I would say, would rally behind Roann and his little beauty. :wave:

[mike1061]

Regarding "needs administrator permission to change preferences":

Wait a second - are you guys joking???

This is a security nightmare! NO piece of software needs admin rights today to set user preferences. There are only two reasons why current software would ask you to run it with such elevated rights:

- The programmer does not know a thing about programming on Windows
- The programmer wants to trick you into letting you into YOUR machine as admin - and it is unlikely that their intentions are pure.

BEWARE OF THIS SOFTWARE, it may be dangerous. (or, option 1, the programmer is incompetent to a high degree)

That's just plan stupid. Dumbist thing I've seen in a long time.
Thanks Mike

[jabulon]

Regarding "needs administrator permission to change preferences":

Wait a second - are you guys joking???

This is a security nightmare! NO piece of software needs admin rights today to set user preferences. There are only two reasons why current software would ask you to run it with such elevated rights:

- The programmer does not know a thing about programming on Windows
- The programmer wants to trick you into letting you into YOUR machine as admin - and it is unlikely that their intentions are pure.

BEWARE OF THIS SOFTWARE, it may be dangerous. (or, option 1, the programmer is incompetent to a high degree)

Thousands (and may be hundreds of) of people are using this nice little app (thanks to the efforts of roann) and you are the first to come along with this specific kind of problem. But if your comment is seriously intended (something I strongly doubt), I would say the problem is on your end of the line (e.g. your PC configuration or some other specific set up). I assume you also checked this nice piece of software with a virusscanner (or multiple virusscanners) and came up with the same results?


BTW: 'very nice first post!'

[jabba1969]

Regarding "needs administrator permission to change preferences":

Wait a second - are you guys joking???

This is a security nightmare! NO piece of software needs admin rights today to set user preferences. There are only two reasons why current software would ask you to run it with such elevated rights:

- The programmer does not know a thing about programming on Windows
- The programmer wants to trick you into letting you into YOUR machine as admin - and it is unlikely that their intentions are pure.

BEWARE OF THIS SOFTWARE, it may be dangerous. (or, option 1, the programmer is incompetent to a high degree)

Unintentionally hilarious post of the year. :D

[RacerX]

The developer has provided it free of charge and unlike most "free" software, not only does he not ask for anything in return but is EXTREMELY amenable to changes, suggestions and quickly implements them. Trader's Little Helper acts as a frontend for the free console applications aucdtect.exe, flac.exe, lame.exe, mac.exe, metaflac.exe, mkwcon.exe, shntool.exe, and shorten.exe.

[Unidecker]

some people just don't know how to say thanks properly to the devz

me i say " THANKS TLH" and eh f*^K the haters

here's some haterade to cool off..


uni-

[dactylus]

Hello,

I just started getting "range check errors" in Trader's Little Helper today when trying to encode a 24/48 wav file to FLAC. The wav file is 2.25 GB in size. Would the size of the wav file have anything to do with this error? I am 100% sure that I have encoded wav files this size to FLAC in the past.

Could the name of the file be the culprit? The file is named C4_2011-08-24_raw Any suggestions?

I was using an older version of TLH and then upgraded to the newest version today. I received the same error message using both versions. The wav encodes to 100% but does not complete, then the error message occurs over and over and over and over and over... You get the picture. I am running Windows 7 on a fairly powerful new Dell.

Thanks,

David

[roann]

... I just started getting "range check errors" in Trader's Little Helper today when trying to encode a 24/48 wav file to FLAC. The wav file is 2.25 GB in size. Would the size of the wav file have anything to do with this error? ...Encoding should work with file sizes up to 4 GB (I tested this long time ago when WinXP was the latest Microsoft OS).

... Could the name of the file be the culprit? The file is named C4_2011-08-24_raw ...Encoding should work with a file named C4_2011-08-24_raw (problems may occur if the file name is very long, ie more than 255 characters).

... I was using an older version of TLH and then upgraded to the newest version today. I received the same error message using both versions. The wav encodes to 100% but does not complete, then the error message occurs over and over and over and over and over... It would help to know whether encoding really is at 100% or not. Please encode that wav file again and "kill" TLH when the error message occurs. Then start TLH again and create shntool md5 fingerprints (st5) of the wav file and the encoded flac file. Are the fingerprints the same?

Robert

[dactylus]

Encoding should work with file sizes up to 4 GB (I tested this long time ago when WinXP was the latest Microsoft OS).

Encoding should work with a file named C4_2011-08-24_raw (problems may occur if the file name is very long, ie more than 255 characters).

It would help to know whether encoding really is at 100% or not. Please encode that wav file again and "kill" TLH when the error message occurs. Then start TLH again and create shntool md5 fingerprints (st5) of the wav file and the encoded flac file. Are the fingerprints the same?

Robert

Thanks for your response Robert. I followed your instructions above and here are the results:

File 'C4_2011-07-23-EQ.flac' is possibly truncated or corrupt
00b0d23b6e9c59a8312652dddef21f48 [shntool] C4_2011-07-23-EQ.wav

There were errors

Once TLH gets to the "100% encoding" of the file the "Range Check Error Box" starts repeating over and over and over on the screen, each time creating a new "TLH range check error box". TLH does NOT display a checksum at this point, it just generates and repeats the "range check error box" ad infinitum. At that point the only way to close TLH is to shut down the machine. It is not possible to close the program normally. This same scenario played out with the same file at least 5 times yesterday.

I am stumped. I have never had any problems with TLH before and I have been using it since it's inception. TLH is an invaluable piece of software and I thank you for creating it and sharing it with us!! :)

Any help in resolving this issue would be appreciated.

Thanks,

David

[dactylus]

Hello Robert,

I tried the same operation on a different computer and got exactly the same results as above. I had to shut the machine down to stop the generation of "TLH Range Check Error" message boxes.

:hmm:

[roann]

... I followed your instructions above and here are the results:

File 'C4_2011-07-23-EQ.flac' is possibly truncated or corrupt
00b0d23b6e9c59a8312652dddef21f48 [shntool] C4_2011-07-23-EQ.wav

There were errors

Once TLH gets to the "100% encoding" of the file the "Range Check Error Box" starts repeating over and over and over on the screen, each time creating a new "TLH range check error box". TLH does NOT display a checksum at this point, it just generates and repeats the "range check error box" ad infinitum. At that point the only way to close TLH is to shut down the machine. It is not possible to close the program normally. ...Thanks for your efforts. This error will be hard to track down, I'm afraid. If you have the time please test as follows:

1) Encode the wav file to shn format.
2) Shorten a copy of the wav file to a size smaller than 2 GB and encode to flac format.

I guess encoding to shn format will work and encoding to flac format will fail (again), but who knows...

Robert

[Gratefuldan]

Hi folks, my name is dan and I'm a techno misfit. This is my first eeting and could use some help with some recently acquired GD, Zero and others shows on a TB hard drive but cant use them as files came to me in SHN and FLAC formats etc...and its cuz I dont know what I'm doing...sorry to say.

I'm looking for a kind soul who can walk me through tapers little helper to help me decompress" or convert my files to audio (wav) files? I have a 160 gb ipod which I find almost useless. (any recommendations for an alternative portable mp3 player would be welcome too)

The traders little helper program files came without a users manual but I'm a quick learner.

Thanks for listening folks!!!

[jabulon]

http://www.ehow.com/how_6705397_convert-using-trader_s-little-helper.html

foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) will play FLAC etc on your PC.

[GRC]

Go to the Format menu in TLH and select Convert Encoding Format.

It's almost self-explanatory from there. You want to convert FLAC to mp3, then use Add to bring the FLAC files in, and select mp3 as your target format.

Why do you find the iPod useless? Have you got iTunes on your computer?

But, as was said above, you can play FLAC on the computer with Foobar

[bullpinjohn]

Live recordings, I don't remember. Do you pad them or fix them?
Thanks.

[roann]

Live recordings, I don't remember. Do you pad them or fix them?
Thanks._fix_

[ironfelix]

hey, Roann, any chance to see TLH for Mac os one day? I had to move to Mac and now i have no idea what to do without your soft... Thanks

[roann]

... any chance to see TLH for Mac os one day?...I don't think so, sorry.

... I had to move to Mac and now i have no idea what to do without your soft...Use Scott Brown's xACT (http://xact.scottcbrown.org/).

[ironfelix]

Use Scott Brown's xACT (http://xact.scottcbrown.org/).

Awesome! thanks a lot!!

[cutz]

For some reason when i DL TLH, my security says TLH is a threat(ADWARE), and i am unable to use TLH. I've used TLH for years now and NEVER had this problem. Don't you think i should be able to ALLOW it through my security somehow? If so, how can i do that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I use Webroot.

[mike1061]

For some reason when i DL TLH, my security says TLH is a threat, and i am unable to use TLH. I've used TLH for years now and NEVER had this problem. Don't you think i should be able to ALLOW it through my security somehow? If so, how can i do that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I think he's giong to need a little more info than that. Like what OS? What was the error message? What security system blocked it?
Thanks
Mike

[tunic]

This has come up on Dime's mailing list as well, probably just a false positive. They were using Webroot SecureAnywhere. Complain about it to whatever virusscanner you're using.
As long as you installed TLH from it's own website it should be safe.

[cutz]

This has come up on Dime's mailing list as well, probably just a false positive. They were using Webroot SecureAnywhere. Complain about it to whatever virusscanner you're using.
As long as you installed TLH from it's own website it should be safe.


Yes, i am using Webroot SecureAnywhere. It's not letting me use TLH at all. I don't know why because i had Webroot on my last computer, and was able to DL and use it with NO problems.

As soon as i go through the wizard set up a pop-up box appears :
webroot has detected w32.adware.mediaget.gen

When i click finish set-up the computer will restart(like it's suppose to), and when the computer comes back on the red TLH Icon is now white. When i click on the white TLH Icon i get this:

The item "tralh.exe" that has this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved, so this shortcut will NO longer work properly. Do you want to delete this shortcut? YES NO



Should i unable the protection to DL & set-up TLH? and then able it after? or will Webroot just delete it anyway?

Apperciate any HELP.

[co9ol]

I'd suggest you search through webroot's controls, there should be a way to add it to a list of safe programs. Are you on XP vista or 7? If your on 7 you could try installing it by right clicking on the installer file and selecting "run as administrator". That tends to solve a lot of 7 related problems.

[kramer73]

I've been getting this message when trying to reinstall TLH.

An installation of TLH 2.7.0 already exists on your computer.

The setup wizard will be shut down.

The thing is, I don't have it on the computer. I've searched for it everywhere.

[kramer73]

I've been getting this message when trying to reinstall TLH.

An installation of TLH 2.7.0 already exists on your computer.

The setup wizard will be shut down.

The thing is, I don't have it on the computer. I've searched for it everywhere.

figured it out myself.

[cutz]

I'd suggest you search through webroot's controls, there should be a way to add it to a list of safe programs. Are you on XP vista or 7? If your on 7 you could try installing it by right clicking on the installer file and selecting "run as administrator". That tends to solve a lot of 7 related problems.

Yes, i have windows 7. I tried that and i just get the same message.

IF i unable webroot can i able it back on?

I'm thinking if i unable it , and then try to DL & install it will work, but i'm not sure i should unable webroot. But, i NEED TLH.

Thanks for the HELP.

[co9ol]

it's worth a try, but I have a feeling that as soon as you re-enable webroot it's going to delete TLH first thing. Contact webroot?

[cutz]

it's worth a try, but I have a feeling that as soon as you re-enable webroot it's going to delete TLH first thing. Contact webroot?

Yea, i think the same thing: it's just going to delete TLH.

[cutz]

Well, my Hard Drive went on my laptop, but it was replaced with a NEW one(at NO CHARGE, because i just bought it).

I downloaded TLH BEFORE i put the Security in, and that seems to work. So far.

Appreciated the suggestions. Thanks.

[trustthex]

So, what are the chances of making this a portable app? I know it has several includes, but it would make tracking/encoding shows on the go much easier.

Thanks for all of everyone's work on this fine app!

[teanertiner]

I found an error when verifying the ffp and md5 files included in a Bill Monroe torrent. Several songs have apostrophes in them, such as "I've Lived A Lot In My Time," for example. When I double click the ffp or md5 file TLH opens as it should. i press verify and it runs throu all the files and verifies the checksum. However, on files with apostrophes in the name it says:


-- snip --
Line 03: file '01 - My Sweet Blue Eyed Darlin.flac' verified ok (checksum matches).
Line 04: file '02 - I’ve Lived A Lot In My Time.flac' does not exist or cannot be opened.
Line 05: file '03 - Bluegrass Breakdown.flac' verified ok (checksum matches).
-- snip --

The flac files play fine and I can see nothing wrong with them. Any idea?

Thanks for the great program.
-teanertiner

[trustthex]

try running the folder against the actual flac tool in command line, they should verify.

[roann]

@teanertiner: Are you running the latest release (v2.7.0 build 172)? Upgrade if necessary (http://tlh.easytree.org). If you are on the latest one and the error still occurs please contact me via pm or email.

[Coyote2]

TLH 2.7.0(172) is working perfectly on one of my XP Pro machines. On the other, even when filesets Verify with their MD5 checksum, a

SHN decode says "No errors" but the Process rows all say "initializing" and no files are created.

FLAC decode fails with the error "file is corrupt, or decoder does not work properly".

Anything I can try please before I un-/re-install?

[Coyote2]

TLH 2.7.0(172) is working perfectly on one of my XP Pro machines. On the other, even when filesets Verify with their MD5 checksum, a

SHN decode says "No errors" but the Process rows all say "initializing" and no files are created.

FLAC decode fails with the error "file is corrupt, or decoder does not work properly".

Anything I can try please before I un-/re-install?oops, never mind, I just figured out that for some reason Comodo is sandboxing it on that machine and never mentioning that.

[glens]

Upgrading to the recent release certainly solved the issues for me concerning otherwise 'weird' characters (apostrophes, slashes, arrows, etc) in filenames....

[trustthex]

So, I tried running TLH and doing some simple operations on a dual 3ghz xeon box w/ 8gb ram (win2k, fully patched), thinking it would fly through the files. It definitely did not, instead pretty much slowing to a crawl, if not hanging the process. Any ideas why?

I haven't installed the actual flac tools from sourceforge, shorten, mdt5sum or mkwact to see how those perform respectively... I will report back.

[P A U L]

I've gotten this before:

http://i529.photobucket.com/albums/dd340/pariht/tlh-issue_zps8217e22d.png

Where it gets to 100%, but never gives the sucessful green dialogue. As you can see, the file says 0kb on the right (in the folder). The other 2 files were successful. The file not successful is almost 3GB in size. This is left for about an hour, when I screen capped this.

Could this be a case of swapfile space getting overloaded? I don't have a lot of space on C drive, but most things I can change my swapfile parameters. I'm not sure if it's possible in tlh...

I downloaded the latest version, I probably already had it, since the latest seems to be from 2011...

[roann]

I don't think this has anything to do with the swapfile. Really hard to tell what's going wrong...

Was there enough space on drive V:\? Could you cancel the encoding process via Cancel button, or didn't TLH respond anymore so you had to kill it via Windows Taskmanager?

Are familiar with using the Windows command prompt? If yes, you could test encoding without using TLH to see if it's a TLH issue or something else...

Robert

PS: The lastest TLH release is from May 2011 (v2.7.0.172).

[P A U L]

Yes, I has 200GB free on drive V. I was able to turn it off, no problem. Yes, that's the version I have - I think it was the one I had previous.

Not sure what you mean about command prompt.

[roann]

Just created a wav file with a size as big as your master.WAV file on an external USB drive. No problems at all when encoding it to FLAC format (level 8) using TLH. I'd really appreciate it if you could test whether or not encoding works when using the flac encoder directly. Please do as follows:

1) Open Windows Explorer.

2) There is a subfolder CmdlineApps in the installation folder of TLH. Copy the file flac.exe from that subfolder to the folder on drive V where your file master.WAV is located in.

3) Press and hold the Shift key, then right-click on that folder on drive V.

4) A context menu will pop up. Click on Open command window here to open a command prompt window. Release the Shift key.

4) Enter flac -8 "master.WAV", and hit <Return> to start encoding.

5) In the command prompt window the encoding progress will be shown. If everythings is fine you'll get to 100%, and then something like master.WAV: wrote ... bytes, ratio=0,... will be displayed. Else there will be some warning and/or error message(s) - please post a screenshot.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Robert

[P A U L]

http://i.minus.com/juVI0Ob0YdwxG.png

here's what my media info says:

http://i.minus.com/jb0CJiUZDQS7zh.png

[P A U L]

You know something strange? I didn't do anything w/ the file & it now says 5GB. IDK why it said 3GB earlier, but, maybe that would be why?

[Mitchxx]

Does anyone know of a Flac decoder that works with Windows 8? Please let me know

Mitch

[tonebloke]

Does anyone know of a Flac decoder that works with Windows 8? Please let me know

Mitch


I'm sure Roann will have the next TLH up to date soonish. :thumbsup

[Mitchxx]

Thanks, please keep everyone posted as far as a program that works on windows 8. I'm dead in the water right now

[spidergawd]

Does anyone know of a Flac decoder that works with Windows 8? Please let me know

Mitch

Are you able to use the flac program directly?

[roann]

Does anyone know of a Flac decoder that works with Windows 8? Please let me know

Mitch
What's the problem with TLH on Win 8?

[GWT]

Hello, I'm new here so I don't know if this is the place to post, but I get the following

In Traders Little Helper there is an error message that comes up saying

" None of the files given has the the file extension(s) required"

And these are 16-44 WAV files

Anybody know what's causing this?

Thanks

[mike1061]

Would you please what it was you were trying to do, when you get that error. Also how what steps you did before you got the error.
Thanks
Mike

[GWT]

Yeah, I was trying to fix the SBEs on some 16-44 wave files and that error popped up.

I've done this on hundreds of wave files before but this is the first time I've seen that error before

[roann]

... In Traders Little Helper there is an error message that comes up saying

" None of the files given has the the file extension(s) required"

And these are 16-44 WAV files...

... I was trying to fix the SBEs on some 16-44 wave files and that error popped up...

You have to provide some more information, otherwise it's really hard to find the place in code that may be buggy.

1) Version of Windows OS?

2) Version of TLH? The latest one is v2.7.0 (build 172). So, if you're using an older release please upgrade and try again.

3) Are you sure your files are in WAV format (sorry, but I have to ask that)? Please go to Analysis > Show audio file details and check/post the process log.

4) How did you add the files to process to the Fix SBEs file list - a) with Add button in Tools > Fix SBEs, or b) via context menu in Windows Explorer, or c) with Fix SBEs button in Analysis > Check audio files for SBEs?

[GWT]

You have to provide some more information, otherwise it's really hard to find the place in code that may be buggy.

1) Version of Windows OS?Windows 7 Pro 32bit2) Version of TLH? The latest one is v2.7.0 (build 172). So, if you're using an older release please upgrade and try again. That's the one I have
3) Are you sure your files are in WAV format (sorry, but I have to ask that)? Please go to Analysis > Show audio file details and check/post the process log.Yes they are. I also checked each file under Windows properties for the .wav extension which Trader's Little Helper said it couldn't find.4) How did you add the files to process to the Fix SBEs file list - a) with Add button in Tools > Fix SBEs, or b) via context menu in Windows Explorer, or c) with Fix SBEs button in Analysis > Check audio files for SBEs?b) the context menu in Windows Explorer. The GUI comes up with the gray rectangular box and I tick the "Fix SBEs" selection down at the bottom.

[roann]

Thanks very much for all the info.
...
4) How did you add the files to process to the Fix SBEs file list - a) with Add button in Tools > Fix SBEs, or b) via context menu in Windows Explorer, or c) with Fix SBEs button in Analysis > Check audio files for SBEs?b) the context menu in Windows Explorer. The GUI comes up with the gray rectangular box and I tick the "Fix SBEs" selection down at the bottom.
Please add the files to process with the Add button in Tools > Fix SBEs (no Windows Explorer context menu involved). What happens when you press Fix?

[Unidecker]

roann rocks so does TLH :)

[GWT]

Thanks very much for all the info.

Please add the files to process with the Add button in Tools > Fix SBEs (no Windows Explorer context menu involved). What happens when you press Fix?Well it's gonna be a couple of days before I can get back to that machine that has them on there.

Why would that really make any difference? :hmm:

[roann]

Well it's gonna be a couple of days before I can get back to that machine that has them on there.

Why would that really make any difference? :hmm:
This error message is confusing because I cannot reproduce it on my side. I'd really appreciate it if you could upload the smallest of those files to a place of your choice and pm/email me the download link.

[dukem]

Hi, I have a strange problem, TLH latest version running on Win Vista Ultimate used to work fine. Now it is running very slow and can take up to 30 minutes to verify an MD5.
Please can you help?

[roann]

Hi, I have a strange problem, TLH latest version running on Win Vista Ultimate used to work fine. Now it is running very slow and can take up to 30 minutes to verify an MD5.
Please can you help?
Not really, I'm afraid.

Any helpful task manager info? Has anything changed on your system? First I'd try to (completely) uninstall TLH > reboot > new install > reboot - maybe TLH will work fine again.

[dukem]

OK I'll try that thank you

[isotope feeney]

It looks lie all the posts I this forum are YEARS old, so I dunno if anyone's listening, but here goes:

I downloaded a torrent, got to 100%. When I went to run md5 in TLH, I got error message:

Checksum file not found in directory.

When I tried to decode FLAC files to see if that would work, I got error messages (one for each line):

file not found in directory.

Nothing else I tried to do in TLH (re-encode FLAC, for instance) would happen either. Same message.

I'm not sure what the version # of TLH is, but when I checked for updates it said You have the latest version... installed.

[dasmueller]

Do the files play using Winamp ?

[mike1061]

Sometimes people change the titles of the songs after they made the checksums. It kinda seems like that happened here. What I do is open the check sums in note pad and comapare them to the song titles. Seems odd that all of them would fail for another reason. I've also seen torrents made in other countrys where something like "~" shows up different on my computer. Or where a symbol is different. For example " ' " . Or maybe on mac computer. Just change the file names to match the check sums.
Thanks
Mike

[gojikranz]

hello I have been happily using traders little helper for years with no major issues. then today i tried to use it and got "error while closing handle(s)" message this happened for anything i have tried to convert today (SHN and Flac).

as far as i know i have not made any big changes to anything so i don't understand why this would happen.

i tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail. any ideas?

[isotope feeney]

Do the files play using Winamp ?

Good point! I don’t have Winamp loaded in to this particular computer, but after yr. question I checked to see if the FLAC files would playback in VLC, which they did. This was only more confusing, because obviously the FLACs were there intact, but TLH for some reason couldn’t ‘see’ them.

But for the rest of the story, see my reply to mike1061 below…

[isotope feeney]

Sometimes people change the titles of the songs after they made the checksums. It kinda seems like that happened here. What I do is open the check sums in note pad and comapare them to the song titles. Seems odd that all of them would fail for another reason. I've also seen torrents made in other countrys where something like "~" shows up different on my computer. Or where a symbol is different. For example " ' " . Or maybe on mac computer. Just change the file names to match the check sums.
Thanks
Mike

Your suggestion about crosschecking filenames didn’t directly solve the problem, but it led me down the path to a solution, and for that I thank you.

I’ll try to keep this short and sweet (well, short anyway). I know listening to other people’s technoproblems can be like listening to other people’s health problems (or watching other people’s vacation slides) - - - interesting for THEM maybe, but for you not so much. But you might find this interesting…

I took yr. advice and converted md5 into a text file. The filetitles LOOKED identical to the originals, but as you rightly pointed out, ya can’t always tell by looking (it could be something as trivial as a capital period versus a lower case period --- the type of thing you could NEVER tell by looking). (And as you rightly intuited, these torrents were from another country: Germany I think, I don’t always recognize those little flags that tell you where people are from).

Anyhoo, as an experiment I copy-and-pasted a single decoded md5 filetitle over the original title, to see if that would do anything. Same error message: file cannot be found in directory. I then changed the textfile back to md5 (just changed the file extension back). Just to see what would happen, I doubleclicked on the reconverted (md5>text>md5) shortcut, which opened TLH as usual. I clicked on verify, and lo and behold, it functioned. All I got was error messages for each file, which made sense because the md5 that I had converted into text was a COPY of the original, in a separate folder with no other (FLAC) files. I had made a clone of the original because I knew from experience that once I started playing games with it, I’d never be able to remember WTF I had done in case I ever needed to get back to square one to try a different approach.

So anyway, this was progress. Originally when I had clicked on verify, TLH just gave me one single global error message: checksum file cannot be found in directory. Now a least it was LOOKING for the FLAC files. On a hunch, I copy-and-pasted the FLACs from their original folder into this new folder (again I COPIED them and didn’t MOVE them, because in case this didn’t get me where I wanted to go, I wanted to have the original files intact --- as I told dasmueller above, I had already determined that FLACs would at least PLAY in VLC, so I wanted to keep them unharmed for any future experimentation down that road).

So you can see where this is going. Once I had copy of md5 and copies of FLACs in a new folder, I ran md5 in TLH: checksums match, no errors. Then I imported FLACs into TLH: everything decoded, easy as pie.

WHY any of this would work, I have no idea. I didn’t really CHANGE anything, I just copied the original files, as-is, into a new folder. I guess it’s like when your car won’t start, and you start panicking: Now what? Then the next day it starts up like always, and you never have the problem (whatever it was) again. So you stop thinking about it. None of this make any sense, but I got to decode the torrent, so I’m not complaining.

Okay, that whole explanation wasn’t as ‘Readers’ Digest’-y as I intended, but like I said maybe you’ll find it interesting. And I never would’ve got to my moment of triumph without your initial suggestion, so for that I thank you again!

:wave:

Jason

[dasmueller]

glad you were successful ! interesting as well.

[gojikranz]

any ideas on my issue?

[spidergawd]

I took yr. advice and converted md5 into a text file. The filetitles LOOKED identical to the originals, but as you rightly pointed out, ya can’t always tell by looking (it could be something as trivial as a capital period versus a lower case period --- the type of thing you could NEVER tell by looking). (And as you rightly intuited, these torrents were from another country: Germany I think, I don’t always recognize those little flags that tell you where people are from).


You can try looking at the file with a hex editor, sometimes a text file can contain non-printable bytes that md5 software will "think" is part of a file name and therefore be unable to find the file. For example a .md5 file created with MSDOS will often (always?) have a carriage return byte at the end of each line, which will screw up the linux version of md5sum. This probably has nothing to do with what happened in your situation, but still it's a good idea to own a decent hex editor.

[JDM111er]

A little help please....

I can't seem to find TLH file conversion download. I used it for FLAC conversion to wav but, recently scrubbed my computer and need to download it again.

Thanks in advance:)

[jabulon]

http://tlh.easytree.org/

[gojikranz]

no ideas about my issue? is there a different program i can use?

[roann]

hello I have been happily using traders little helper for years with no major issues. then today i tried to use it and got "error while closing handle(s)" message this happened for anything i have tried to convert today (SHN and Flac).

as far as i know i have not made any big changes to anything so i don't understand why this would happen.

i tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail. any ideas?
It's almost impossible to tell what's wrong on your side... some thoughts:


The error while closing handle(s) message often indicates insufficient access rights (multiple users try to access the same file and file open attributes are not set to allow sharing, or the files to be processed with TLH are located in a directory you don't have access rights for (even if you're logged in as an admin), for example).

TLH tries to write to a target directory that you don't have write access to (even if you're logged in as an admin).

Anti-virus and/or firewall program settings have changed.

Windows remembers a lot of things. If you completely uninstall TLH including re-boot, there still might be something in the registry that could cause troubles after you've re-installed TLH.
Only a) if you are really familiar with using the registry and b) if you know what you're doing when tampering with Windows:

Uninstall TLH and re-boot.
Open the Registry Editor and remove entries that hold one of the following programs if and only if the programs are located in the CmdlineApps subfolder of TLH's installation folder:
aucdtect.exe, flac.exe, lame.exe, mac.exe, metaflac.exe, mkwcon.exe, mkwm4.drv, shntool.exe, shorten.exe, tralih.exe.
Close the Registry Editor.
Open Windows Explorer and empty the prefetch folder (a subfolder of the Windows system folder).
Re-boot.
Install TLH to the folder the setup suggests.
Re-boot and try using TLH.



Hope this helps.
Robert

[macio]

hello, I got a problem: when i'm trying to do anything (Decode/convert) i got this message:
"an Os error occured while executing the DOS subcomponent"
I have tried to uninstall and reinstall THL but it's always the same
I use VISTA and recently i got to reinstall the whole Operating System
Thanks for the attention
Massimo

[Yer Blues]

I downloaded the latest utorrent version and screw up my computer, now I can't download or upload anything, please I need help. what is the best working version of utorrent, the latest sucks.:(

[mike1061]

Your going to have to do better than that. Give some kind of discription as to what's happening. What are the error messages?
Thanks
Mike

[Powerage]

Hi guys, quick question about something I've seen on TLH.

I've just converted a 16bit WAV file to a level 6 FLAC.

The following message has appeared in the process log...:

02 Creepin Up On You.wav: successfully encoded to '02 Creepin Up On You.flac' (Ratio = 0.523; foreign metadata 'BEXT' , 'LGWV' removed)

No errors occured.

The part I'm unsure about is the ratio and the BEXT and LGWV metadata being removed.

I looked up the two terms and got a link to a wikipedia page about Broadcast Wav and how BEXT is something that allows it communicate and work with different computer platforms.

I edited the audio in Logic Pro 8 on MAC and transferred it by USB to my XP PC then put this into Traders Little Helper after all sorts of issues about the File not being found. I think I've sorted the File Not found stuff but just seen the message above.

Hopefully I've given you all the info and so any help / tips / suggestions would be greatly received and appreciated.

Thanks
Rob

[longtalleric]

Hi Rob,

I'm not an expert at all, but maybe I'll be able to help. At least, I can try. :)

Your WAV file contains, next to the audio portion, some additional information used by certain software, which is called metadata.

When you encode your wav file to flac, you have an option to remove this metadata. I guess that's because it'll allow the flac file to become a bit smaller.

AFAIK, TLH's default setting is that it removes this metadata. If you want to preserve it, so the metadata information gets taken into the flac file, check the option 'Keep foreign metadata' in the 'Encode wav files' window in TLH.

Hope that helps,
Eric

[Powerage]

Hi Eric, thanks for the quick reply!

Ah I see, yes that was an option I saw on TLH. Would you recommend keeping the metadata?

Also, do you or anyone else know anything about the way the directories within Traders Little Helper work? They are giving me no end of problems.

Every file I've tried to convert, it says "File cannot be found in directory". The only time it did work was when i moved a single file straight to the top of my C: drive and it converted it there. I've tried changing the directory in the Preferences > General > Directories sub section and it still won't work. I've never had any problems with TLH until the last few days!

Thanks
Rob

[longtalleric]

Ah I see, yes that was an option I saw on TLH. Would you recommend keeping the metadata?


Depends, I guess. If you'd plan on using the (extracted) files in certain software again, it might be useful.


Also, do you or anyone else know anything about the way the directories within Traders Little Helper work? They are giving me no end of problems.

Every file I've tried to convert, it says "File cannot be found in directory". The only time it did work was when i moved a single file straight to the top of my C: drive and it converted it there. I've tried changing the directory in the Preferences > General > Directories sub section and it still won't work. I've never had any problems with TLH until the last few days!


Strange.
In the 'Encode wav files' screen, do you have a directory selected under 'Encode to this directory'?
Have you tried the 'Save encoded files to source directory' as well?

[Unidecker]

Yer Blues utorrent is a disease use a real client with no ads/disease Qbittorrent is what i recccomend.

enjoy.

[Powerage]

Depends, I guess. If you'd plan on using the (extracted) files in certain software again, it might be useful.



Strange.
In the 'Encode wav files' screen, do you have a directory selected under 'Encode to this directory'?
Have you tried the 'Save encoded files to source directory' as well?

Hello, I have tried both of the things you have suggested. It's so weird! It gets to 99%, says No errors occured. It hasn't created the file. If I then tick the Test Encoded files box, it comes up with the Cannot be found in Directory message.

I'm using Version 2.7.0 Build 172

[madhouse73]

where can I download TLH safely? I need to add it to another computer.

thanks

[Unidecker]

http://tlh.easytree.org/

[madhouse73]

Thank you!

[Unidecker]

anytime love that app and love u2lynne too for all she does and a happy new year to all my friends on here and there. :)

<3 unidecker <3

[jimmyRRpage]

So... I have some FLAC files that are 24bit lossless.

TLH will not convert them to MP3. I can convert the encoding format or decode them to WAV first, it doesn't matter. TLH says the file format is not supported.

Before I get castigated for using MP3, I have to. It's for work.

Please help.

Oh and no, I don't have any money. So if I have to use another program, it has to be a free program. Thanks.

[roann]

So... I have some FLAC files that are 24bit lossless.

TLH will not convert them to MP3. I can convert the encoding format or decode them to WAV first, it doesn't matter. TLH says the file format is not supported.

Before I get castigated for using MP3, I have to. It's for work.

Please help.

Oh and no, I don't have any money. So if I have to use another program, it has to be a free program. Thanks.
Just tested this with a set of 48 kHz 24 bit files. No problems on my side...

Do you use the current release (2.7.0 build 172) of TLH?

[jimmyRRpage]

Just tested this with a set of 48 kHz 24 bit files. No problems on my side...

Do you use the current release (2.7.0 build 172) of TLH?

They're 24/96 I believe, ripped from a Blu-Ray. And yes, as far as I know, my TLH is up to date...

[roann]

Just tested this with a set of 48 kHz 24 bit files. No problems on my side...

Do you use the current release (2.7.0 build 172) of TLH?

They're 24/96 I believe, ripped from a Blu-Ray. And yes, as far as I know, my TLH is up to date...
Also no problems with a 96/24 file set (wav to mp3 and flac to mp3).

[jimmyRRpage]

Also no problems with a 96/24 file set (wav to mp3 and flac to mp3).

Gah. I won't be home until later this evening. I'm going to send you a PM then.

[janetfdoss]

Amazing project. I have never seen such great project ever. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[ironchef]

I know there are only about 1,000 pages on here of instructions about the minute details of flac fingerprints, but I'm still having trouble. I'm trying to upload an audio torrent and can't get the flac fingerprints from TLH. I see them when I run TLH, but I can't copy them or do anything else with them to get them into the torrent. I've only posted about 500 shows on Dime, but this "simple" little step keeps tripping me up over here. Should I just use Flac Frontend?

[Audioarchivist]

When you see your flac fingerprints in TLH, you can highlight them, and hit ctrl-c to copy them (can't right click to copy them here for some reason) then paste where you need to.

Or, you should be able to get TLH to save a ffp file - you can make your computer open the ffp file in notepad or wordpad, and copy them from there...

[roann]

Most people don't know about the "magic" of the Save button: right-click the button and a popup menu will be opened that allows to copy the fingerprints to the clipboard.

[ironchef]

When you see your flac fingerprints in TLH, you can highlight them, and hit ctrl-c to copy them (can't right click to copy them here for some reason) then paste where you need to.

Or, you should be able to get TLH to save a ffp file - you can make your computer open the ffp file in notepad or wordpad, and copy them from there...

Thank you very much. Ctrl-C did the trick. I knew it had to be something simple, but I just couldn't find it. I need to start posting over here and not put everything on Dime.

[janetfdoss]

Thank you very much. Ctrl-C did the trick. I knew it had to be something simple, but I just couldn't find it. I need to start posting over here and not put everything on Dime.

Somehow your question did helped me too.

[ultraviolet74]

Does it work on windows 10, because I always get :
an error occur while executing the DOS subcomponents.

Thanks in advance for help

[AAR.oner]

according to the TLH site:

System requirements -- Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

[ultraviolet74]

according to the TLH site:

System requirements -- Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7


Yes I know, I just wanted to know if someone managed to get it work with win10...

and how...

[roann]

Does it work on windows 10, because I always get :
an error occur while executing the DOS subcomponents.

Thanks in advance for help

according to the TLH site:

System requirements -- Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

Well, the TLH site is a bit outdated - I'm a lazy guy, I'm afraid.

I've tested TLH up to Win 7 (32/64 bit), but I don't have Win 8/8.1/10, so no tests with the latter on my side. But until now there isn't any user feedback about serious problems on Win 8/8.1/10. From my point of view TLH works on Win 10.

This error message usually pops up when Windows refuses to execute one of the free command-line programs TLH comes with. Without more info about what you want TLH to do it's really hard to tell what's going wrong (maybe you've installed TLH in a folder where the new security settings Microsoft came up with Win Vista are causing trouble).

Robert

[ultraviolet74]

Does it work on windows 10, because I always get :
an error occur while executing the DOS subcomponents.

Thanks in advance for help

according to the TLH site:

System requirements -- Windows 98/NT/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7

Well, the TLH site is a bit outdated - I'm a lazy guy, I'm afraid.

I've tested TLH up to Win 7 (32/64 bit), but I don't have Win 8/8.1/10, so no tests with the latter on my side. But until now there isn't any user feedback about serious problems on Win 8/8.1/10. From my point of view TLH works on Win 10.

This error message usually pops up when Windows refuses to execute one of the free command-line programs TLH comes with. Without more info about what you want TLH to do it's really hard to tell what's going wrong (maybe you've installed TLH in a folder where the new security settings Microsoft came up with Win Vista are causing trouble).

Robert


THANK YOU very very much,
I had installed this on Program files(x86) and it was the problem, reinstalling TLH on c: root doesn't have any problem!

Thanks againg I didn't think it before.

[roann]

THANK YOU very very much,
I had installed this on Program files(x86) and it was the problem, reinstalling TLH on c: root doesn't have any problem!

Thanks againg I didn't think it before.

Glad it works, though basically it's not a good idea to install a program to C:. Anyway, it seems to be a problem with the TLH installer that isn't really able to handle this properly. I'll try to fix the installer with the next TLH release.

[ultraviolet74]

C: but under a THL folder...
Very happy to listen another release will be out...
Thank you again you saved us a lot of time with your program!!!

[longtalleric]

Strange. On my version of Win10 TLH works well, I did a standard install so TLH is installed in "c:\Program Files (x86)\Trader's Little Helper" and the DOS subcomponents are in the subdirectory "CmdlineApps".

[mdshrk1]

Glad it works, though basically it's not a good idea to install a program to C:. Anyway, it seems to be a problem with the TLH installer that isn't really able to handle this properly. I'll try to fix the installer with the next TLH release.

Not to be a nit-picker, but how about spelling "occurred" right on the next release.....? :hide:

st5 fingerprints:

9a5b9b2a9bcac4a68a2b71341ccfa8c3 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2901.flac
7d9173be22aeba7010e8d7cef0edb9ea [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2902.flac
26ce23b8129af52c2cc585333ef425d8 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2903.flac
f23103b64389201e889878292044ef33 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2904.flac
426edb4ea816d2439c7033d945e41ac6 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2905.flac
e0d9cf2c3c622f2f57d114d2bc51528d [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2906.flac
3a072f987cc650f54a7b8e13b92689ca [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2907.flac
89a1f8639a2fa8b7e72f997d841a2397 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2908.flac
7bb0258c9733ab0fa473501c174ef5fb [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2909.flac
8fca9cead715eda7919c5b9e88c511df [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2910.flac
31d96806099d93ae47d6e25750e45467 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2911.flac
db3d9f38507ee5dd82f67f65117eed03 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2912.flac
e3aedc5c8e144a4b7d66c9f540f8f406 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2913.flac
7b677e8cab97067c721e85f8473044e2 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2914.flac
247d4164555211c1d685c638eeae736e [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2915.flac
f3329418b52d43909e7926f777653ac6 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2916.flac
6962620c30e790209d9d2dfcf87ee2c3 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2917.flac
da8d4845805cf08d35fd22956b7ef835 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2918.flac
513ef4182ed40a33827a8bdf73652de5 [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2919.flac
a84f7ff80a5f4b6f3b15f5f26806dacc [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2920.flac
8a0c561723b0e585785db516a885ec4d [shntool] lfwfmt 2016-02-2921.flac

No errors occured.

[dasmueller]

:roflol:

[wharfrat73]

Not to be a nit-picker, but how about spelling "occurred" right on the next release.....? :hide:

No errors occured.


Thank you.

[mdshrk1]

Love me some Trader's Little Helper....Thanks to you! :wave:

[wharfrat73]

I think one of the helper programs needs to be updated too. I cannot make a .ffp or verify files for certain types of .flac files. I'm using TLH v.2.7.0 build 172. I don't think that TLH checks to see if the helper programs are up to date. The latest .flac.exe is v.1.3.1. TLH installs v.1.2.1. I believe that shntool is also out of date.

I only use TLH as my second choice for various tasks with lossless files. I'm sure that other folks will run into this problem with newer .flac files as time goes by.

Thanks

[roann]

I think one of the helper programs needs to be updated too. I cannot make a .ffp or verify files for certain types of .flac files. I'm using TLH v.2.7.0 build 172. I don't think that TLH checks to see if the helper programs are up to date. The latest .flac.exe is v.1.3.1. TLH installs v.1.2.1. I believe that shntool is also out of date.

I only use TLH as my second choice for various tasks with lossless files. I'm sure that other folks will run into this problem with newer .flac files as time goes by.

ThanksCould you be a bit more specific (what "certain types of .flac files" are you talking about, are there any TLH error messages, for example)?

[wharfrat73]

Could you be a bit more specific (what "certain types of .flac files" are you talking about, are there any TLH error messages, for example)?

Sorry, I thought mentioning that the helper programs were out of date was info enough.

For instance, with .flac encoded 5.1 LPCM Surround Sound Mix (48k) TLH reports that .flac "is not supported." TLH also reports "No errors occured." (sic).

TLH will create a valid .ffp checksum. It will not verify the .ffp. Verifying with up to date files works fine. I believe that metaflac.exe is the helper program that is the issue. I don't have time to check right now.

I hope this helps.

[roann]

Could you be a bit more specific (what "certain types of .flac files" are you talking about, are there any TLH error messages, for example)?

Sorry, I thought mentioning that the helper programs were out of date was info enough.

For instance, with .flac encoded 5.1 LPCM Surround Sound Mix (48k) TLH reports that .flac "is not supported." TLH also reports "No errors occured." (sic).

TLH will create a valid .ffp checksum. It will not verify the .ffp. Verifying with up to date files works fine. I believe that metaflac.exe is the helper program that is the issue. I don't have time to check right now.

I hope this helps.
Thanks for the details! metaflac.exe isn't involved in verifying .ffp files. It's shntool.exe (no matter what release) that cannot handle this format...

[wharfrat73]

Like I said in my earlier post, they verify with the .ffp except in TLH.

[roann]

Like I said in my earlier post, they verify with the .ffp except in TLH.
???

[mike1061]

Probably means in the old Flac program.
Thanks
Mike

[Seventyseven]

All these decoding / encoding / fixing / testing / checksumming programs, for every file type and task another one, plus those annoying command line parameters ... So I wrote a Windows tool/frontend I called Trader's Little Helper. It was not written to be the perfect "all in one wonder" but to handle the most important tasks.

Development isn't finished yet (version 0.8.0), but there are a lot of things this tool already has to offer:

- verify & create checksum files (md5 signature, flac fp, md5 fp)
- test flac and ape files
- decode ape, flac, shn files
- list file details (looking for sector boundary errors)

Features to come in the next versions:
- encode wav files to ape, flac, shn
- fix sector boundary errors
- integration via context menu in windows explorer
- drag & drop functionality
- ???

It would be perfect if Trader's Little Helper could decode mkw files too. Unfortunately I didn't found any information about this file format, and the author of mkw/mkwACT can't be contacted (mkwACT homepage is down, email address doesn't work any more). So if you have any information about mkw, please contact me.

I've decided to make my prog public. You can download it here:

http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205

Any feedback is appreciated! If there are some good icons out there (for the application itself or those md5, ffp, st5 checksum files) please let me know.

Robert

I just found this page and post...i want to say thank you for this awesome little program.

[ultraviolet74]

???

Come on, PLEASE update TLH!
;)

[roann]

???

Come on, PLEASE update TLH!
;)
Well, this would take a long time...

About five years after the last release for me a new release would make sense only if installer skript, GUI, and many internal parts of TLH would be updated or rewritten. And a help file would be great.

For testing all the (pre-)alpha/beta/rc releases a lot of testers would be needed, because I don't have the time to test all this extensively with Windows releases from XP to 10 (32/64-bit). Plus I'd need some assistance writing the help file.

So, any volunteers?

[ultraviolet74]

???

Come on, PLEASE update TLH!
;)
Well, this would take a long time...

About five years after the last release for me a new release would make sense only if installer skript, GUI, and many internal parts of TLH would be updated or rewritten. And a help file would be great.

For testing all the (pre-)alpha/beta/rc releases a lot of testers would be needed, because I don't have the time to test all this extensively with Windows releases from XP to 10 (32/64-bit). Plus I'd need some assistance writing the help file.

So, any volunteers?

Is there a simply way to update only SHN, LAME and FLAC decoder that are a little bit old especially FLAC encoder?

I will be happy to help you test releases!

[roann]

Is there a simply way to update only SHN, LAME and FLAC decoder that are a little bit old especially FLAC encoder? ...

SHN
Deprecated; development was stopped long time ago. TLH 2.7.0 comes with the latest en-/decoder release so this part is up-to-date.

LAME
TLH 2.7.0 comes with LAME v3.98.4. The actual release will be v3.100 (not yet released). Judging from the changelog/history (http://lame.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lame/lame/doc/html/history.html) all post-v3.98.4-fixes/changes are _not_ relevant when using LAME with TLH. So there's no need to update this part of TLH.

FLAC
As a workaround you can replace flac.exe and metaflac.exe in the CmdlineApps folder of TLH with the latest releases. _But_ note that the ffp verifying problem reported about a couple of posts above will _not_ be gone with this workaround (the ffp issue occurs due to the way verifying ffp checksum files is implemented inside of TLH).

... I will be happy to help you test releases!
Thanks very much for your kind offer but much more users than the two of us would be needed for testing...

[longtalleric]

Thanks very much for your kind offer but much more users than the two of us would be needed for testing...

My offer still stands! ;)

[roann]

Thanks very much for your kind offer but much more users than the two of us would be needed for testing...

My offer still stands! ;)
I know :cheers:.

[SIRMick]

TLH does not seem to like a semi-colon being used in the name of the folder containing flac files. I have been trying to generate an ffp but although TLH saw the folder it couldn't read the contents. Has anyone else come across this problem?

Thanks

[roann]

TLH does not seem to like a semi-colon being used in the name of the folder containing flac files. I have been trying to generate an ffp but although TLH saw the folder it couldn't read the contents. Has anyone else come across this problem?

Thanks
Works fine on my side - but at the moment I can only test on Win XP / 7. Is there any error message?

[SIRMick]

No error message. I changed the semi-colon to a comma and it then worked as normal.

BTW: I'm using Win 10.

[LambsWool]

I've suddenly started having problems with Trader's Little Helper. It will encode files just fine but that's all it will do. If I attempt to decode any file, be it FLAC or Ape, I get the error: cannot open output file (likely it does not exist or is not accessible).

So far, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling but the problem persists. Is this a common problem? Is there anything that I can do to fix it? Many thanks.

[roann]

I've suddenly started having problems with Trader's Little Helper. It will encode files just fine but that's all it will do. If I attempt to decode any file, be it FLAC or Ape, I get the error: cannot open output file (likely it does not exist or is not accessible).

So far, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling but the problem persists. Is this a common problem? Is there anything that I can do to fix it? Many thanks.
TLH was written way before Win Vista was released. Security of Win Vista is much improved compared to Win XP (User Account Control, file access, for example).

Workarounds:
1) Move your files to "My Documents" folder. Test...
2) Run TLH as administrator. Test...

[LambsWool]

Thanks. I've just tried both of these options, moving the files to My Documents and then then trying to decode and then, when that didn't work, tried running TLH as administrator. That didn't work either :(

I really appreciate the help. This is a real head-scratcher for me.

[iarooster]

Okay, here's a weird one. :hmm:

Windows 10 machine. Pretty certain TLH worked fine "before the incident." The incident: I installed an old piece of software I liked and it horked up Windows but good-- machine wouldn't boot to Windows, couldn't restore from the restore points, etc. Had to do a reset, and reinstall everything.

Since then, TLH works fine for files on the hard drive. I make data DVDs of GD shows for a friend who doesn't do bit torrents, and TLH won't work on discs in the CD/DVD drive. The file manager portion of TLH works fine-- I can navigate to the drive and select files, but when I click the button to perform the action (like verifying checksums), I always get a "file cannot be found in directory" error message in the log. I get this for verifying checksums, checking audio file details, checking for SBEs, etc. I've removed and reinstalled TLH, which didn't help. :hmm:

Other utilities work fine with the drive, and all the functions can be done to the files on the DVDs using TLH on another machine. While the issue is probably something weird with Windows caused by the reset, I'm hoping the brain trust can point me to a solution. It would be a lot easier to verify the checksums immediately after I burn a disc, instead of having to take it to another machine.

Thanks!

[SIRMick]

Okay, here's a weird one. :hmm:

Windows 10 machine. Pretty certain TLH worked fine "before the incident." The incident: I installed an old piece of software I liked and it horked up Windows but good-- machine wouldn't boot to Windows, couldn't restore from the restore points, etc. Had to do a reset, and reinstall everything.

Since then, TLH works fine for files on the hard drive. I make data DVDs of GD shows for a friend who doesn't do bit torrents, and TLH won't work on discs in the CD/DVD drive. The file manager portion of TLH works fine-- I can navigate to the drive and select files, but when I click the button to perform the action (like verifying checksums), I always get a "file cannot be found in directory" error message in the log. I get this for verifying checksums, checking audio file details, checking for SBEs, etc. I've removed and reinstalled TLH, which didn't help. :hmm:

Other utilities work fine with the drive, and all the functions can be done to the files on the DVDs using TLH on another machine. While the issue is probably something weird with Windows caused by the reset, I'm hoping the brain trust can point me to a solution. It would be a lot easier to verify the checksums immediately after I burn a disc, instead of having to take it to another machine.

Thanks!

I've had this happen before with files on my HD as well. It's nothing to do with TLH as far as I can recall. I think it's something to do with the headers in the files. Can I suggest you copy a few flacs from the DVD back onto your hard drive and test them to see whether they are ok.

[roann]

Okay, here's a weird one. :hmm:

Windows 10 machine. Pretty certain TLH worked fine "before the incident." The incident: I installed an old piece of software I liked and it horked up Windows but good-- machine wouldn't boot to Windows, couldn't restore from the restore points, etc. Had to do a reset, and reinstall everything.

Since then, TLH works fine for files on the hard drive. I make data DVDs of GD shows for a friend who doesn't do bit torrents, and TLH won't work on discs in the CD/DVD drive. The file manager portion of TLH works fine-- I can navigate to the drive and select files, but when I click the button to perform the action (like verifying checksums), I always get a "file cannot be found in directory" error message in the log. I get this for verifying checksums, checking audio file details, checking for SBEs, etc. I've removed and reinstalled TLH, which didn't help. :hmm:

Other utilities work fine with the drive, and all the functions can be done to the files on the DVDs using TLH on another machine. While the issue is probably something weird with Windows caused by the reset, I'm hoping the brain trust can point me to a solution. It would be a lot easier to verify the checksums immediately after I burn a disc, instead of having to take it to another machine.

Thanks!

I've had this happen before with files on my HD as well. It's nothing to do with TLH as far as I can recall. I think it's something to do with the headers in the files. Can I suggest you copy a few flacs from the DVD back onto your hard drive and test them to see whether they are ok.
If the header of a file is corrupted in some way you'd get another error message. So I don't think the issue is caused by the file headers.

Good old TLH ... I wrote it way before Win Vista was released (it all started in the Win 2K era). Security of Win Vista (and newer) is much improved compared to Win 2K/XP (User Account Control, file access, for example). This could be the reason for the "file cannot be found in directory" error message. But I don't know for sure.

I hate Windows OS starting with Win 8... so I switched to Linux long time ago. That's why TLH wasn't updated for years. Unfortunately, for a couple of reasons (most parts of the code need to be reworked, for example) updating TLH would take a lot of time. So far I don't wanted to spend months coding a new release.

The only thing that doesn't take that much time would be to update the installer (from my point of view this could get TLH back to work properly). Don't know - maybe I'll do this in April. I'll let you know...

Robert

[iarooster]

Here's a followup on my issue, where I was getting the error that TLH couldn't find the ffp or md5 file when selected from a data disc burned on my new PC: the problem seems to occur on discs burned with BurnAware Free software, and read with TLH on Win10 (or maybe on a 64 bit OS).

-- The fingerprint files were not found on discs burned with BurnAware on the Win10 *nor* on the old WinVista machine.
-- The fingerprint files *were* found on discs burned on both machines but with different burning software.
-- The fingerprint files were found on discs burned with BurnAware on either machine but read on the Vista machine
-- The fingerprint files were found if I copied the folders back to the hard drive from a disc burned with BurnAware on the Win10 machine.

So it would seem to me that the issue is something about the directory structure/format on the disc when burned with BurnAware; the file explorer part of TLH can navigate it fine, but whatever it's passing to the verification module or other modules doesn't mesh with the disc. I'm sure all the terminology is wrong, but that's how it seems to me. And the important part is, I can just use different burning software and everything's hunky dory with TLH on the Win10 machine.

Thanks to roann and everyone else for their interest!

[francois truffaut]

Hi

Can you let me know what these mean

Audience
Soundboard
Pre-FM
FM Broadcast
Matrix
Studio
IEM/ALD
Multi Track Stereo

I am looking for Acoustic Songs of high clarity Like

Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin Tribute): Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson - 2012 Kennedy Center Honors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u-PjvRyr0I


Thanks

[PearlJamAmerica.com]

I need some help. I am unsure exactly how to fix SBEs. I am going through some of my 2005 Pearl Jam FLAC shows released by Nugs a couple years back and they are riddled with SBEs.

What settings should I be using? Here is an example of the SBE output for one of the shows.


1-01 - I Believe In Miracles.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 128 bytes).
1-02 - Small Town.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1676 bytes).
1-03 - Off He Goes.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1404 bytes).
1-04 - Low Light.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 664 bytes).
1-05 - Man Of The Hour.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1700 bytes).
1-06 - I Am Mine.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 892 bytes).
1-07 - Crazy Mary.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1584 bytes).
1-08 - Black.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 932 bytes).
1-09 - Hard To Imagine.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 2008 bytes).
2-10 - Given To Fly.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 472 bytes).
2-11 - Last Exit.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 2056 bytes).
2-12 - Save You.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1240 bytes).
2-13 - Do The Evolution.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 472 bytes).
2-14 - Alone.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 472 bytes).
2-15 - Sad.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1884 bytes).
2-16 - Even Flow.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 944 bytes).
2-17 - Not For You.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1424 bytes).
2-18 - Corduroy.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1404 bytes).
2-19 - Dissident.flac: audio data is cut on a sector boundary.
2-20 - MFC.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 2176 bytes).
2-21 - Undone.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 556 bytes).
2-22 - Daughter.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 800 bytes).
2-23 - In My Tree.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1140 bytes).
3-24 - State Of Love And Trust.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 36 bytes).
3-25 - Alive.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 500 bytes).
3-26 - Porch.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 520 bytes).
3-27 - Encore Break 1.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 692 bytes).
3-28 - Love Boat Captain.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 380 bytes).
3-29 - Insignificance.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 996 bytes).
3-30 - Better Man.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1828 bytes).
3-31 - Rearviewmirror.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 2276 bytes).
3-32 - Last Kiss.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 624 bytes).
3-33 - Crown Of Thorns.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 2220 bytes).
3-34 - Blood.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1616 bytes).
3-35 - Encore Break 2.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1200 bytes).
3-36 - Yellow Ledbetter.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1324 bytes).
3-37 - Baba O'Riley.flac: audio data is not cut on a sector boundary (sector misalignment = 1140 bytes).

There were sector boundary errors.

[Audioarchivist]

I need some help. I am unsure exactly how to fix SBEs. I am going through some of my 2005 Pearl Jam FLAC shows released by Nugs a couple years back and they are riddled with SBEs.

What settings should I be using? Here is an example of the SBE output for one of the shows.

If you use the "fix" feature in the dropdown box in TLH when you're converting your files, it will append (add) the data outside of the sector boundary to the beginning of the next track. We're talking fractions of 1/75th of a second here, so the resulting files shouldn't sound too different. Being a live show with applause between tracks, fix should keep a gapless fileset ready for CD burning. If you use "pad" it will add null samples (silence) to round up to the next sector boundary CD frame 1/75th of a second, which will make little hesitations in the files of a live show. No good!

Does that help?

[PearlJamAmerica.com]

If you use the "fix" feature in the dropdown box in TLH when you're converting your files, it will append (add) the data outside of the sector boundary to the beginning of the next track. We're talking fractions of 1/75th of a second here, so the resulting files shouldn't sound too different. Being a live show with applause between tracks, fix should keep a gapless fileset ready for CD burning. If you use "pad" it will add null samples (silence) to round up to the next sector boundary CD frame 1/75th of a second, which will make little hesitations in the files of a live show. No good!

Does that help?
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

Should I be checking the box that says "Pad last file with zero-bytes"?

What should I select in the ACTION dropdown? It has shift backward, shift forward & round as options. I don't know what this stuff is or what it means or what I should use of it.

[GRC]

Can you let me know what these mean


Audience
(Recorded with a microphone from the audience)

Soundboard
(rec with a direct feed from the soundboard/mixing desk in the venue)

Pre-FM
(Radio stations would record concerts for later broadcast. These would be stored on magnetic tape or similar. A pre-FM is taken directly from one of these tapes - i.e. it hasn't been 'broadcast' over the air, but taken from the source that preceded the broadcast

FM Broadcast
(Someone has recorded this from a broadcast on an FM band 'over the air' using a radio tuner and recorder)

Matrix
(Combination of AUD and SBD sources mixed together)

Studio
(Something recorded within a genuine recording studio, such as would be used by professionals to record their albums)

IEM/ALD
(Recorded from an Inner Ear Monitor system or Assisted Listening Device)

Multi Track Stereo
(Similar to Studio, but taken from original multi-track tapes)

[roann]

If you use the "fix" feature in the dropdown box in TLH when you're converting your files, it will append (add) the data outside of the sector boundary to the beginning of the next track. We're talking fractions of 1/75th of a second here, so the resulting files shouldn't sound too different. Being a live show with applause between tracks, fix should keep a gapless fileset ready for CD burning. If you use "pad" it will add null samples (silence) to round up to the next sector boundary CD frame 1/75th of a second, which will make little hesitations in the files of a live show. No good!

Does that help?
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

Should I be checking the box that says "Pad last file with zero-bytes"?

What should I select in the ACTION dropdown? It has shift backward, shift forward & round as options. I don't know what this stuff is or what it means or what I should use of it.
a) Important: Always fix SBEs per CD, do not fix the whole fileset. So fix tracks 1-01 to 1-09, then tracks 2-10 to 2-23, and finally tracks 3-24 to 3-37.

b) Check the box that says "Pad last file with zero-bytes". Should work without doing this because usually your CD burner will do the padding, but you never know...

c) Just use the default setting in the "Action" dropbox (backward).

[PearlJamAmerica.com]

a) Important: Always fix SBEs per CD, do not fix the whole fileset. So fix tracks 1-01 to 1-09, then tracks 2-10 to 2-23, and finally tracks 3-24 to 3-37.

b) Check the box that says "Pad last file with zero-bytes". Should work without doing this because usually your CD burner will do the padding, but you never know...

c) Just use the default setting in the "Action" dropbox (backward).

Thanks so much for the reply and information roann :wave: I appreciate this software too. I hope someday you find interest or time in updating this tool.

[pernod]

Since about a month, I have no idea why, I have to manually restore integration of TLH into Windows Explorer context menu every time I start my PC. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this? I have it checked under Options > Preferences > Shell integration so that's not the reason.

[tunic]

Since about a month, I have no idea why, I have to manually restore integration of TLH into Windows Explorer context menu every time I start my PC. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this? I have it checked under Options > Preferences > Shell integration so that's not the reason.

I don't know, but did you try a clean install of TLH (uninstall, reboot PC then reinstall)? Did you perhaps install any other programs around that time that are messing up with TLH?

[pernod]

A clean install did the trick, thanks. Something messed it up for sure but I have no idea what, it's worked just fine for years.

[pernod]

Spoke too soon. Same problem again, clean install didnt solve it.

[FLashfan]

I was using Trader's Little Helper Version 2.7.0 today to convert some .shn files to
> FLAC, and I ran into a problem. It worked fine for the first couple of
> shows I was converting, but all of a sudden TLH showed that the files
> had been successfully converted with no errors, but when I went to the
> destination folder, it was empty. I tried converting them to the same
> folder, and when it was finished only the original .shn files were
> there.

> I tried uninstalling TLH and re-installing it, but it's still the same.

> Anyone got an idea what to do?

[pernod]

Since about a month, I have no idea why, I have to manually restore integration of TLH into Windows Explorer context menu every time I start my PC. Does anyone know if there's a solution for this? I have it checked under Options > Preferences > Shell integration so that's not the reason.

Suddenly, without explanation, it started working again. Thanks for listening.

[roann]

Just released TLH v2.8.0 (build 178).

It's a maintenance release, so no new features. Some fixes and tweaks. Latest FLAC and MP3 decoders/encoders.

In previous releases settings cannot be saved and shell integration cannot be restored if the user account belongs to the Standard User group, or, under Windows Vista and higher with UAC enabled, belongs to the Administrators group. For these tasks it's not required anymore to execute TLH via "Run as administrator...". Now the program will automatically open a UAC elevation prompt to ask for the rights needed.

Robert

[Unidecker]

thanks roann for all your hard work

now integrate it into a shell like some other apps =)

[ironchef]

After my old PC died, I'm finally getting all my usual programs loaded on the new machine. The only one I'm having trouble downloading is TLH b/c Windows Defender thinks it's a virus. Before I go and bypass the WD warning, is there a better place to grab TLH than http://tlh.easytree.org ?

Thanks,

Ironchef

[roann]

After my old PC died, I'm finally getting all my usual programs loaded on the new machine. The only one I'm having trouble downloading is TLH b/c Windows Defender thinks it's a virus. Before I go and bypass the WD warning, is there a better place to grab TLH than http://tlh.easytree.org ?

Thanks,

Ironchef
http://tlh.easytree.org is the only place where you should download the TLH installer, because this is the official TLH homepage.

Virus/trojan/malware warnings are false positives!

Up to v2.7.0 TLH is a single file (tralih.exe). With v2.8.0 (the latest release) there is a second file called external.exe. It is required for the Options menu (tasks that need elevated rights).

Both tralih.exe and external.exe are compressed .exe files (same compressor app, same settings). Compressor apps exist for many years, but still some AV/Anti-Trojan/Malware apps detect whatever malicious when scanning a compressed .exe file. tralih.exe passes the scan, but external.exe sometimes does not. No idea, why...

So, set an exception for external.exe in your security app. Or use TLH without external.exe: you won't be able to use the features in the Options menu, but all other features will work because they do not need external.exe. Or downgrade to TLH v2.7.0.

Robert

[pernod]

This may be a stupid question but on the website I only see tralih280178.exe for download, no external.exe. I still need to manually restore Windows Explorer context menus integration every time after starting my PC.

[roann]

This may be a stupid question but on the website I only see tralih280178.exe for download, no external.exe. I still need to manually restore Windows Explorer context menus integration every time after starting my PC.
tralih280178.exe is the setup file used to install or upgrade TLH. All files needed for installation/upgrade (tralih.exe, external.exe, all command-line apps) come with this installer and will be installed during setup.

[juxtiphi]

If you open TLH and look under the Help tab you will see an option for updating the prog.

[pernod]

tralih280178.exe is the setup file used to install or upgrade TLH. All files needed for installation/upgrade (tralih.exe, external.exe, all command-line apps) come with this installer and will be installed during setup.

Understood. Thought I was missing something. ;)

[roann]

The powers of evil (before you ask, no, not Agent Orange, but the copy & paste demon) had forced me to introduce a bug to the latest TLH release v2.8.0 (in other words, this bug is not present in older releases): Processing a .flac file will fail if there is an ID3v2 tag at the beginning of the file.

Triple sorry! And a big Thanks to L.S. who reported this mess.

The fixed release v2.8.1 (build 179) is out now. Use TLH's Help menu to check for updates and download/install the new one. Or get the new installer from the TLH homepage. Or stay with v2.7.0 if you don't have any .flac files with an ID3v2 tag at the beginning...

Robert

[Seth01]

The fixed release v2.8.1 (build 179) is out now. Use TLH's Help menu to check for updates and download/install the new one. Or get the new installer from the TLH homepage. Or stay with v2.7.0 if you don't have any .flac files with an ID3v2 tag at the beginning...

Robert

Thank you so much for continuing to develop this amazing little program. All these years later and I still use it regularly. It's a godsend. Much, much appreciate. :clap::clap:

[guygee]

Today I generated a large list of MD5s for files in a top-level directory including files in all sub-directories, at the end of the MD5 list I have a message: "There were errors." I searched the MD5 text file for the word "error" but found nothing. I also checked the path lengths in the sub-directories, the longest length was 216 characters, including the file name, less than the 255 characters that could cause an error.

Question: What else would cause TLH to generate an error while encoding MD5s?

[TheMysticMuse]

Best program ever made for collectors like us. LOVE IT!

[guygee]

Is there documentation for the command-line arguments to tralih.exe that would allow me to use it in a script?
P.S. For example I would like to traverse all sub-directories on a disk, periodically checking all md5 and ffp files for errors.

[guygee]

Today I generated a large list of MD5s for files in a top-level directory including files in all sub-directories, at the end of the MD5 list I have a message: "There were errors." I searched the MD5 text file for the word "error" but found nothing. I also checked the path lengths in the sub-directories, the longest length was 216 characters, including the file name, less than the 255 characters that could cause an error.

Question: What else would cause TLH to generate an error while encoding MD5s?

In this case I came up with at least one answer: corruption in the NTFS filesystem caused the error. I ran du -ach >list.txt in linux, it dumped core. I looked at the where the list.txt stopped, the file looked like a link to another folder. I moved the USB external disk to windows and tested the flacs with TLH in that folder, some tested bad. Then running chkdsk /f, the filesystem was repaired and those files disappeared. No wonder trying to encode an md5 threw an error.

[roann]

Is there documentation for the command-line arguments to tralih.exe that would allow me to use it in a script?...
There's no documentation. You have to look in the registry (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\...).

... For example I would like to traverse all sub-directories on a disk, periodically checking all md5 and ffp files for errors.
Unfortunately, this is not possible using command-line args only.

[fart_napkin]

Hey guys, longtime lurker, first time poster. Quick question...
I absolutely love Trader's Little Helper; I use it all the time! Here's my dilemma... Recently, I've been naming the songs of my shows using unicode fullwidth characters as opposed to using an underscore or a caret, etc. to signify a segue, inverted version, etc.
Exempli gratia:
Instead of,
2-01 I_ Little Betty Boop (inv)-_ or
2-01 I_ Little Betty Boop (inv)^
I've been naming them like so,
2-01 I：Little Betty Boop (＞＜) –＞

However, unfortunately TLH will not recognize these files. It will just say it "does not exist" or "No files left to be processed", "File cannot be found in directory", etc.
Why does this happen? I'm guessing this means TLH does not have unicode/utf-8 support? Does it read files via ANSI? Is there a way to force TLH to read unicode characters or an extension I could download? I mainly trying to create checksums, specifically st5. I know it's at least possible to create MD5, SFV, CRC-32, SHA-256, and BLAKE2 checksums using unicode characters because I've created them with TurboSFV.
If TLH could read the files, I assume I could just save it as a text file > open in notepad > save as UTF-8 or unicode.

Anyways, I'd appreciate any help you guys could give me!

[Homebrew101]

You may get a quicker reply if you posted that question here: http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3904

[XAVeRY]

I'd be glad to work on Unicode support in TLH if source was available.

[roann]

Hey guys, longtime lurker, first time poster. Quick question...
I absolutely love Trader's Little Helper; I use it all the time! Here's my dilemma... Recently, I've been naming the songs of my shows using unicode fullwidth characters as opposed to using an underscore or a caret, etc. to signify a segue, inverted version, etc.
Exempli gratia:
Instead of,
2-01 I_ Little Betty Boop (inv)-_ or
2-01 I_ Little Betty Boop (inv)^
I've been naming them like so,
2-01 I：Little Betty Boop (＞＜) –＞

However, unfortunately TLH will not recognize these files. It will just say it "does not exist" or "No files left to be processed", "File cannot be found in directory", etc.
Why does this happen? I'm guessing this means TLH does not have unicode/utf-8 support? Does it read files via ANSI? Is there a way to force TLH to read unicode characters or an extension I could download? I mainly trying to create checksums, specifically st5. I know it's at least possible to create MD5, SFV, CRC-32, SHA-256, and BLAKE2 checksums using unicode characters because I've created them with TurboSFV.
If TLH could read the files, I assume I could just save it as a text file > open in notepad > save as UTF-8 or unicode.

Anyways, I'd appreciate any help you guys could give me!

I'd be glad to work on Unicode support in TLH if source was available.

TLH consists mainly of two parts: 1) the Graphical User Interface (the window you work with when using TLH (menus, file lists, buttons, ...)) and 2) a couple of third-party command-line apps ("console applications"; apps without GUI) that TLH calls in the background to execute the task specified (encoding files, for example).

The GUI is not able to handle Unicode because long time ago, when the main parts of TLH were written, there was no need for Unicode support. Though this would be a lot of work I could update the GUI to support Unicode. But: The real pain in the ass are the third-party command-line apps. They do not support Unicode because they were written to work in the non-Unicode Windows console. And: not all used comand-line apps are Open Source.

[pernod]

Version 2.8.2 (Build 181) released past month seems to have fixed a little nagging problem I have had since last year, manually having to restore integration into Windows Explorer context menus each time. < Knocks wood > Thanks a lot roann.

[pernod]

Spoke too soon... it hasn't. :lol:

[TheMysticMuse]

Version 2.8.2 (Build 181) released past month seems to have fixed a little nagging problem I have had since last year, manually having to restore integration into Windows Explorer context menus each time. < Knocks wood > Thanks a lot roann.

Can you please elaborate? What's the problem?

[pernod]

Can you please elaborate? What's the problem?

The ability to open an audio file in TLH with right click which always worked fine with me until last year something changed and I have to manually restore integration from the TLH menu each time I start my PC. Like I said, it's a small nagging problem, not something major. I'm just baffled why this would have changed suddenly.

[roann]

The ability to open an audio file in TLH with right click which always worked fine with me until last year something changed and I have to manually restore integration from the TLH menu each time I start my PC. Like I said, it's a small nagging problem, not something major. I'm just baffled why this would have changed suddenly.
:wtf: ... I'll check this next weekend in a Win 10 VM.

[gmm6797]

FWIW, this:
http://tlh.easytree.org/files/tralih282181.exe
is reporting a "Trojan:Win32/Spursint.F!cl" by Windows Defender

[roann]

Yeah, I know :pissed: See here (http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2659394&postcount=975) for some explanation.

I'm still trying to rewrite my malware so anti-whatever-evil apps won't be able to detect it :devil: ...

Robert

[carbonbit]

I set an exception in my Windows (7) anti-virus software for external.exe, but the software will still not permit the DL of the new .exe file.

...the other option you mention is to downgrade to 2.7, which is what I'm currently using, and I'm fine with it. But trying to turn other people (experiencing the same AV issue) onto TLH.... is there a link to the 2.7 installer on easytree?

(also, I would suggest that some mention of this issue on the easytree page might prevent attempted DLers from freaking out and losing faith in both TLH AND easytree.)

[roann]

I set an exception in my Windows (7) anti-virus software for external.exe, but the software will still not permit the DL of the new .exe file. ...

a) You have to set an exception for the installer file (tralih282181.exe) to be able to download it.
b) You have to set an exception for external.exe to be able to install TLH.

...the other option you mention is to downgrade to 2.7, which is what I'm currently using, and I'm fine with it. But trying to turn other people (experiencing the same AV issue) onto TLH.... is there a link to the 2.7 installer on easytree?

I'll update the website ASAP. Updated.

... (also, I would suggest that some mention of this issue on the easytree page might prevent attempted DLers from freaking out and losing faith in both TLH AND easytree.)

IIRC I did mention it some time ago.

[amber438]

My pc crashed a week ago and just installed the new version of TLH v2.8.2 (had version 2.2.1 for years and worked beautifully for me) and am getting these 2 error messages.

First when double clicking any torrent file I get this error:
The parameters passed contain invalid or incomplete commands. Processing will be terminated and all parameters passed will be ignored.

Then while trying to restore windows explorer context menu associations, I get this error:
There was an error while reading forms or writing to the windows registry. Restoring integration of Traders Little helper into windows explorer menus was terminated.

This never happened with the older version. Happened in version 2.7 also. Is there a fix? Or better yet does anyone have the old version 2.2.1 they would be willing to send me?
Thanks all