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roann
2005-02-18, 03:55 PM
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

http://tlh.easytree.org/

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

wazoo2u
2005-02-18, 04:57 PM
MKW developer had some serious health issues (don't know what exactly), and ceased development.

This looks like a great project, and very useful tool. Thanks for your efforts.

TheMamba
2005-02-18, 08:57 PM
:clap:

fp.trade
2005-02-19, 03:38 AM
nice project ... :thumbsup

RainDawg
2005-02-21, 08:54 AM
The link from your page is in German (best I can tell), and I can't find for download anywhere the program file you refer to. I would be happy to incorporate some of this program into a sourceforge project and host the files there for free (I believe we were in contact about this previously). It would provide reliable hosting for sure.

feralicious
2005-02-21, 01:22 PM
I've decided to make my prog public. Cause it seems impossible to get some free webspace with the monthly bandwidth needed I put the (un)installer file in my GMX Media Center:

http://service.gmx.net/mc/66U7Z4PONneJQYHSwg7Qf8oAcIZd1y

(You may have to click some buttons before you can download the file ...)
Which buttons should I click?

feralicious
2005-02-21, 01:39 PM
Okay I got it. Next question is should one run an executable from someone with only 1 post here? :hmm:

diggrd
2005-02-21, 10:42 PM
I had the same trepidation but roann's user# is 1284 and I figure someone who lurks that long is either one calculating haxzor or just a lurker with better things to type (code) than posts on msgboards. No ill effects from this so far. :eek:
The link from your page is in German (best I can tell), and I can't find for download anywhere the program file you refer to. I would be happy to incorporate some of this program into a sourceforge project and host the files there for free (I believe we were in contact about this previously). It would provide reliable hosting for sure.

I rar'ed it to postable size here but that would take 15 posts :(

feralicious
2005-02-21, 11:20 PM
I had the same trepidation but roann's user# is 1284...Where do you see that? I want to know what # I am.

Spelunker
2005-02-21, 11:23 PM
Where do you see that? I want to know what # I am.

http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/member.php?u=26

That is what you are.

Five
2005-02-21, 11:24 PM
Where do you see that? I want to know what # I am.
you're #26. It shows up in the lower-left display on your browser when hovering over a member's avatar.

feralicious
2005-02-21, 11:24 PM
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/member.php?u=26

That is what you are.Hey now... no need for name calling. :lol

So the number at the end of the url is my user number?

Five
2005-02-21, 11:25 PM
jah.

feralicious
2005-02-21, 11:25 PM
you're #26. It shows up in the lower-left display on your browser when hovering over a member's avatar.
Five, you joined one number too late. ;)

Spelunker
2005-02-21, 11:26 PM
Hey now... no need for name calling. :lol

So the number at the end of the url is my user number?
yep. That is your user number. You were even here before me. ;)

feralicious
2005-02-21, 11:29 PM
yep. That is your user number. You were even here before me. ;)That's right. And don't you forget it. :p

U2Lynne
2005-02-21, 11:30 PM
Nina, hold the mouse over the avatar and it will tell you what user number you are in the status bar on the bottom of your browser.

feralicious
2005-02-21, 11:31 PM
Yeah Lynne, thanks, I got it when Five told me. ;)


You know I'm just being sarcastic, right?

U2Lynne
2005-02-21, 11:44 PM
Yeah Lynne, thanks, I got it when Five told me. ;)


You know I'm just being sarcastic, right?
And, I need to stop grabbing a bunch of threads that need answearing at the same time (in tabbed browsing) and not hitting refresh when I finally get to the post!

roann
2005-02-24, 03:29 PM
Some of you seem to think that the _number_ of posts is related to the character of the poster - this is a bit naive, isn't it!?

Sorry for my first dl link. I didn't know that in times of a _world wide_ web one of the leading freemailers offers filesharing links that are only valid in one country. Anyway ... here is the link to the Trader's Little Helper homepage where you can find some info and download the install prog (worldwide I hope):

http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205

PS: Probably over the next weekend the new version 0.9 will be released which can handle sector boundary errors.

fluxus
2005-02-24, 04:08 PM
Fine prog, works ok, thanks a lot! :clap:

feralicious
2005-02-24, 04:40 PM
Some of you seem to think that the _number_ of posts is related to the character of the poster - this is a bit naive, isn't it!?
Not really. The number of posts is related to whether anyone knows who you are or how active you are in the community. This is the internet. Don't you think it would be naive to run an executable file from an unknown person?
Would you eat food that someone you just passed on the street gave you? Take drugs from a stranger? They may be a saint or a serial killer, but you just don't know.

Anyway, now that the guinea pigs have tried it out so will I. :lol
Thanks for sharing your work.

roann
2005-02-27, 01:54 PM
I've released a new version (0.9.0.47) of Trader's Little Helper. Added is the ability to fix sector boundary errors. Upcoming version 1.0 will be able to encode files.

Info / download: http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205

Punkishlyevil
2005-02-27, 03:11 PM
Quite useful. Thanks a lot.

62v8
2005-02-28, 06:04 AM
This is scary ... at last even I can get to the point where I can actually put up a post with confidence. Check and repair in a one stop shop. Little Helper is a ripper.

Wel done!

jaguaracer
2005-02-28, 05:22 PM
Is anyone else having problems decoding FLAC Files?

I get the error:
To Test:
flac -t [INPUTFILE[...]]
Ignore and Continue?
Yes or No?

I'd like to get this working because it looks like a great program. :)

Five
2005-02-28, 05:37 PM
double-check it using FLAC frontend (link in my signature).

if it works with FLAC frontend, it is probably a problem with Trader's Little Helper.

if it gives the same error with FLAC frontend, the problem is with your files.

...also (of course) try decoding some different FLAC files and see if you always get that error or not.

hope this helps

jaguaracer
2005-02-28, 05:59 PM
ya, I've always used FLAC frontend. I just upgraded to the latest version too thinking there was an issue there but nothing solved.
I tried decoding the same files with FLAC frontend and TLH and they work fine with FLAC frontend but not TLH.
And yes, I've tried decoding many FLAC files.
:hmm: :hmm:
Quite perplexing, especially if others are not having this problem.
Wild guess, but I'll see if I can mess around with the FLAC decoding engine (if possible). My guess is that it is set to automatically test the files then decode, but this testing action action is not being recognized by TLH.
Thank you for your help Five. Maybe someone will chime in with the same problem (and hopefully a solution).

roann
2005-03-01, 02:24 AM
Is anyone else having problems decoding FLAC Files?

I get the error:
To Test:
flac -t [INPUTFILE[...]]
Ignore and Continue?
Yes or No?

I'd like to get this working because it looks like a great program. :)

Never seen this before when testing/using my prog. Please tell me the following details:

1 - on which tab ('Test encoded files', 'Decode files', both?) do this occur?
2 - do this happen every time or only with some files?
2 - is the quoted code above the error message that comes up with an extra message box (the exact words, file name)?
3 - what is written in the log window after this error had shown up?
4 - Windows version?
5 - did you install some flac program after you've installed Trader's Little Helper?

Robert

jaguaracer
2005-03-01, 08:07 AM
1. only under decode files. testing works fine.
2. with all FLAC files. SHN decoding works fine.
2. the message I posted is a dialog box that pops up with Yes or No being buttons I can press. 'Yes' will ignore and try to decode the rest of the files (but the same error appears with all the others), 'No' just cancels the whole procedure.
3. Just says
there were errors
decoding files aborted.
4. Windows, yes
5. No. I had FLAC 1.1.1a installed and ran your program: error. Then I uninstalled both FLAC and your program. Got 1.1.2a FLAC, installed then re-installed TLH. Same error still.
:hmm:

roann
2005-03-01, 05:06 PM
1. only under decode files. testing works fine.
2. with all FLAC files. SHN decoding works fine.
2. the message I posted is a dialog box that pops up with Yes or No being buttons I can press. 'Yes' will ignore and try to decode the rest of the files (but the same error appears with all the others), 'No' just cancels the whole procedure.
3. Just says
there were errors
decoding files aborted.
4. Windows, yes
5. No. I had FLAC 1.1.1a installed and ran your program: error. Then I uninstalled both FLAC and your program. Got 1.1.2a FLAC, installed then re-installed TLH. Same error still.
:hmm:

Jaguaracer, thanks for your detailed info. I finally got it ... and I'm an idiot please shoot me ;-) ...

Anyway, I've fixed this stupid error and uploaded a new version (0.9.1.48). Hope this was the only "monster bug".

jaguaracer
2005-03-01, 06:53 PM
Jaguaracer, thanks for your detailed info. I finally got it ... and I'm an idiot please shoot me ;-) ...

Anyway, I've fixed this stupid error and uploaded a new version (0.9.1.48). Hope this was the only "monster bug".

Thank you!!
:worship: :worship: :worship:
Finally, an all-in-one taper software package. I like having a clean, neat computer and this incorporates practically everything I need.

Five
2005-03-02, 05:30 AM
Thanks very much for this progarm roann :clap:

I finally installed it and checked it out, it is really great! I'll have some suggestions along the way if that's okay. I hope to uninstall all the aps this replaces sometime after v1.0 that would be great.

I tried everything I could think of and found just one small bug...

Sometimes people include an md5 with FLAC files. When I tried to test a wholefile .md5 generated with md5summer your prog did very well to skip the comments but couldn't manage to verify past the first file.

http://img230.exs.cx/img230/9117/tlherror15dy.th.gif (http://img230.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img230&image=tlherror15dy.gif)

Five
2005-03-02, 05:31 AM
So I generated another wholefile .md5 using you program. I checks fine in md5summer...

http://img229.exs.cx/img229/1687/summerworks18bv.th.gif (http://img229.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img229&image=summerworks18bv.gif)

Five
2005-03-02, 05:32 AM
then I tried checking the same .md5 that just worked in the pic above with TLH and got the errors again.

http://img229.exs.cx/img229/5691/tlherror27wr.th.gif (http://img229.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img229&image=tlherror27wr.gif)
Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting (http://www.imageshack.us)

Five
2005-03-02, 05:53 AM
This only happens with wholefile .md5 checksums that are for FLAC files. Even tho these are unnecessary especially with your program's ability to verify from ffp files it would still be great if this worked since I still see some people seeding FLAC sets with wholefile md5s included.

I like how the fix sbe function has a popup asking if you are sure about the order of the files. I guess the only way to change the order is to use add > open one file at a time or just change the filenames. Since 99% of shows are named so that they automatically will be sorted this is not much of an inconvenience. A "move up" and "move down" button which changes the order by moving the highlighted track might be something to add down the line, not that I would ever use it I would just rename the files so that they sort.

The other thing that comes to mind is that SBEs should be fixed one disc at a time, so that for example if there's an SBE on the last track of disc one it pads with silence rather than taking a little piece off the beginning of d2t01. Perhaps some mention of this or if possible some intelligent guess by the program to identify multiple disc sets and confirm with the user that it has done this correctly before applying the fix.

Perhaps this could be done by looking for "d1" "d2" in the filenames (or even "d01" and "d02" for sets of 10+ audio cdrs). This could get a little hairy if d1 or d2 exists in the filename.

An easier option might be to ask the user "is this a one-disc set?" yes or no, then if it is a multiple disc set get the user to show the prog which files are for disc one, then disc two, etc etc.

Anyhow, I'm thankful for everything you've done so far and just wanted to give you some input on what I would like as a user. (ps. maybe one day drag and drop will be possible *hint* *hint*)

Five
2005-03-02, 06:40 AM
oh, and one more thing... I can't seem to get the "fix sbes" to start. I pushed "save" but it just gave me a preview .txt file... how do I get it to start?

http://img34.exs.cx/img34/8070/fixsbes12iz.th.gif (http://img34.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img34&image=fixsbes12iz.gif)

roann
2005-03-02, 10:53 AM
Five, thanks for that much input/feedback. It will take some posts to answer all your questions. Because I'm at work at the moment you have to be a bit patient. This md5 thing I can test only at home. This is very strange cause from the beginning I've never had problem with this feature. I think programmers always say that ;).


I like how the fix sbe function has a popup asking if you are sure about the order of the files. I guess the only way to change the order is to use add > open one file at a time or just change the filenames. Since 99% of shows are named so that they automatically will be sorted this is not much of an inconvenience. A "move up" and "move down" button which changes the order by moving the highlighted track might be something to add down the line, not that I would ever use it I would just rename the files so that they sort.


_Don't_ use the add/remove buttons and rename the files. You can change the order or the files in the list by simply clicking and dragging them with your mouse (very similar to the way you select file(s) in the windows explorer with the left mouse button and move them via right mouse button to another directory). So no "move up/down" buttons are needed.


oh, and one more thing... I can't seem to get the "fix sbes" to start. I pushed "save" but it just gave me a preview .txt file... how do I get it to start?


??? ... ok, you've added the files to the list. Next to the "Clear" button is a thing called combo box (this is only enabled if there are files in the list!). If you click on the small down arrow button right side of this box you will be able to select "preview" or "fix". If you select "preview" (or "fix) the button under the combo box has the caption "Preview" (or "Fix SBEs"). So, select "fix", press "Fix SBEs" und the prog will do the job. The results can be seen in the log. The "Save" button right side the log will save the log, for example if you want to add this text file to a seed as some kind of change log.

Sorry, time-out.

feralicious
2005-03-02, 11:04 AM
Does shntool need to be up and running on one's system in order for this to work? That's something I've always had a problem with, getting shntool to work, so I gave up and never tried again. But I'd like to check all my shows for SBEs.

pmonk
2005-03-02, 11:12 AM
No - shntool does not need to be up and running.

Actually - shntool is somewhat easy once you figure it out!

If you download Batchenc program you can load all the shntool commands and it works like a charm.

You can also get the shntool len to creat a text file as well.

feralicious
2005-03-02, 12:33 PM
Thanks Paul for the help with shntool, it's going now. Although now that roann has 6 posts I can run that .exe file and use that program. ;) :lol

roann
2005-03-02, 02:22 PM
... SBEs should be fixed one disc at a time, so that for example if there's an SBE on the last track of disc one it pads with silence rather than taking a little piece off the beginning of d2t01. Perhaps some mention of this or if possible some intelligent guess by the program to identify multiple disc sets and confirm with the user that it has done this correctly before applying the fix.

Perhaps this could be done by looking for "d1" "d2" in the filenames (or even "d01" and "d02" for sets of 10+ audio cdrs). This could get a little hairy if d1 or d2 exists in the filename.

An easier option might be to ask the user "is this a one-disc set?" yes or no, then if it is a multiple disc set get the user to show the prog which files are for disc one, then disc two, etc etc.

Great idea. Added to the list. But definitely not in v1.0.

... maybe one day drag and drop will be possible *hint* *hint*

Yep, drag&drop is already on the list. But same as above - not in v1.0.

roann
2005-03-02, 02:40 PM
Five, this md5 problem really is a bit weird. On my machines at home verifying/creating md5s (for all types of files) works perfectly :hmm: .

You wrote "When I tried to test a wholefile .md5 generated with md5summer your prog did very well to skip the comments but couldn't manage to verify past the first file." So the first file was verified ok? Could you please tell me what error message Trader's Little Helper had put up (pop up window and the message in the log)?

Five
2005-03-02, 07:35 PM
thanks for the replies, roann.

as for the md5 problem... it seems to have fixed itself! The files I was working on have been renamed since this morning, and I tried it again now and couldn't get it to crash. It's the old case of calling the television repair man and when he arrives the TV works fine. :lol

When I was having the problem, the 1st file was verifying fine, then for the 2nd and every other file I was getting the popup that says "Error: Invalid Data Line 8: audio file does not exits. Ignore and continue?" as pictured here:
http://img229.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img229&image=tlherror27wr.gif
Each file caused the popup, which would say Line 8, Line 9, etc. All's well that ends well, I can't make it happen again right now, so I'll guess it wasn't because of your prog.

As for fixing SBEs, thanks, I've found the "fix/preview" option and am going to try it out in a few minutes. For changing the order of files, I tried dragging and dropping the files in the list displayed by TLH but it didn't work, they just highlight but won't move. I'm using WIN2KPRO. No biggie, I can't see myself ever needing to change the order but I thought you might like to know.

pmonk
2005-03-02, 08:19 PM
The fix sbe option worked very well. I opened a Zep file and it had mucho sbe problems. Used the preview button to view the problem and it fixed all sbe's quite nicely!

For some reason - I can't stop playing with all of these frontends :)

feralicious
2005-03-02, 08:46 PM
I just tried to download the update but it seems v9.1.48 isn't there anymore. Not found. :(

pmonk
2005-03-02, 08:59 PM
It's still there - look on the bottom!

Five
2005-03-02, 09:01 PM
For some reason - I can't stop playing with all of these frontends :)
me too!

I just tried to download the update but it seems v9.1.48 isn't there anymore. Not found. :(
I just went and checked, I could get it just fine. I downloaded another copy to my desktop just now, give it another shot.

feralicious
2005-03-02, 09:05 PM
Damn. I got the 404 error, then I tried "save link target as" and it said the file wasn't there and maybe it got moved. I'll try again.


Got it this time. :)

roann
2005-03-03, 12:03 AM
as for the md5 problem... it seems to have fixed itself! The files I was working on have been renamed since this morning, and I tried it again now and couldn't get it to crash. It's the old case of calling the television repair man and when he arrives the TV works fine.
This prog definitely is capable of repairing itself cause it was coded in a top secret research lab on Area 51 ... :lol



When I was having the problem, the 1st file was verifying fine, then for the 2nd and every other file I was getting the popup that says "Error: Invalid Data Line 8: audio file does not exits. Ignore and continue?" as pictured here:
... Each file caused the popup, which would say Line 8, Line 9, etc. All's well that ends well, I can't make it happen again right now, so I'll guess it wasn't because of your prog.
An error message "Line ...: audio file does not exist." will be shown if the file to verify the checksum for has been renamed, moved to another directory or deleted after the creation of the md5 file or if changes were made in the md5 file itself. In some rare cases this message also will pop up if another program is accessing the file at the same time (specially when you're still uploading the file and want to verify the checksum). This will be fixed in the next version of Trader's Little Helper.



As for fixing SBEs, thanks, I've found the "fix/preview" option and am going to try it out in a few minutes. For changing the order of files, I tried dragging and dropping the files in the list displayed by TLH but it didn't work, they just highlight but won't move. I'm using WIN2KPRO. No biggie, I can't see myself ever needing to change the order but I thought you might like to know.
You can move one file or multiple files. To try out just click one file with your _left_ mouse button. The line will be highlighted. Then click on this line with your _right_ mouse button _but_ keep the button pressed. Move the mouse cursor (the cursor pic will change) to the line you want to move the file to. Release the button and the file order has been changed.

Don't know if you users are more into "Move up/down" buttons. Would be no big problem to add this feature. Let me know.

Five
2005-03-03, 04:39 PM
yeah, I believe that my "md5 bug" is completely my own fault. the show I was testing with had the tracks named with d1t1 - d1t15 , so it was sorting with 10 after 1 if you know what I mean. Now I'm pretty sure that I renamed the files to d1t01 ... etc then got the errors after that. sorry for the false alarm! I guess the only discovery that I've found from this is that the md5 checking in your program stops checking and requires the user to hit "ok" when a file can't be found, perhaps it could continue checking and just give an error message at the end like other other md5 checkers at least that's how I'd prefer it.

As for the changing of the the order, I tried left clicking and highlighting a file, then dragging but as I drag it just highlights other files and the order doesn't change. I have other programs where you can change the order that work by dragging so I know how it works but I couldn't get this to work with your program. No biggie for me, I normally wouldn't want to change the order anyways. I just suggested the move up/move down buttons because on some other programs where I couldn't drag the programmers have added these buttons... I'd still prefer to drag, of course.

This prog definitely is capable of repairing itself cause it was coded in a top secret research lab on Area 51 ... :lol
I should have known :lol

I'm using your program regularly now. :thumbsup

rerem
2005-03-05, 02:46 PM
Gotta give this a shot,shntool makes me nuts. It may be a much different sort of code but an ability to quick scan to see if music files are overloaded-clipping,would be a neat feature. Clipped peak issues seem about as common as SBE's and are even more noticable. I can load all the waves into Soundforge and look song by song but I don't want to do that for every disc I burn. Other shows come with very low levels. Generally normalizing individually scans a song for peak and adjusts from that,so t-1 and t-2 may not be at the same loudness but the normalizing will try to make them so,which makes it not useful for live shows. a batch normalizer that could load a disc's worth of songs,find the peak of the whole group and apply equal adjustment woul be a nice trader tool too. Maybe such a prog exists and I missed it. It looks to me like mkw is fading from use,and ape never caught on-takes forever to decode ape on my machine. Before long flac will be the norm with some shn,while the various others will seldom be seen

Five
2005-03-06, 12:50 AM
Gotta give this a shot,shntool makes me nuts. It may be a much different sort of code but an ability to quick scan to see if music files are overloaded-clipping,would be a neat feature. Clipped peak issues seem about as common as SBE's and are even more noticable. I can load all the waves into Soundforge and look song by song but I don't want to do that for every disc I burn. Other shows come with very low levels. Generally normalizing individually scans a song for peak and adjusts from that,so t-1 and t-2 may not be at the same loudness but the normalizing will try to make them so,which makes it not useful for live shows. a batch normalizer that could load a disc's worth of songs,find the peak of the whole group and apply equal adjustment woul be a nice trader tool too. Maybe such a prog exists and I missed it. It looks to me like mkw is fading from use,and ape never caught on-takes forever to decode ape on my machine. Before long flac will be the norm with some shn,while the various others will seldom be seen
I think it might be better to leave a job like this to a WAV editor, a prog like Audacity could do this.

If it's just available blindly at a push of a button I'm not sure that's a good thing... even if it was programmed as perfectly as possible I'd still want to look it over in a WAV editor to make sure it was done right before passing it on. So maybe it's better just to do it in a WAV editor.

Sid
2005-03-07, 09:13 AM
:clap: :clap:

sedate-ed
2005-03-25, 11:38 AM
I believe I may have discovered a bug/conflict with the Trader's Little Helper program. I am running Windows XP-SP2 (fully patched) and also running the Cygwin X-Server for Windows (open-source application to run X-based applications in a Win32 environment). The TLH installer puts its "cygwin1.dll" file in the "Windows" directory. With this file present, the Cygwin X-server will not start. Cygwin X-server uses "cygwin1.dll" version 1005.12.0.0, and it is located (by default) in the "cygwin\bin" folder.

Now for me, I am able to work around this issue, by running TLH on another PC on my home network. Great program, haven't run across any functionality issues with the program itself! It would be nice to able to run it on my main PC also.

I am running the latest version of TLH, BTW.

Sedate-ed

roann
2005-03-26, 05:08 AM
I believe I may have discovered a bug/conflict with the Trader's Little Helper program. I am running Windows XP-SP2 (fully patched) and also running the Cygwin X-Server for Windows (open-source application to run X-based applications in a Win32 environment). The TLH installer puts its "cygwin1.dll" file in the "Windows" directory. With this file present, the Cygwin X-server will not start. Cygwin X-server uses "cygwin1.dll" version 1005.12.0.0, and it is located (by default) in the "cygwin\bin" folder.

Now for me, I am able to work around this issue, by running TLH on another PC on my home network. Great program, haven't run across any functionality issues with the program itself! It would be nice to able to run it on my main PC also.

I am running the latest version of TLH, BTW.

Sedate-ed
Trader's Little Helper doesn't need/use cygwin1.dll, but shorten and shntool (which are called by Trader's Little Helper for some functionality) will not run if cygwin1.dll is not installed. So the version of cygwin1.dll which comes with the latest shorten/shntool releases is included in the setup file for Trader's Little Helper. This "original DLL" is version 1005.9.0.0. Most likely there is a conflict with this one year old version because Cygwin X-Server installs/needs an updated one.

I've run some tests with shorten/shntool using the newest version of cygwin1.dll (1005.13.0.0). Seems everything is fine. So the following workaround should solve your problem: Just copy (not move) the version of cygwin1.dll which comes with Cygwin X-Server from your "cygwin\bin" folder to the "Windows" directory (so the version Trader's Little Helper had installed will be replaced).

Please let me know whether or not this works.

sedate-ed
2005-03-26, 01:29 PM
That worked like a charm!!! Thank you :) I can now use both the X-Server and TLH (or shntool, more correctly ;) ).

It never even occurred to me that cygwin1.dll was simply a requirement of shntool (which is why I said "may have found a bug" versus "I found a bug" :D ). Didn't even think of trying something as basic as copying the newer .dll file to the Windows directory....

I appreciate your fast response and very imformative answer.

Sedate-ed

symon
2005-03-26, 04:40 PM
I have just come across an odd problem.
I am testing some FLACs I d/l from STG - 1 track comes up as containing invalid data.
However, the fingerprint check passes with no errors, and checking the file in just FLAC frontend also gets an all clear.
Erm, that's it. I haven't tried decoding through TLH yet. That's next. Just wanted to report this odd happening.

BTW, Trader's Little Helper is a fantastic tool. Thank you!

symon
2005-03-26, 04:46 PM
Ok - I have successfully decoded this FLAC file to WAV with TLH - with no errors.
I also tested the whole set through the SBE checker - again, no problems.
So, I tested the encoded file again - and came up with the same invalid data box - with errors reported.
Odd..

roann
2005-03-27, 02:48 AM
I have just come across an odd problem.
I am testing some FLACs I d/l from STG - 1 track comes up as containing invalid data.
However, the fingerprint check passes with no errors, and checking the file in just FLAC frontend also gets an all clear.
...
I have successfully decoded this FLAC file to WAV with TLH - with no errors.
I also tested the whole set through the SBE checker - again, no problems.
So, I tested the encoded file again - and came up with the same invalid data box - with errors reported.
Odd..... :hmm: ... please give me some more details:

(1) What version of Trader's Little Helper are you using (if you right-click on the Trader's Little Helper icon to get the system menu there's an about item)?

(2) Does this error only occur when you're testing this as a single file or does it also occur when there are other files to test in the list?

(3) What are the exact words in the error message box that pops up?

(4) What are the exact words reported in the log window?

symon
2005-03-27, 06:37 AM
1. ermm, that's also odd!! I get Version ??? - I think I may have to d/l it again! Although I have had no other problems so far.

2. Both. It first happened when I was testing a batch, and then happened again when I tested it on it's own.

3. "Error: Invalid Data Ignore and Continue?"

4. If I continue then it says "There were errors"

It seems to be spotting the invalid data at the end of the file because if I continue, it finishes testing almost immediately.

AAR.oner
2005-03-28, 09:09 AM
d/ling TLH right now to give it a shot...sounds real nice though [tired of having half a dozen programs open at once!]

one question: any possible chance of a Mac version in the distant future? just curious...

Cheers for the work roann!

Five
2005-03-28, 10:16 AM
there's a prog which predates TLH for Mac called xact which can do some of the same things. Check it out:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xACT-users/
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/14246

roann
2005-03-29, 01:34 AM
1. ermm, that's also odd!! I get Version ??? - I think I may have to d/l it again! Although I have had no other problems so far.If you get 'Version ???' the .exe file of Trader's Little Helper may be corrupt. Another reason for this mystery could be an older version of Windows (95, 98 or ME), but I don't think this is it. Please uninstall Trader's Little Helper. Download the setup file(s) and install again (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/).

2. Both. It first happened when I was testing a batch, and then happened again when I tested it on it's own.Good news (decoding sequence in Trader's Little Helper is ok).

3. "Error: Invalid Data Ignore and Continue?"This seems to be not a "real" error message ... The caption of the message box should be "Error: Invalid data" and in the box there should be a more specific description of the error ("file is truncated or otherwise corrupt" for instance).

4. If I continue then it says "There were errors".That's the summary of the whole testing process. But above there must be a line "filename.flac: tested ok" or "filename.flac: (some kind of error message)". I suppose you haven't got this line have you?

It seems to be spotting the invalid data at the end of the file because if I continue, it finishes testing almost immediately.No, there are other reasons for this. This is not related to our problem.


You said earlier this flac file can be decoded without problems. Is the size of the decoded file bigger than the size of the flac file? Did you listen to the decoded file - no unusual skips, no unexpected end?

PS: If there is some way I can get this flac file from you please PM me.

roann
2005-03-29, 01:39 AM
d/ling TLH right now to give it a shot...sounds real nice though [tired of having half a dozen programs open at once!]

one question: any possible chance of a Mac version in the distant future? just curious...

Cheers for the work roann!There will be no Mac version of Trader's Little Helper ... maybe a Linux version some day.

symon
2005-03-29, 03:43 AM
If you get 'Version ???' the .exe file of Trader's Little Helper may be corrupt. Another reason for this mystery could be an older version of Windows (95, 98 or ME), but I don't think this is it. Please uninstall Trader's Little Helper. Download the setup file(s) and install again (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/).

Good news (decoding sequence in Trader's Little Helper is ok).

This seems to be not a "real" error message ... The caption of the message box should be "Error: Invalid data" and in the box there should be a more specific description of the error ("file is truncated or otherwise corrupt" for instance).

That's the summary of the whole testing process. But above there must be a line "filename.flac: tested ok" or "filename.flac: (some kind of error message)". I suppose you haven't got this line have you?

No, there are other reasons for this. This is not related to our problem.


You said earlier this flac file can be decoded without problems. Is the size of the decoded file bigger than the size of the flac file? Did you listen to the decoded file - no unusual skips, no unexpected end?

PS: If there is some way I can get this flac file from you please PM me.

Yes, I do have Windows ME.
I'll do the test again when I get home tonight. I can't remember what it said about the FLAC file.
There definitely was no description of what type of error it was other than 'invalid data.'

Punkishlyevil
2005-03-30, 01:19 AM
What does this (http://www.seveninchsingle.com/hosted/Traders%20Little%20Helper.jpg) mean? The file is a video, but I would assume you can check any md5 with your program.

roann
2005-03-30, 06:37 AM
What does this (http://www.seveninchsingle.com/hosted/Traders%20Little%20Helper.jpg) mean? The file is a video, but I would assume you can check any md5 with your program.Trader's Little Helper hasn't reached version 1.0 yet and is still in beta. So there are a lot of error messages which are for debugging purposes only. They will be removed in the final version.

One of those messages is your "Integer overflow" message. It means that a number occured while calculating the md5 sum that is bigger than what can be handled with the data structures used in Trader's Little Helper. This is a serious bug, so really thanks for putting this up.

The problem only occurs when the size of the file is bigger than about 300 MB. If you don't get this error message all has been properly calculated. That nasty bug will be fixed in the next version of Trader's Little Helper which will be released in about two weeks.

Punkishlyevil
2005-03-30, 11:22 AM
Thanks for answering. Yeah the file was about 500 MB.

symon
2005-04-02, 03:00 PM
If you get 'Version ???' the .exe file of Trader's Little Helper may be corrupt. Another reason for this mystery could be an older version of Windows (95, 98 or ME), but I don't think this is it. Please uninstall Trader's Little Helper. Download the setup file(s) and install again (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/).


I just did this - uninstalled and then installed again. But it still comes up with "Version ??? The file may be corrupt"
I do use Windows ME.

I'll try the file again tomorrow, if I get the chance.

jcrab66
2005-04-02, 05:04 PM
I just downloaded TLH last night and I must say I am impressed, cant wait for a version 1.0.....Nice Work :clap: :clap: :clap: :thumbsup

feralicious
2005-04-03, 04:00 PM
Well I've used this now for several functions and it's great! Good work roann. I especially like the preview of the fixing SBE's which I have started saving in the folder as a log of what was done when I fixed them. Don't know if anyone cares about it but I figured it can't hurt.

One thing... is it possible to add a "clear" button on the "Verify checksum" page? I can't seem to clear it without closing TLH or opening a new one from another show. I've tried highlighting and right clicking, but nothing. It won't let me highlight more than one file at a time anyway.

Also, I agree with Five, it would be nice to have a "move up/down" button for the SBE fixing. If you didn't mention how to do it I'm not sure anyone would know you were able to move them.

Thanks again for the proggy. I'm not ascared of you anymore. ;)

feralicious
2005-04-03, 07:11 PM
Another suggestion...

How about the ability to double click on an md5 or ffp file and have it verify in TLH?

feralicious
2005-04-03, 07:59 PM
One more...

How about if in the verifying log window it showed the file name then "verified ok" instead of the line #? would make it easier to ID which file it is.


Now don't you wish I was still suspicious? I'll have more, I can assure you. ;)

pmonk
2005-04-03, 08:34 PM
Another suggestion...

How about the ability to double click on an md5 or ffp file and have it verify in TLH?

If you have Win XP you can set it up where a left click an .md5 file using md5check.

pmonk
2005-04-03, 08:35 PM
One more...

How about if in the verifying log window it showed the file name then "verified ok" instead of the line #? would make it easier to ID which file it is.


Now don't you wish I was still suspicious? I'll have more, I can assure you. ;)

Yeah - that would be nice!

Five
2005-04-03, 09:24 PM
Another suggestion...

How about the ability to double click on an md5 or ffp file and have it verify in TLH?
I would also love this, especially for .ffp and .st5 extensions.

feralicious
2005-04-03, 11:48 PM
If you have Win XP you can set it up where a left click an .md5 file using md5check.I've got it where it opens TLH but nothing happens. Then I still have to search for the folder and open it through TLH. It would be nice if it started running, is there a way to do that?

And that reminds me of something else. Every time I go to grab an md5 of ffp to check the default directory it goes to is the C: drive. I don't store any shows on my C: drive. It would be cool if it would open the last directory you were in first so that if you have a particular folder you download to and check from it will always go there first. Or if you could set it to a default of your choice that would be good.

AAR.oner
2005-04-04, 10:17 AM
roann...

used tlh for that last few weeks to give it a go--finally one program that does it all [well almost]! well done...

i can't think of any suggestions at the moment that haven't been addressed already [the double-left click of an md5/ffp would be nice!]...thanks for all the work on this one, no doubt...

Andy L
2005-04-04, 02:44 PM
This is a handy little program, nice work. Is there any chance you could add an option to switch off the Confirm prompt when you close the program? Also, it'd be nice to be able to set a default directory to look for the program to look in.

pmonk
2005-04-04, 02:53 PM
it'd be nice to be able to set a default directory to look for the program to look in.

Yes - that would be helpful.

roann
2005-04-05, 05:49 AM
I just did this - uninstalled and then installed again. But it still comes up with "Version ??? The file may be corrupt"
I do use Windows ME.So we can see whether or not it's a Windows problem (I don't think it is but you never know ...) please do the following: right click on the Trader's Little Helper executable ("tralih.exe"), select "Properties". Then select the "Version" tab. Is there any valid information (copyright, version, ...)?

roann
2005-04-05, 06:13 AM
One thing... is it possible to add a "clear" button on the "Verify checksum" page? I can't seem to clear it without closing TLH or opening a new one from another show. ...Clear contents of the checksum file window only or this plus clear name of checksum file?

... Also, I agree with Five, it would be nice to have a "move up/down" button for the SBE fixing.Already done. Moreover you can now fix SBEs on multiple file sets (as suggested by Five).

The reason why I don't release the new version of Trader's Little Helper is a new very fast super duper 18 Ghz Pentium 6 machine that I can use now. On this one (and only on this one!) Trader's Little Helper crashes occasionally when showing audio file details of very long file sets. On one run all is fine and on the next one with the same list of files some nice little crash will happen. At this moment I'm really pissed off ...

... If you didn't mention how to do it I'm not sure anyone would know you were able to move them.A help file would be nice. But before the release of version 1.0 I don't have the time to do this.

How about the ability to double click on an md5 or ffp file and have it verify in TLH?Already done. Moreover you can now right click a checksum file and select "verify" on the upcoming menu.

How about if in the verifying log window it showed the file name then "verified ok" instead of the line #? would make it easier to ID which file it is.I will implement this when that f***ing crash problem (see above) is fixed.

Every time I go to grab an md5 of ffp to check the default directory it goes to is the C: drive. I don't store any shows on my C: drive. It would be cool if it would open the last directory you were in first so that if you have a particular folder you download to and check from it will always go there first. Or if you could set it to a default of your choice that would be good.
Is there any chance you could add an option to switch off the Confirm prompt when you close the program? Also, it'd be nice to be able to set a default directory to look for the program to look in.Yeah, think I'll implement some kind of options/preferences menu for this stuff. But not in the next release, sorry.

symon
2005-04-05, 02:53 PM
So we can see whether or not it's a Windows problem (I don't think it is but you never know ...) please do the following: right click on the Trader's Little Helper executable ("tralih.exe"), select "Properties". Then select the "Version" tab. Is there any valid information (copyright, version, ...)?

I get:
File Version 0.8.0.0
Description Trader's Little Helper Setup

And that's it. There are some more bits in teh comments, info, etc box.

Is that what you were hoping for? The Copyright field was blank.
BTW, this is the name of the file itself: tralih08043.exe

Five
2005-04-05, 04:04 PM
did you also install the updater to bring it up to v0.9.1 Build 48?

It's at the bottom of the page:
http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/

hope this helps

symon
2005-04-05, 04:07 PM
Yup

Same details, but the version is 0.9.1.0

roann
2005-04-05, 05:24 PM
I get:
File Version 0.8.0.0
Description Trader's Little Helper Setup

And that's it. There are some more bits in teh comments, info, etc box.

Is that what you were hoping for? The Copyright field was blank.
BTW, this is the name of the file itself: tralih08043.exeSymon, not the setup file "trahih08043.exe". You have to look at the *installed executable* of Trader's Little Helper which is named "tralih.exe" (there's no number in the file name, a number is only in the setup file name). "tralih.exe" is located in the installation directory (default is "C:\Program files\Trader's Little Helper\").

symon
2005-04-05, 05:44 PM
Ok. Sorry

Yes - Version, Description and Copyright info all present and correct.
Version 0.9.1.48

roann
2005-04-05, 06:14 PM
Ok ... not a Windows problem. I'll recode the "read version info" part and post a link to a test version with different ways to get this info. So you can tell me what kind of routine to use.

BTW what's up with that one flac file you had problems with ???

symon
2005-04-05, 06:23 PM
I just rechecked it.
Still getting the Error: Invalid data box.

I can do an info mode check under Audio file details. Would that give you any clues?

feralicious
2005-04-05, 07:16 PM
Great tech support! :thumbsup

roann
2005-04-06, 07:04 AM
I just rechecked it.
Still getting the Error: Invalid data box.

I can do an info mode check under Audio file details. Would that give you any clues?(1) Mode check under "Audio file details" won't help.

(2) You should get an error message box similar to that on the first attached pic (errmsgbox.gif). What's the message for your file?

(3) Close the error message box with "Yes" and take a look at the log window. You should see a line similar to that on the second attached pic ("errmsglog.gif). What's the message for your file?

symon
2005-04-06, 11:29 AM
The text you either outlined or highlighted is missing from my messages.
So, no explanation as to what the error is. Just that there is invalid data and that there were errors.

roann
2005-04-07, 02:24 PM
The text you either outlined or highlighted is missing from my messages.
So, no explanation as to what the error is. Just that there is invalid data and that there were errors.I experienced some odd behaviour of flac.exe / flac frontend some weeks ago. The flac files came from an incomplete show (no one had snatched this; the seeder didn't show up again). I tried to test/decode the files. For two of them flac.exe / flac frontend didn't report anything, and the files were decoded without an error message. The decoded files were *smaller* than the flac files ... is your decoded file smaller than the encoded one?

At the time the actual version of Trader's Little Helper was written I didn't know this could happen, so Trader's Little Helper will show you what flac.exe puts up. The upcoming version will handle this properly.

AAR.oner
2005-04-08, 07:21 PM
roann--

ran into an error tonight: "Integer Overflow"

when trying to verify an md5 sum...i ran the md5 thru mkw and it verified fine...so i tried to decode w/ TLH and it decoded without any error...

the files i was verifying were from a cassette tape that were transfered to shn, and the seeder left it as a single file for each side...i don't know if this could be the problem...the shn files were ~280MB for Track1 and ~180MB for Track2

AAR.oner
2005-04-08, 07:33 PM
doh...it seems you already addressed this issue on an earlier page...shoulda paid closer attention!

thanks for TLH, does almost everything i want [except make me dinner] CHEERS!

symon
2005-04-09, 12:57 PM
is your decoded file smaller than the encoded one?

No. The encoded file is 68.3mb, the decoded file is 113mb.

feralicious
2005-04-16, 12:43 PM
Question:

When you fix SBE and keep them in flac, does the track stay at the same encoding level?

Does anyone know the answer for shntool?

It seems to me that it would since I don't believe it has to re-encode, but that's mere speculation on my part.

symon
2005-04-16, 12:50 PM
And, while we're on the subject of fixing SBEs.. what is the difference between the different ways of fixing the SBEs - Forwards, backwards, etc. -? The default seems to be backwards. Does it matter?

Five
2005-04-16, 01:52 PM
I believe SHNtool (and therefore TLH) will reencode to compression level 5 when fixing SBEs.

Uhclem posted a batch file in the "recipie" thread that reencodes to level 8, but it would be a great feature for TLH if you could set the compression level (0-8) when fixing SBEs. It would also be great if TLH could autodetect when only the last track needs fixing and use the shntool pad -postpad -o flac [filename] command since right now (so far as I know) TLH can't fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set.

symon: ppl might cut their tracks very close to the first note of a song, so backwards is the safest and most sensible setting (altho somebody might convince me otherwise here). I like fixing SBEs in CEP where I can see exactly where the cue stop is in relation to the beginning of the song and I usually move it backwards.

feralicious
2005-04-16, 02:37 PM
How 'bout if you fix them while they're still shn?

Oh, and are you certain that it's encoding again? Or is it just moving bits of data around without decoding/encoding?

Five
2005-04-16, 02:59 PM
Oh, and are you certain that it's encoding again? Or is it just moving bits of data around without decoding/encoding?
good point... I'm pretty sure it's reencoding Uhclem would know 100% for sure.

Like I said, I normally fix SBEs with CEP so my experience is limited.

roann
2005-04-16, 06:00 PM
Question:

When you fix SBE and keep them in flac, does the track stay at the same encoding level?

Does anyone know the answer for shntool?

It seems to me that it would since I don't believe it has to re-encode, but that's mere speculation on my part.The track stays at the same encoding level, no re-encoding, only shifting bytes.

I believe SHNtool (and therefore TLH) will reencode to compression level 5 when fixing SBEs.

... (so far as I know) TLH can't fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set.Shntool (and therefore Trader's Little Helper) will not reencode to compression level 5 when fixing SBEs.

Trader's Little Helper can fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set. You need to enable the "Pad last file with zero-bytes" option for this.

jazzbo
2005-04-16, 06:22 PM
The track stays at the same encoding level, no re-encoding, only shifting bytes.

Shntool (and therefore Trader's Little Helper) will not reencode to compression level 5 when fixing SBEs.


I don't see how it's possible, as it is bytes in the uncompressed audio stream, not the compressed side that need to be moved so the data needs to be piped back through flac by shntool in order to make the correction.

I also tested it, and shntool clearly recompresses at level 5 when doing a SBE fix.

First the original files:

kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ shntool len *.wav
length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
6:12.52 65744012 -b- -- ----- track1.wav
1:33.32 16479368 -b- -- ----- track2.wav
7:46.09 82223380 B (totals for 2 files, 1.0000 overall compression ratio)


Compress to flac level 8:

kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ flac -8 *.wav

flac 1.1.2, Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac' for details.

options: -P 4096 -b 4608 -m -l 12 -e -q 0 -r 0,6
track1.wav: wrote 32738704 bytes, ratio=0.498
track2.wav: wrote 7648176 bytes, ratio=0.464


Check the level 8 flac files:

kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ shntool len *.flac
length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
6:12.52 65744012 -b- -- ---xx track1.flac
1:33.32 16479368 -b- -- ---xx track2.flac
7:46.09 82223380 B (totals for 2 files, 0.4912 overall compression ratio)


Now do a quick fix of the files using shntool's fix mode taking a flac file as input and pushing it back out as a flac.

kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ shntool fix -o flac *.flac
shntool [fix]: warning: no shift direction specified - assuming backward shift
track1.flac --> track1-fixed.flac ... done.
track2.flac --> track2-fixed.flac ... done.
Padded 'track2-fixed.flac' with 276 zero-bytes.


Let's check the file sizes and confirm the corrections. As you can see the uncompressed stream for track 1 was reduced in size, but the compressed file is now ~90k larger. That is because of shntool recompressing at level 5 rather than retaining level 8.


kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ ls -l *.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 32829902 2005-04-16 19:09 track1-fixed.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 32738704 2005-04-16 19:05 track1.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 7664871 2005-04-16 19:09 track2-fixed.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 7648176 2005-04-16 19:05 track2.flac
kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ shntool len *.flac
length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
6:12.52 65743148 --- -- ---xx track1-fixed.flac
6:12.52 65744012 -b- -- ---xx track1.flac
1:33.32 16480508 --- -- ---xx track2-fixed.flac
1:33.32 16479368 -b- -- ---xx track2.flac
15:32.18 164447036 B (totals for 4 files, 0.4918 overall compression ratio)

Five
2005-04-16, 06:52 PM
Trader's Little Helper can fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set. You need to enable the "Pad last file with zero-bytes" option for this.
ahh yes, thanks I should have seen that.

as jazzbo shows, shntool likes to recompress to level 5 which is annoying to most traders who use level 6-8 (6 recommended by etree, 8 recommended by me!). I appreciate all of your time an effort tremendously but if I ever decide to use TLH SBE fix, I would have to write to WAV then recompress to FLAC in a second step or else just go straight to command line...

5 (the default) and yes.

You have to use the cust format in shntool:

For example, here's a SHN file on my harddrive. (Sorry, all of my examples are in a unix shell, but the examples should be applicable to a Windows machine, just follow the instructions in the shntool documention about quoting the curly braces. But the important thing is I marked the file sizes so you can see the higher compression level working.)

/data2/bwq1977feb7$ ls -la bwq1977feb7track01.shn
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 3437861 2004-06-27 17:40 bwq1977feb7track01.shn


Now, default FLAC compression from shntool at level 5:

/data2/bwq1977feb7$ shntool conv -o flac bwq1977feb7track01.shn
converting 'bwq1977feb7track01.shn' to 'bwq1977feb7track01.flac' ... done.

/data2/bwq1977feb7$ ls -la bwq1977feb7track01.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 3354437 2005-03-27 17:02 bwq1977feb7track01.flac


Now, force level 8 with the cust format:

/data2/bwq1977feb7$ shntool conv -o cust ext=flac8 { flac - -8 -o %f } -d . *track01.shn
converting 'bwq1977feb7track01.shn' to './bwq1977feb7track01.custom' ... done.

/data2/bwq1977feb7$ ls -la bwq1977feb7track01.flac8
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 3345563 2005-03-27 17:05 bwq1977feb7track01.flac8


The cust command here is forcing the output extension to be flac8 (just for comparison purposes while I was running the test) and passing STDIN ("-") to be compressed at level 8. I couldn't get it to work without explicitly stating I wanted output in the present path with the -d switch.

Once you get the cust format working on your setup, you can use it for output with any of shntool's modules. You can also use cust to incorporate new compression formats into shntool without the support being waiting for support to be added to shntool.
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5047&page=2&pp=15

It would be so great to have this functionality in TLH if you find the time and/or have the inclination.

feralicious
2005-04-16, 09:10 PM
Wait a sec, track1-fixed is smaller (by 864) and track2-fixed is bigger (by 1140), looking like it just shifted and padded. I'm not convinced they've been re-encoded. :hmm:

kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ shntool len *.flac
length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
6:12.52 65743148 --- -- ---xx track1-fixed.flac
6:12.52 65744012 -b- -- ---xx track1.flac
1:33.32 16480508 --- -- ---xx track2-fixed.flac
1:33.32 16479368 -b- -- ---xx track2.flac
15:32.18 164447036 B (totals for 4 files, 0.4918 overall compression ratio)


And I've had the "Pad last file..." checked and still no luck with fixing just the last track. I'll try again though, leaving only that track in the window. Would the Shift type make any difference? I use "round".

jazzbo
2005-04-16, 10:31 PM
Wait a sec, track1-fixed is smaller (by 864) and track2-fixed is bigger (by 1140), looking like it just shifted and padded. I'm not convinced they've been re-encoded. :hmm:


shntool's len mode shows the length of the uncompressed data. It shifted 864 from the first track into the second track and then padded 276 to end of it as it said. The len values should be the same for the original wav, a SHN, a flac, etc.

What is important is the size of the flac files themselves which I highlighted in red this time::



kevin@dizzy:/data2/test$ ls -l *.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 32829902 2005-04-16 19:09 track1-fixed.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 32738704 2005-04-16 19:05 track1.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 7664871 2005-04-16 19:09 track2-fixed.flac
-rw-r--r-- 1 kevin kevin 7648176 2005-04-16 19:05 track2.flac

feralicious
2005-04-16, 11:56 PM
Oh, yeah, I see. Oops.

roann
2005-04-17, 04:53 AM
I don't see how it's possible, as it is bytes in the uncompressed audio stream, not the compressed side that need to be moved so the data needs to be piped back through flac by shntool in order to make the correction.

I also tested it, and shntool clearly recompresses at level 5 when doing a SBE fix.

...You're absolutely right: shntool does re-encode to compression level 5 when fixing flac files. I'm such an idiot (or am I just too old for this?) not to get the facts ... you can easily see what happened using the shntool info mode (same in Trader's Little Helper). The output for every file shows a row beginning with "compression ratio". Compare the values for an unfixed and a fixed flac file and you know whether or not the compression level has been changed.

And now the good news: In the next version of Trader's Little Helper there will be an option to set the compression level when fixing files.

PS: Just my two cents on the level of flac compression ... I'm not really a friend of a flac encoding levels higher than 6. Take a look at the filesizes below (sizes are in Byte):

...
2005-04-17 08:16 317,048,732 Track01.wav
2005-04-17 08:16 190,677,594 Track01_level5.flac
2005-04-17 08:16 190,182,642 Track01_level8.flac
2005-04-17 08:16 82,797,836 Track02.wav
2005-04-17 08:16 48,118,903 Track02_level5.flac
2005-04-17 08:16 47,874,321 Track02_level8.flac
...
The compressed versions of Track01 differ with about 483 kB or 0.0026%. For Track02 the size difference is about 239 kB or 0.0051%. On an old P3 550 Mhz machine of mine the time for encoding those two files with level 8 is about 4.5 times or 450% bigger than the time needed with level 5. IMO those size differences are not worth the significant bigger amount of time. But as i said before ... just a matter of opinion.

roann
2005-04-17, 06:46 AM
... The compressed versions of Track01 differ with about 483 kB or 0.0026%. For Track02 the size difference is about 239 kB or 0.0051%. ...
Well I think I'm really too old for modern science ... of course the correct values are 0.26% and 0.51% ...

dancin_carrot
2005-04-17, 11:05 AM
And I've had the "Pad last file..." checked and still no luck with fixing just the last track. I'll try again though, leaving only that track in the window. Would the Shift type make any difference? I use "round".

I think this is a small bug with THL. When you load up a set and hit Fix, I believe it does a check to see if it can skip the first few files (if there are no SBEs on the first few tracks, nothing has to be done to them). However, when it sees that the only track that needs fixing is the final track, shntool doesn't allow it to fix because shntool doesn't like fixing just one track.

In theory, it should work fine if there are scattered SBEs throughout the set, as well as one on the last track, so shntool fix can do its thing, and shntool pad can do the last track.

This is just my theory, and I probably have no idea what I'm talking about, so it would be good if someone can confirm or deny this.

feralicious
2005-04-20, 02:35 PM
Right, I understand that it doesn't like fixing just one track, but roann said that if the option of "Pad last file with zero-bytes" was checked it would do it.
...Trader's Little Helper can fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set. You need to enable the "Pad last file with zero-bytes" option for this.
But it doesn't for me.

I've tried with all files in the window and with just the file that had the SBE, no go.

WinXP Pro
TLH v0.9.1 (build 48)

roann
2005-04-20, 03:35 PM
Right, I understand that it doesn't like fixing just one track, but roann said that if the option of "Pad last file with zero-bytes" was checked it would do it.

But it doesn't for me. ...I didn't say/mean that you can fix a single stand-alone file. What I said was "...Trader's Little Helper can fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set. ...". So, if you have a set of files (i.e. more than one) and the last file in this set is not sector aligned then Trader's Little Helper can fix this with the "Pad last file ..." option if you're having all files of the set in the file list window.

It's a common misunderstanding to try a fix only on the files with SBEs. Never do that (there are some exceptions but forget this for a moment)! Fix always the whole set of files. shntool is smart enough to see which files need to be fixed.

dancin_carrot
2005-04-20, 06:19 PM
I know what you're saying roann, but something about the way TLH is set up doesn't work with how shntool works. Here's an example.

I have this show that only has an SBE on the last track of the second disk:

length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
5:03.13 53479820 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t01.shn
5:15.74 55740092 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t02.shn
4:52.67 51666428 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t03.shn
14:14.71 150812636 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t04.shn
5:41.54 60279452 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t05.shn
5:58.37 63238056 -b- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t06.shn
41:07.16 435216484 B (totals for 6 files, 0.5403 overall compression ratio)

I hit Fix SBEs. I make sure Pad Last File is checked. I then hit fix:

shntool [fix]: warning: skipping first 5 files because they would not be changed
shntool [fix]: error: need two or more files to process

There were errors.

You can see from the error log that TLH skips the first 5 because nothing needs to be done. Fair enough, except that it is now only telling shntool to fix one track. Shntool can't do this, so it produces an error and never even gets to the padding part.

Now to the fun part. I load up the same show, except I put another track that has an SBE in front of it:

length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
4:05.62 43364208 -b- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d1t13.shn
5:03.13 53479820 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t01.shn
5:15.74 55740092 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t02.shn
4:52.67 51666428 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t03.shn
14:14.71 150812636 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t04.shn
5:41.54 60279452 --- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t05.shn
5:58.37 63238056 -b- -- ---xx cj2001-11-07d2t06.shn
45:13.03 478580692 B (totals for 7 files, 0.5284 overall compression ratio)

I hit fix, then preview and voila:

Preview of changes:
-------------------

Track breaks will be shifted backward when necessary.

cj2001-11-07d1t13.shn --> cj2001-11-07d1t13-fixed.shn
- beginning of track will remain unchanged
- data size will decrease by 340 bytes

<SNIP>

cj2001-11-07d2t06.shn --> cj2001-11-07d2t06-fixed.shn
- beginning of track will be moved backward by 340 bytes
- data size will increase by 340 bytes

The last file 'cj2001-11-07d2t06-fixed.shn' would be padded with 2224 zero-bytes.

Perfect, no errors.

TLH will not work when a show has only an SBE on the last track. Don't get me wrong, I love this program. I'm just trying to help you make it even better.

-Alex

feralicious
2005-04-20, 07:10 PM
I didn't say/mean that you can fix a single stand-alone file. What I said was "...Trader's Little Helper can fix a single SBE on the last track of a FLAC/APE/SHN set. ...". I know, I quoted you. As I said in the post that you partially quoted, I tried both, with all the files in the window and with just the error file. Neither worked.

So, if you have a set of files (i.e. more than one) and the last file in this set is not sector aligned then Trader's Little Helper can fix this with the "Pad last file ..." option if you're having all files of the set in the file list window.Nope, I get the same error carrot posted above. It just doesn't work.

It's a common misunderstanding to try a fix only on the files with SBEs. Never do that (there are some exceptions but forget this for a moment)! Fix always the whole set of files. shntool is smart enough to see which files need to be fixed.Yeah, I've already learned that part. I only did it as an experiment to see if I could get TLH to work for fixing just the last track. No luck.

roann
2005-04-26, 05:14 AM
Showtime girls and boys! A new release (v0.9.2.55) of Trader's Little Helper. As usual you can download the setup file here (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/index.htm).

Next are excerpts from the change log with some comments/explanations I added for you. Though this will take some time please read those notes carefully! There are some answers to reported problems and some help/hints how to use new functionality.

Added: Ability to verify shn files
flac.exe and mac.exe come with a build-in option to verify files (i.e. decoding w/o writing an output file), shorten.exe does not. I used a little workaround to implement the same functionality for shn files.

Added: Ability to pad files with zero bytes
Padding a file with zero bytes means adding silence at the beginning ("prepad") or at the end ("postpad") so the file becomes sector aligned. This is very useful if only the first or if only the last file in a file set has a SBE.
Important: Do not use pad mode for fixing single tracks that are part of a live file set (only exceptions noted above). Because it's silence that is added you will ruin the whole thing.
Note: The Fix tab had been reworked, so please take a deeper look to become familiar with this (for example "Preview" is now in the "Options" group).

Added: Re-encoding level can be set when fixing SBEs
As discussed early in this thread shntool re-encodes the files to be fixed. This will be done with a default re-encoding level of 5 on flac files and 2 on ape files. This default value can now be changed.
Note for those of you that are not familiar with ape encoding levels: Do not use the "insane" level. It will take a very very long time for encoding ...

Added: When fixing SBEs default setting "Skip the first N files that wouldn't be changed" can be disabled to process all files
The default was/is to skip the first N files that wouldn't be changed, i.e. shntool will check the file list from the beginning and skip all files with no SBE until the first file with a SBE comes up. That's the way all previous releases of Trader's Little Helper will handle a file set with SBEs.
And there we got a problem that was reported earlier in this thread: If you have a file set with a SBE only on the last track, all files except the last one will be skipped. Now there's only one file left to fix, and this cannot be handled by shntool ... error message.
With Trader's Little Helper there are now two ways to get this processed properly: a) Use pad mode (see above) to postpad silence to the last file. b) Stay in fix mode but disable the newly implemented option "Skip first N sector aligned files" so all files will be processed even if the first several of them wouldn't be altered.
Note: Please keep in mind that fixing SBEs the latter way in most cases needs alot of unnecessary time and disc space. Say you have a set of 10 files, each file 40 MB, and only the last file got a SBE. If you have disabled file skipping the first nine files without SBE will be copied to your drive though there are no fixes/changes (except the file names will be suffixed with "-fixed"). Because of copying this will work a lot longer and will waste your disc space with data that's already there (in this example 360 MB).
Note:Sorry for my previous incorrect postings on this but I tested your reports on the version I was working on and there skipping files was permanently disabled for debugging purposes - what I hadn't in mind at that time.

Added: Ability to fix SBEs on multiple file sets
If you double-click on a file name in the file list there will be a number left-handed to the file name. So this file is marked as first file of a new file set. Double-clicking on the file name again will remove the marker. When fixing SBEs Trader's Little Helper will detect those markers and step-by-step fix SBEs for every file set found.

Added: When fixing SBEs the file order can be changed with Move up / Move down buttons
There are now two buttons to change the order of the files. You can move all the files you've selected (BTW with the mouse you can move only one file at a time now). Moving files is only allowed within a file set (or in other words you can not move a file from one file set to another). So the best way is to set the file set markers after arranging the files.

Added: Buttons on some pages to expand the size of the log window
Those buttons will expand the size of the log window to the max so you can see a lot more messages at a time.

Added: Checksum files (.ffp, .md5, .st5) can be associated with Trader's Little Helper for verifying purposes
If you had selected "associate" during setup there a now two additional ways to verify checksum files: a) Double-click on a checksum file. b) Right-click on a checksum file and select the item "Verify with Trader's Little Helper" in the context menu. BTW there will be some (poor) icons installed for the checksum files. Would be great if you have better ones or can create better ones ... please let me know.
Note:Putting things to the registry is sometimes a bit frustrating because other entries may be a bit unusual. On one of my machines I had a minor "problem" with MD5Summer: MD5Summer stays as the default prog which will be executed when double-clicking a md5 file, Trader's Little Helper does not appear in the files context menu. If you want to set Trader's Little Helper as your default md5 checker you need to do this manually via the Explorers Tools --> Options menu.

Added: .ape, .flac and .shn files can be associated with Trader's Little Helper for decoding purposes
This is the same as described for checksum files above. Please keep in mind that with double-clicking you can only process one file. Processing multiple files will only work using the files context menu.

Added: .ape, .flac and .shn files can be decoded via drag & drop
As requested .ape, .flac and .shn files can be dragged from Windows Explorer and dropped on Trader's Little Helper to decode them.

Changed: Audio files that were located in different directories and/or have different file extensions can be processed at the same time to show file details
In previous releases Trader's Little Helper refuses to show details about audio files that have different file extensions or are located in different directories.

Changed: Default name for saving a checksum file is '<directory>.<type of checksum>'
Example: The files checksums were created for are located in C:\Music\abc2004-07-11.flac16 and it's a flac fingerprint. The default file name will be abc2004-07-11.flac16.ffp.

Changed: Default name for the file details log file is '<directory>.shntool.txt'
Example: Files are located in C:\Music\abc2004-07-11.flac16. The default file name for the log file will be abc2004-07-11.flac16.shntool.txt.

Changed: Almost all error messaging is done in the respective log window
In previous versions there are a lot of pop-up error message boxes. It's very annoying to click them away especially if there are alot of them during a task. Now the error messages will be displayed in the log windows.

pmonk
2005-04-26, 06:12 AM
Very, very, very, very cool Roann!

Five
2005-04-26, 10:13 AM
I'm floored! Thanks a million! :clap:

wharfrat73
2005-04-26, 10:18 AM
Remarkable.

feralicious
2005-04-26, 11:19 AM
Very nice! Gonna go check it out now. :thumbsup

jcrab66
2005-04-26, 01:29 PM
sweet man, thanks a bunch :clap: :thumbsup

dorrcoq
2005-04-26, 02:52 PM
Hey roann - this is much appreciated, thanks a lot :clap:

roann
2005-04-26, 03:20 PM
%!#&! ... this sucks ... !!! WARNING!!! ... from an email: "... i have a problem with the "fix SBE" or "PAD SBE" feature : When i want to use them with WAV files, the resulting fixed or padded files are compressed into FLAC format, though they are still called .WAV Is it me, or is there a bug somewhere ?"

Unfortunately there is a bug somewhere! Just testet heavily fixing SBEs. For ape, flac and shn files all is done the way it should be ... phew ... When fixing wav files the "fixed" files are definitely not wav but flac files ... very strange. So ... do not use fix mode / pad mode on wav files!

Big sorry for this shit, at the moment I really don't know what's going on. Just got home from work, so give me some time to fix this.

- Robert

uhclem
2005-04-26, 04:14 PM
I don't see how it's possible, as it is bytes in the uncompressed audio stream, not the compressed side that need to be moved so the data needs to be piped back through flac by shntool in order to make the correction. ...

jazzbo is right about this. Shntool compresses flac at default level 5, regardless of what compression level the original flacs had. Shntool always applies the default settings of whatever output format you are using.

Secondly, in order for shntool to do it's job, it always decompresses the files to wave format, does what it has to do, then compresses the results to whatever output format you specify. It does not merely shift bytes from the front of one file to the next. That would not work, since it is, as jazzbo states, the audio stream that shntool works with, not all the data in the file. In fact, if, for some reason, you had a set made up of a mix of shn, flac and wave files, shntool could easily work with all of them at once. This is because it converts everything to wave format.

uhclem
2005-04-26, 04:58 PM
And, while we're on the subject of fixing SBEs.. what is the difference between the different ways of fixing the SBEs - Forwards, backwards, etc. -? The default seems to be backwards. Does it matter?
The default is indeed backwards. Here's how this all works:

A sector consists of 588 samples. Let's suppose you have a track in the middle of a set somewhere (TrackX) that has an SBE of 500 samples, i.e. the last sector of the track contains only 500 samples instead of the required 588. Assume that all other tracks are sector-aligned.

If you set shntool to backward fix (the default), shntool will move the track break backwards, that means it will cut those 500 samples off the end of the file and append them to the beginning of the next file, TrackX+1. The samples move forward, but the track break has moved backwards because now TrackX ends and TrackX+1 begins 500 samples sooner.

Because 500 samples have been added to the beginning of TrackX+1, shntool will have to cut 500 off the end of that file and move them to the beginning of the next, TrackX+2. This goes on all the way down the chain until the end. The last track would then have 500 samples too many. Shntool simply pads the end with 88 samples of silence, thus giving a complete sector of 588 samples at the end.

If you set shntool to forward fix, shntool will do the opposite. It will cut 88 samples off the front of TrackX+1 and stick those 88 samples on to the end of TrackX. This will make the last sector on TrackX 588 samples (500+88), thus fixed. The samples are moved back, but the track break is moved forward because now TrackX ends and TrackX+1 begins 88 samples later.

Because 88 samples are now missing from TrackX+1, shntool cuts 88 samples from the beginning of TrackX+2 and appends them to the end of TrackX+1. But now TrackX+2 is 88 samples short, so shntool keeps on going track after track till it reaches the end. The last track then ends up 88 samples too short, so shntool pads the end of it with 88 samples of silence.

If you set shntool to round fix, shntool looks at the number of samples in the last sector of TrackX and decides whether to shift forward or back depending on size. The idea is to move as little data as possible. If the last sector contains fewer than 294 samples (i.e. 1/2 of 588) then shntool will cut off those samples and move them to the front of TrackX+1. If, on the other hand, the last sector of TrackX contains more than 294 samples, it will cut off however many samples it needs from the front of TrackX+1 and move them to the end of TrackX so that the last sector of TrackX becomes 588 samples. In the case of our 500 sample last sector, shntool would perform a forward shift and move 88 samples from the beginning of TrackX+1 to the end of TrackX. When shntool goes on to fix TrackX+1 it performs the same thing. The idea is to never move more than 294 samples from the end/beginning of one track to the next. If your set has multiple SBEs, shntool can end up moving some track breaks forward, and some track breaks backward all in the same set. I don't know what happens if a sector has exactly 294 samples, but obviously it moves those samples one way or the other.

Does it matter which you use? Not really. I use 'round' because the author of shntool claims this is a bit less work for shntool. I like round because it results in the least amount of movement of a track break. If you aren't fussy use backward (the default). I think backward is the default for the reason Five gave, i.e. to avoid moving the track break into the music of the next track.

uhclem
2005-04-26, 05:08 PM
PS: Just my two cents on the level of flac compression ... I'm not really a friend of a flac encoding levels higher than 6.
I agree with this 100%. If you look at the parameters that flac.exe uses for its various compression levels, there is no point in going higher than 6:

-0, --compression-level-0, --fast Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -r 2,2
-1, --compression-level-1 Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -M -r 2,2
-2, --compression-level-2 Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -m -r 3
-3, --compression-level-3 Synonymous with -l 6 -b 4608 -r 3,3
-4, --compression-level-4 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -M -r 3,3
-5, --compression-level-5 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 3,3
-6, --compression-level-6 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 4
-7, --compression-level-7 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6
-8, --compression-level-8, --best Synonymous with -l 12 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6

Flac Help says that '-e' means 'do exhaustive model search' which it calls 'expensive!'. It also states that a '-r' of more than 4 doesn't usually help much. Both level 7 and level 8 use the '-e' switch and an -r value above 4, but levels 6 and below do not. So unless you have an extremely fast computer you are wasting your time on anything above level 6. I have 2.4GHz and I use level 6.

feralicious
2005-04-26, 07:18 PM
Does it matter which you use? Not really. I use 'round' because the author of shntool claims this is a bit less work for shntool. I like round because it results in the least amount of movement of a track break. If you aren't fussy use backward (the default). I think backward is the default for the reason Five gave, i.e. to avoid moving the track break into the music of the next track.I can't get "round" to work in shntool using the command line. Is it only -r for that? I think I was trying "shntool fix -r -noskip -o flac *.flac" Something like that.

feralicious
2005-04-26, 07:49 PM
Very nice improvements, thanks!

Double clicking on the st5 file opens TLH and goes straight into verifying, however it doesn't seem to do that with the ffp files. I tried on two different shows.

uhclem
2005-04-26, 10:48 PM
um, try something like this:

shntool fix -s r -noskip -o flac *.flac

feralicious
2005-04-27, 12:23 AM
um, try something like this:

shntool fix -s r -noskip -o flac *.flac
Ah... thank you.

roann
2005-04-27, 02:44 AM
Very nice improvements, thanks!

Double clicking on the st5 file opens TLH and goes straight into verifying, however it doesn't seem to do that with the ffp files. I tried on two different shows.Works fine on _all_ my machines ... let's track this down:

Right-click on the ffp file. Is there an item "Verify with Trader's Little Helper"?

If not, you probably didn't select the option "associate with ffp files" during setup procedure. If there is this item, is it printed bold?

If not, another item (the bold one) is set as default action when you double-click the file. You can change this default setting via the Tools menu of Windows Explorer. If the item is printed bold and double-clicking does not work ... I really don't know. Does processing start if you just right-click the ffp file and select "Verify ..."?

roann
2005-04-27, 02:52 AM
... Unfortunately there is a bug somewhere! Just testet heavily fixing SBEs. For ape, flac and shn files all is done the way it should be ... phew ... When fixing wav files the "fixed" files are definitely not wav but flac files ... very strange. ...There was a _very_ stupid small bug I had "implemented" with v0.9.2.55. Program didn't check files to fix for wav type :mad: ... you know I'm getting older, my brain is shrinking or something ;) ...

Anyway, this is fixed and v0.9.3.56 is released (as usually available here (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/index.htm)).

- Robert

jcrab66
2005-04-27, 06:25 AM
thanks man, i'm sure i speak for many others when i say how much i appreciate your efforts upgrading TLH and making it available to us.. :clap:

pmonk
2005-04-27, 06:40 AM
but can TLH make coffee in the morning?????

jcrab66
2005-04-27, 06:54 AM
but can TLH make coffee in the morning?????

havent found that feature but then again havent found it on monkeys audio, flac frontend, mkwact or anything else either... :lol

feralicious
2005-04-27, 09:12 AM
Works fine on _all_ my machines ... let's track this down:

Right-click on the ffp file. Is there an item "Verify with Trader's Little Helper"?

If not, you probably didn't select the option "associate with ffp files" during setup procedure. If there is this item, is it printed bold?

If not, another item (the bold one) is set as default action when you double-click the file. You can change this default setting via the Tools menu of Windows Explorer. If the item is printed bold and double-clicking does not work ... I really don't know. Does processing start if you just right-click the ffp file and select "Verify ..."?It's associated, I did that on the last version thinking it would work. It has the icon and I double checked properties. It does open TLH but it just doesn't do the verifying. However when I right click and select "Verify with Trader's Little Helper" it opens and verifies.

I start a new job today and I have to get running along, so I'll grab the new version tonight and see what happens.

Sid
2005-04-27, 02:51 PM
:D i have not read every post so don't bash me if this has been stated ;)

when creating a large(single file) md5 for wav(s) you get the error>inter overload.
exmpl=green grass n' high tides wav
it does it with all single large mb's wavs

i love this tool :D

Sid
2005-04-27, 03:04 PM
sorry the error states->Integer Overflow

happens on all files over 275mb's wavs when creating an md5 chkr

roann
2005-04-27, 03:54 PM
sorry the error states->Integer Overflow

happens on all files over 275mb's wavs when creating an md5 chkrPlease update to the newest version of Trader's Little Helper. On v0.9.2.55 the function that creates md5 checksums was reworked/fixed and successfully tested with files up to 2 GB.

Sid
2005-04-27, 04:00 PM
Please update to the newest version of Trader's Little Helper. On v0.9.2.55 the function that creates md5 checksums was reworked/fixed and successfully tested with files up to 2 GB.

Sorry,I should have looked for updates 1st :wave:

love this tool.... :clap:

thank you
marc

dancin_carrot
2005-04-27, 06:22 PM
Awesome new version! Thanks a ton.

jukesfan
2005-04-28, 09:42 PM
A couple times today when fixing SBE's in .wav files the program ran fine then I'd get various error messages and it'd lock up. The only way I could get out of TLH was alt/control/del > end task.
The most recent error messages were:
Access violation at address 6C6C7566. Read of address 6C6C7566.
Access violation at address 74E35C8D in module RICHED20.dll. Read of
address 000000010.
There was a third but I forgot to write it down. Any idea why this is
happening? The files are fixed, regardless but they don't all show in the "window". In the last batch there were 20 files, the program only showed 16 as being "fixed" but when I looked in the folder all files were complete.

jcrab66
2005-04-28, 09:45 PM
Sorry,I should have looked for updates 1st :wave:

love this tool.... :clap:

thank you
marc


nice new avatar there marc....

roann
2005-04-29, 01:11 AM
A couple times today when fixing SBE's in .wav files the program ran fine then I'd get various error messages and it'd lock up. The only way I could get out of TLH was alt/control/del > end task.
The most recent error messages were:
Access violation at address 6C6C7566. Read of address 6C6C7566.
Access violation at address 74E35C8D in module RICHED20.dll. Read of
address 000000010.
There was a third but I forgot to write it down. Any idea why this is
happening? The files are fixed, regardless but they don't all show in the "window". In the last batch there were 20 files, the program only showed 16 as being "fixed" but when I looked in the folder all files were complete.Earlier in this thread I posted ...The reason why I don't release the new version of Trader's Little Helper is a new very fast super duper 18 Ghz Pentium 6 machine that I can use now. On this one (and only on this one!) Trader's Little Helper crashes occasionally when showing audio file details of very long file sets. On one run all is fine and on the next one with the same list of files some nice little crash will happen. At this moment I'm really pissed off ...... at that time I thought the reason for this is a bug somewhere in Trader's Little Helper ... but now I know it is _not_. It's a bug in RICHED20.DLL, a file that comes with Windows OS. The only way to get a new fixed version of this dll is to update Windows with the latest service pack.

Note: As you said ... if you are fixing SBEs and this error occurs do not panic. Fixing will be continued _properly_ until all files are processed. What is "lost" is the output in the log window because everytime Trader's Little Helper tells Windows to update the log window Windows "reacts" with this access violation thing. Just wait until all processing is done and then kill Trader's Little Helper via task manager.

jukesfan
2005-04-29, 06:05 AM
Great program by the way! Thanks for the info roann....updating XP right now.

jukesfan
2005-04-29, 07:37 AM
Great program by the way! Thanks for the info roann....updating XP right now.

PS - No updates were needed

jukesfan
2005-04-29, 05:48 PM
Another little problem I've encountered when fixing SBE's in .wav files - if there are 19 files and they're all good except the last one, I get a message saying the first 18 will be ignored (because they don't need fixed) but I don't have enough files to check because I need at least 2. When I checked them with FLAC frontend, the last track (#19 in this case) did need fixed. Any suggestions?

pmonk
2005-04-29, 06:55 PM
Another little problem I've encountered when fixing SBE's in .wav files - if there are 19 files and they're all good except the last one, I get a message saying the first 18 will be ignored (because they don't need fixed) but I don't have enough files to check because I need at least 2. When I checked them with FLAC frontend, the last track (#19 in this case) did need fixed. Any suggestions?

Did you get the latest upgrade???

jukesfan
2005-04-29, 07:29 PM
Did you get the latest upgrade???
Yes, that's what I'm using...0.9.3 Build 56

roann
2005-04-30, 12:28 AM
Another little problem I've encountered when fixing SBE's in .wav files - if there are 19 files and they're all good except the last one, I get a message saying the first 18 will be ignored (because they don't need fixed) but I don't have enough files to check because I need at least 2. When I checked them with FLAC frontend, the last track (#19 in this case) did need fixed. Any suggestions?There are two ways to get this done properly:

a) Add only the last file of your file set to the list. Switch to pad mode (you can select this via the combo box) and _post_pad zero-bytes (i.e. silence) to the file.

b) Stay in fix mode but disable the option Skip first N sector aligned files so all files will be processed even if the first several of them wouldn't be altered.

Note: Fixing SBEs the latter way in most cases needs alot of unnecessary time and disc space. The first 18 our your files (those without SBE) will be copied to your drive though there are no fixes/changes (except the file names will be suffixed with "-fixed"). This will take a long time and waste your disc space with data that's already there. In pad mode only one file is processed.

uncle don
2005-05-01, 03:44 PM
I just fixed "Springsteen 2005-04-25" and the entire process could not have been any easier. Thanks for the program and thanks for the instructions here. The DIME torrent has links to both, you might be getting some extra traffic.

Don

direwolf
2005-05-04, 12:43 PM
Apologies but I need to get my head round this re fixing SBEs.

Am I right in thinking that for most eventualities you'd use 'fix' mode, only using 'pad' mode if you wanted to pad the last file of a set with silence [ie, if that was the only track with a SBE].

Big thanks for this btw, it solves one of the main bugbears for testing flac files - no more ugly DOS box window that scrolls out of sight [so you can't see the results].

bato
2005-05-04, 06:15 PM
Earlier in this thread I posted ...... at that time I thought the reason for this is a bug somewhere in Trader's Little Helper ... but now I know it is _not_. It's a bug in RICHED20.DLL, a file that comes with Windows OS. The only way to get a new fixed version of this dll is to update Windows with the latest service pack.

Like the other person earlier in the thread, I have the exact same exception errors and the same lock up problem. I am using the latest build and have all updates for Windows XP. This looks like a great program that I will revisit once the bugs are worked out. Thanks for taking the time to do this Robert. I've been waiting for someone to do a GUI for shntool and will use this once it's stable. Back to my command line, for now.

direwolf
2005-05-05, 12:15 AM
Another thing I've noticed - if you double click on more than one md5, mkwact will queue them up for checking - this doesn't happen with TLH - for a future release perhaps ?

roann
2005-05-11, 06:58 AM
Sorry for answering so late, but there was *a lot* of trouble at home the last couple of days ...

... Am I right in thinking that for most eventualities you'd use 'fix' mode, only using 'pad' mode if you wanted to pad the last file of a set with silence [ie, if that was the only track with a SBE]. ...Yep.

Like the other person earlier in the thread, I have the exact same exception errors and the same lock up problem. I am using the latest build and have all updates for Windows XP. This looks like a great program that I will revisit once the bugs are worked out. Thanks for taking the time to do this Robert. I've been waiting for someone to do a GUI for shntool and will use this once it's stable. Back to my command line, for now.As I said earlier in this thread there is *no* bug and Trader's Little Helper *is* stable. This "access violation ... in RICHED20.DLL" error occurs because Windows OS (AFAIK WinXP and Win2003 only) has some kind of timing problem accessing the dll if the calling application uses different ways (at nearly the same time) in the OS messaging system to put text into a richedit element.

At the moment I am testing a 6 CD set of flac files, size about 1,92 GB, every file with a sector boundary error. I've rewritten two lines so all fix SBEs output instructions are using the same way in the messaging system now. Seems this solves the problem, but I'm not sure yet and will do more tests over the next days.

Another thing I've noticed - if you double click on more than one md5, mkwact will queue them up for checking - this doesn't happen with TLH - for a future release perhaps ?If you select more than one file and then double-click on them Windows OS *always* will pass just the file your mouse cursor was over at the time of double clicking (test this with .txt files for example). So only one checksum file can be verified via double-click. But if you select more than one file and then use your right mouse button you can select the 'Verify with Trader's Little Helper' item in the files context menu. Trader's Little Helper will then verify *all* selected files.

jukesfan
2005-05-11, 09:00 AM
Like the other person earlier in the thread, I have the exact same exception errors and the same lock up problem. I am using the latest build and have all updates for Windows XP. This looks like a great program that I will revisit once the bugs are worked out. Thanks for taking the time to do this Robert. I've been waiting for someone to do a GUI for shntool and will use this once it's stable. Back to my command line, for now.

I *was* having this problem but realized it doesn't happen when I close Outlook Express before using TLH. Thanks again to roann for such a useful "all-in-one" tool

roann
2005-05-11, 09:48 AM
I *was* having this problem but realized it doesn't happen when I close Outlook Express before using TLH. ...There definitely is this access violation problem you and others had described. I never tried to deny it. Got it myself quite a few times, but only on a Win2k3 machine and only from time to time (same set of files ...). BTW Outlook Express was closed all the time. This becomes more and more the twilight zone ... maybe I should contact Mr. Gates :hmm:

wharfrat73
2005-05-12, 10:40 AM
I too have had this problem on Win2K. I don't use OE. (Neither should you, but that's another thread :) ) Anyhow, I've also gotten the same error when using FLAC 1.1.2. and Frontend v. 1.7.1 (Etree). I wondered if the others that have had this problem were working with flac files when it occurred. The only errors I have encountered were when working with FLAC files. Maybe that is the common element.

Alfie Noakes
2005-05-28, 06:03 PM
I had problems with SHN tool before,trying to figure it out,but TLH has solved a load of these problems,and it is so easy to use.A great prog for checking files and repairing easily when necessary.All we need now is to be enable to encode files with it and we'll be laughing. :cool: Thanks a lot for this,and from a few others I've recommended it to as well
Cheers
Alfie

jcrab66
2005-05-28, 07:06 PM
I had problems with SHN tool before,trying to figure it out,but TLH has solved a load of these problems,and it is so easy to use.A great prog for checking files and repairing easily when necessary.All we need now is to be enable to encode files with it and we'll be laughing. :cool: Thanks a lot for this,and from a few others I've recommended it to as well
Cheers
Alfie

i concur, come on with the encoding and I dont think I'll need another piece of software that has anything to do with compression/verification... :clap:

range_hood
2005-05-29, 07:22 AM
Looks very promising. Thanks for sharing your work. :clap:

I have some sort of request.
Could you implement the feature for dragging and dropping files in other windows than "Decode Files" too.
If I´m dropping files from Explorer it always defaults to "Decode Files".

Another one:
If you add audio files per "Add Button" (Test Encoded Files, Audio File Details, Fix SBEs, Decode Files) it would be nice if you could select on "File Type" something like "all supported file types"

Another really minor one:
In len mode an output format in MB would be helpful.
length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
3:18.62 35073068 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t01.flac
3:51.61 40891916 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t02.flac
3:32.14 37429772 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t03.flac
3:10.49 33631292 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t04.flac
3:09.29 33407852 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t05.flac
17:02.65 172.08 MB (totals for 5 files, 0.6765 overall compression ratio)

instead of

length expanded size cdr WAVE problems filename
3:18.62 35073068 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t01.flac
3:51.61 40891916 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t02.flac
3:32.14 37429772 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t03.flac
3:10.49 33631292 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t04.flac
3:09.29 33407852 --- -- ---xx Nirvana_1994-03-01_AUD1_remaster_d1t05.flac
17:02.65 180433900 B (totals for 5 files, 0.6765 overall compression ratio)
shntool len -u mb *.*

thanks again :)
-range

squire23
2005-05-29, 07:08 PM
Hey all, still having this problem with the "access violation ... in RICHED20.DLL" error. Have just updated Widows XP SP2 with all relevant updates from the Microsoft website to see if this would make things any better but instead it has now totally crashed TLH. Everytime I run Audio File Details on a series of files it I now get this error whereas before I was only getting it when trying to run the Fix SBE's feature. It'd be great if someone could help me resolve this issue cause I'm not the greatest with cmd line & all that & this prog seems like a godsend if I could get it to work properly

thanks
squire

range_hood
2005-05-30, 04:26 AM
Have you tried this yet?

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B291651&x=14&y=8

Lou
2005-06-01, 06:46 PM
I just tried this today, it's really great. All it needs is an encoding feature and a "joinwav" command like shntool has, and I can ditch every other program I have!

rabble
2005-06-02, 07:32 PM
My god.. This app is the cat's meow.. Abosfrigginlutely amazing.. THANK YOU, for all of your hard work on this!! Found it as I was searching TTD for a way to fix SBEs now that I've implemented the code that Five pointed out for Foobar to detect them. Finally got my hands on a copy of the complete pizza tapes, and wouldn't you know it, all but one track had SBEs.

So, anyhow, upgraded TLH (had the old pre-SBE fix version) and proceeded to load all the files up and fix SBE (I assumed that I could do these all as one set rather than breaking it up by disc since it's all fairly continuous, right?) I loaded all files, INCLUDING the one that didn't have an SBE, and that was that. Finished fixing, loaded the originals and the fixed files into foobar, and the fixed don't show SBEs anymore.. Awesome!@ Thanks!

How would I go about updating the lineage to reflect that I fixed the SBEs?

Five
2005-06-02, 09:09 PM
sounds like you got it right, Rabble. Just check all the transitions on your finished fixed version carefully, especially first and last tracks to check that a tiny "blip" of music hasn't been carried over in a funny way.

oh, and I just wanted to give full credit for the writing of the foobar2000 SBE detection code to ssamadhi97. I can't write all that %Fif>//!@~ stuff like he can.

mike1061
2005-06-05, 07:52 PM
Thanks
Mike

ColinM
2005-06-17, 02:54 PM
I've got a problem fixing SBE.

I have build 08043 and update 09356.

I add in the files I wish to repair and click 'Fix SBE'. The lower window fills with text, but the text tells me of the changes that could happen. I click 'Fix SBE' again and it fills with the same text.

Images for your perusal:

ColinM
2005-06-17, 02:56 PM
Next image:

kotti
2005-06-17, 03:04 PM
You have the 'Preview without making changes' option checked.

ColinM
2005-06-17, 03:15 PM
Unbelievable.

< What an idiot...

Thanks a bunch.

kotti
2005-06-17, 03:17 PM
Robert,

This is an excellent tool for those who get intimidated by command line programs like Shntool. The only program that I know that actually verifies sd5 and ffp files.

There's a couple of things that could be changed in the future (might have already been mentioned in the thread, not sure).

1. When you drag and drop files to any tab the program automatically changes to the decoding tab. Draggind and dropping is great for e.g. checking for SBEs for all your collection (by e.g. doing an explorer search for .flac and then dragging them all onto the program and then the same for .shn and .ape or whatever).

2. Please make a) the main window b) the individual parts (e.g. the log area) resizable. When you have hundreds of files to check it's a bit irritating to only see the results for ten or so files at a time.

3. I can't remember whether it asked if it should associate itself with .sd5 .md5 and .ffp extensions but if not - please make it ask first! There's nothing more irritating in the world than programs that steal extensions without giving you the option to choose first (oh the horrors of Real Player!). This is not a problem for sd5 or ffp but some people might have other programs for the md5 extension.

Anyway excellent work so far! :clap: Cheers :D

rabble
2005-06-18, 04:36 PM
2. Please make a) the main window b) the individual parts (e.g. the log area) resizable. When you have hundreds of files to check it's a bit irritating to only see the results for ten or so files at a time.

I second that...

When I'm running BitVerify on 300 files the log scrolls off after 20 or so, so when I come back to see how it's done, I only get the results for the last 20.

Otherwise, I'm lovin' it..!

chelrob
2005-07-22, 02:40 PM
Hello. Thanks for the great program.

Never mind, my mistake. :disbelief

Ted
2005-07-22, 02:45 PM
No it's not a bug. It's telling you that that particular file passed verification.

Maybe I'm missing something though. Why would you think it's a bug?

chelrob
2005-07-22, 02:46 PM
DOH, my bad. I'm imagining that is says checksum does not match. Sorry.

mokura
2005-07-22, 03:59 PM
The link for version 0.8.0 Build 43 at the link above is dead. Does anyone know of another place to get this? TIA.

Sid
2005-07-22, 04:04 PM
Hey all, still having this problem with the "access violation ... in RICHED20.DLL" error. Have just updated Widows XP SP2 with all relevant updates from the Microsoft website to see if this would make things any better but instead it has now totally crashed TLH. Everytime I run Audio File Details on a series of files it I now get this error whereas before I was only getting it when trying to run the Fix SBE's feature. It'd be great if someone could help me resolve this issue cause I'm not the greatest with cmd line & all that & this prog seems like a godsend if I could get it to work properly

thanks
squire

ditto

not all "Audio File Details" & "Fix SBE's"
but some :confused: ,I'm trying to figure out what's common when the ERROR occours :hmm:

direwolf
2005-08-02, 11:05 AM
Whenever I drag a flac or shn file onto the TLH window, it automatically puts it in the 'decode files' tab, even if I had the 'test encoded files' tab open. Is this a bug/feature ? Testing files works fine by using the 'add' button but dragging & dropping would be easier.

Thanks.

feralicious
2005-08-05, 11:37 PM
roann, if you're still checking in I have a suggestion. Can you make it so that when you switch tasks the files stay in the window ready to be uh, tasked? So that if you verify and they're fine you can switch over to decode and go for it. Unless I'm missing something it seems that you have to reload the files when you switch tasks.

ozzyzak
2005-09-21, 07:13 PM
anyone ever get this?

Preview of changes:
-------------------
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe (4028): *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack 0x40000 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
3 [main] shntool 2656 sync_with_child: child 4028(0x6C4) died before initialization with status code 0x1
671 [main] shntool 2656 sync_with_child: *** child state waiting for longjmp
shntool: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Error: error while forking child process, see above.


This is what I see when trying to fix SBE.

Also, when I go to create an md5 fingerprint (not a wholefile md5) and then verify it, they all fail.

ozzyzak
2005-09-21, 08:47 PM
Figured it out, not sure why this did anything. I right clicked and went into compatibility settings. Clicked the box that turns off advanced text services for the program. Anyway, long story (and confusing one) short, I can now check SBE and create as well as verify st5.

feralicious
2005-09-21, 10:25 PM
anyone ever get this?

Preview of changes:
-------------------
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe (4028): *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack 0x40000 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
3 [main] shntool 2656 sync_with_child: child 4028(0x6C4) died before initialization with status code 0x1
671 [main] shntool 2656 sync_with_child: *** child state waiting for longjmp
shntool: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
Error: error while forking child process, see above.


This is what I see when trying to fix SBE.

Also, when I go to create an md5 fingerprint (not a wholefile md5) and then verify it, they all fail.
That error sounds illegal and immoral.

Five
2005-09-21, 10:55 PM
Rotflmao!!!

roann
2005-10-16, 04:12 AM
It has been a long time since the last release of Trader's Little Helper. As some of you know there was *a lot* of trouble in my life over the last months. Because of serious health problems I had to stop working on Trader's Little Helper shortly after the release of the last version. That were the bad news.

And here are the good news. Those "dark days" seem to be nearly over now. I'm back home again and the doctors finally allowed me to run my computers again. So I continued working on Trader's Little Helper ... and >here (http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/) < is the new one: version 1.0.0 beta 1 (build 72).

Some notes (please read them):

(1) *Any* version of Trader's Little Helper prior to this new release must be uninstalled before you can install version 1.0.0 beta 1.

(2) Most wanted feature ... the page 'Encode files' is now implemented with a lot of options (encoding level, align on sector boundaries, test encoded files, create checksum file after encoding, and more). Hope you like it.

(3) All versions of Trader's Little Helper prior to the new one verify ffp files by comparing the flac fingerprints in the checksum file to the ones stored in the flac file headers (because that's the way metaflac.exe works). No checking of the audio content of the flac file is done. So verifying ffp files is *not* save at all: audio data can be corrupt but not the ffp stored in the header, and vice versa.
There's a new option 'Full ffp vrf.' on the 'Verify checksum files' page. If you check this option the old way of verifying is performed plus a re-calculation of the ffp which is checked against that in the flac file header. Now ffp verifying is save, but checksum re-calculating takes some time (same as verifying a .st5 checksum) ... so you have to be patient if you want "saver verifying".

(4) It's now possible to verify multiple checksum files. Because of the resulting space problems on the 'Verify ...' page the box showing the contents of a checksum file needed to be removed. Nevertheless you can take a look at a file's contents: just double-click on the file name in the list and a new window showing the contents will pop up.

(5) Adding files to create a checksum file for was completely reworked. You can now select all files in a directory, even all files in the subdirectories of that directory. Check it out!

(6) In the system menu of Trader's Little Helper a 'Preferences' dialog was inplemented. In this dialog you can change some of the default settings (startup page, directories, message boxes).

(7) Shell integration of Trader's Little Helper into Windows Explorer has been reworked and extended. A lot of function are available via Explorer's context menus.

(8) Drag & drop now works for verify, decode and encode.

(9) There's a new option 'Test decoded files for mp3' on the 'Decode files' page. It's the free command-line tool 'aucdtect.exe' that's called when you check this option. If you don't know this tool do *not* expect too much. It's a very good prog when it comes to studio recordings (that's the reason for *me* to integrate it). With live recordings it has its problems. So if you want to use it with live recordings only use it as a last step in your analysis. Spectral/frequency analysis is very important as is lineage ...

And remember ... Trader's Little Helper is still in beta. Thanks for all the feedback over the last months.

Cheers
Robert

fp.trade
2005-10-16, 04:55 AM
Very goods news...

Thanx for your work, i will DL and test this new version

Fabien

Sid
2005-10-16, 08:46 AM
:clap: :clap:

The best tool available ;)

Hope you are feeling better.

Marc

wharfrat73
2005-10-16, 08:52 AM
A lot of nice improvements. Thanks.

A word of warning : This version is going to change file associations without asking if you want too. It's not a big deal, it just takes a few minutes to change them back, if you know how.

Sid
2005-10-16, 09:04 AM
recieved error when attempting to updated
removed completely & tried twice

see attatched screenshot>

Sid
2005-10-16, 09:18 AM
Now no functions work...hmmm :confused:

any ideas.....what did I screw up :hmm:

Sid
2005-10-16, 10:18 AM
Anyway to get the other version back because I can not get this one to download correctly & now I have no TLH ,which makes me sad :(

feralicious
2005-10-16, 11:40 AM
I can send old version to you... pm me.

Sid
2005-10-16, 12:57 PM
I can send old version to you... pm me.

thank you :wave:

roann
2005-10-16, 12:59 PM
... A word of warning : This version is going to change file associations without asking if you want too. ...
Not without asking: During setup there's an option "Integrate Trader's Little Helper into context menu of Windows Explorer" you can (un)check. If you check it file associations are going to be changed.

roann
2005-10-16, 01:04 PM
Now no functions work...hmmm :confused:

any ideas.....what did I screw up :hmm:
:hmm: :confused: never seen this message before ... to be sure I'll check the setup prog tomorrow. If you need the setup files of the old version send me a pm oder email.

jcrab66
2005-10-16, 11:05 PM
recieved error when attempting to updated
removed completely & tried twice

see attatched screenshot>

i got that too but i just clicked continue and all functions seem to work properly upon completion of install..

Sid
2005-10-17, 06:27 AM
i got that too but i just clicked continue and all functions seem to work properly upon completion of install..

I did that also but none of the functions worked for me after completion :hmm:
I removed & reinstalled twice :confused:

A nice member sent me the last version & it's working fine again.

I'll wait until the new version gets sorted out because I'd be lost without it.
BEST tool available.

thanks roann,
Marc

roann
2005-10-17, 09:04 AM
I did that also but none of the functions worked for me after completion :hmm:
I removed & reinstalled twice :confused:

A nice member sent me the last version & it's working fine again.

I'll wait until the new version gets sorted out because I'd be lost without it.
BEST tool available.

thanks roann,
Marc
Marc,
today I checked the code of the setup program over and over again but didn't found any suspicious lines. There's only one way to track down the error, but for this I need your help: you'll have to do some uninstall/install runs for me. If you have the time to help you/me please send me an email (you'll find my address in the system menu / about dialog of Trader's Little Helper) cause those runs require some "do this, do that - what are the results" communication.

Robert

cmaz
2005-10-21, 01:51 PM
recieved error when attempting to updated
removed completely & tried twice

see attatched screenshot>

i got that error twice when i installed TLH today...but i'm using it now, and it seems to be functioning fine.

gd4ever
2005-10-21, 02:38 PM
I love this program! Very convenient, to have shn and flac all in one neat little package. I just wish it could do encoding as well as decoding... but half of a useful tool is better than none, in this case.

BTW, I'm using version 0.9.3 (build 56). Is that the most recent version, or does anyone know of a newer one?

cmaz
2005-10-21, 03:27 PM
BTW, I'm using version 0.9.3 (build 56). Is that the most recent version, or does anyone know of a newer one?

The most current version is 1.0.0 beta 1 (build 72). Scroll up to roann's post on 10/16/05 to see more details.

roann
2005-10-22, 01:44 AM
i got that error twice when i installed TLH today...but i'm using it now, and it seems to be functioning fine.
If someone who experienced this "Runtime Error (...): Out Of String Range" message during installation is willing to help me tracking this down (max. 3x uninstall and 3x re-install with special parameters I'll tell you) please contact me ... on my machines this never happened so I can't do anything without a helping hand.

Robert

mort
2005-10-24, 04:48 AM
yep. That is your user number. You were even here before me. ;)


this may seem like a dumb question but ill take my chances

i notice you spend a lot of time here

but when you torrent something you do it over at the dime

why not here ?

roann
2005-10-24, 07:03 AM
this may seem like a dumb question but ill take my chances
i notice you spend a lot of time here ...
You're wrong, I do not spend a lot of time here.

... but when you torrent something you do it over at the dime why not here ?
You're wrong, I've never put up a show - neither on TTD nor on DaD.

cmaz
2005-10-25, 02:41 PM
If someone who experienced this "Runtime Error (...): Out Of String Range" message during installation is willing to help me tracking this down (max. 3x uninstall and 3x re-install with special parameters I'll tell you) please contact me ... on my machines this never happened so I can't do anything without a helping hand.

Robert

Hey Robert,

i tried contacting you at the email provided in TLH (as you suggested we do in an earlier post), but my email was rejected by you.

Anyway, if you still need someone to help you run through some installs/uninstalls, i think i can help you out.

Let me know.

roann
2005-10-26, 01:42 AM
Hey Robert,

i tried contacting you at the email provided in TLH (as you suggested we do in an earlier post), but my email was rejected by you.

Anyway, if you still need someone to help you run through some installs/uninstalls, i think i can help you out.

Let me know.Thanks for your kind offer. Please take a look at you inbox cause I've sent you a pm.

ColinM
2005-10-26, 01:45 AM
Thanks again for the program. I love it, even if I haven't upgraded yet... ;)

H3BR3W
2005-10-27, 05:42 PM
I'm having a problem decoding my FLACs to WAVs in order to burn them.

I keep getting this error message:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/Otakon2005/help.jpg

roann
2005-10-28, 01:29 AM
I'm having a problem decoding my FLACs to WAVs in order to burn them.

I keep getting this error message:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/Otakon2005/help.jpgBefore processing a task Trader's Little Helper looks for its subcomponents in your Windows directory. The files below should be located in C:\WINDOWS (or whatever the name of your Windows directory is):
aucdtect.exe, cygwin1.dll, flac.exe, mac.exe, metaflac.exe, shntool.exel, shorten.exe
if one of those files is missing on your machine please >contact< ([email protected]) me.

H3BR3W
2005-10-28, 06:28 AM
Ah, okay.

I downloaded cygwin1.dll.

Works fine now, thanks a lot.

AAR.oner
2005-10-28, 08:52 AM
downloaded the new version, have yet to install, but want to say CHEERS Roann! i really appreciate all the work you've done to make PC traders life much easier... :wave:

gd4ever
2005-10-29, 01:17 AM
Thanks for the heads up, cmaz. I downloaded the new version, and it appears to be working just fine...

And thanks for the great program, roann!

:clap:

tay
2005-10-29, 02:33 PM
Thanks I love this program!

aaadbell
2005-11-12, 11:51 AM
Before processing a task Trader's Little Helper looks for its subcomponents in your Windows directory. The files below should be located in C:\WINDOWS (or whatever the name of your Windows directory is):
aucdtect.exe, cygwin1.dll, flac.exe, mac.exe, metaflac.exe, shntool.exel, shorten.exe


Roann, thank you for this program.

I just uninstalled the old version I had, and I reinstalled the new version 1.0.0 Beta 1 (Build 72). All of the files mentioned above except cygwin1.dll were deposited in my Windows directory. Now I already have a couple of copies of cygwin1.dll, one in my Windows/System32 directory, but not in C:\Windows. Did the TLH install package know I had a copy of cygwin1.dll, or is it not part of the installation package?

[Side question - where is a reliable place for people to download just cygwin1.dll? When you go to the http://www.cygwin.com/, it looks like you have to download a package - I don't see any way to just get the DLL file.]

Allen

aaadbell
2005-11-12, 12:10 PM
A question about the user interface. When you drag and drop files into TLH, no matter what tab is showing, the tab switches to either Verify checksum files, Decode files, or Encode files. So you can't drag & drop to create checksums, test, get shntool info, or fix SBEs?

There is also no context menu support for fixing SBEs. Apparently the only way to use this function is with the Add button. Is this deliberate?

Finally, about the context (right-click) menu. The dialog box does not come to the top if the TLH window is hidden - it would be nice to have that option. Also, if you select the context menu but then change your mind, there seems to be no way to cancel the dialog box.

I think this is a great program. I don't mean to complain, I'm just pointing things out that I've noticed.

Allen

pelle
2005-11-12, 01:01 PM
Could someone please help me out with this:

I've just installed TLH and tried the SBE fix option.
When I use the 'Pad Files" function in the 'pad mode' - after I have done the 'Fix SBEs' - I get this error message in the Process Log:

'shntool: error: invalid mode or option: pad
shntool:
shntool: type 'shntool -h' for help'

Any idea what this means and how to fix it?

roann
2005-11-13, 01:44 AM
... I reinstalled the new version 1.0.0 Beta 1 (Build 72). All of the files mentioned above except cygwin1.dll were deposited in my Windows directory. Now I already have a couple of copies of cygwin1.dll, one in my Windows/System32 directory, but not in C:\Windows. Did the TLH install package know I had a copy of cygwin1.dll, or is it not part of the installation package? ...
"cygwin1.dll" is part of the installation package, but if Setup detects an existing version of it on your machine it will not install it (some users reported problems with more than one version of the DLL installed). If Trader's Little Helper works fine on your machine change nothing. If not (error message "at least one subcomponent was not found") just move (not copy) cygwin1.dll from your Windows\System32 directory to your Windows directory.

... [Side question - where is a reliable place for people to download just cygwin1.dll? When you go to the http://www.cygwin.com/, it looks like you have to download a package - I don't see any way to just get the DLL file.] ...
Just google a bit, there are lots of sites. But for the most updated version (not needed for Trader's Little Helper) it's better to use the link above. Before the download starts there's a menu where you can select what you want to download. I never managed it to just d/l "cygwin1.dll" but you can reduze the size of the download to a few megs.

roann
2005-11-13, 02:12 AM
A question about the user interface. When you drag and drop files into TLH, no matter what tab is showing, the tab switches to either Verify checksum files, Decode files, or Encode files. So you can't drag & drop to create checksums, test, get shntool info, or fix SBEs? ... That's right. Maybe this will available with the next release.

... There is also no context menu support for fixing SBEs. Apparently the only way to use this function is with the Add button. Is this deliberate? ... Maybe there's an extended context menu in the next release.

... Finally, about the context (right-click) menu. The dialog box does not come to the top if the TLH window is hidden - it would be nice to have that option. ... This "bad behaviour" depends on the Windows version you're using. On my Win2K system for example the dialog box always shows up, on a Win2k3 system sometimes it does sometimes not. I don't know why. I've tried a lot of ways available in the net (including the official ones from MS) to get this working - but none of them really worked. So you have to live with that ...

... Also, if you select the context menu but then change your mind, there seems to be no way to cancel the dialog box. ...Unfortunately not. Already on the list.

roann
2005-11-13, 02:27 AM
Could someone please help me out with this:

I've just installed TLH and tried the SBE fix option.
When I use the 'Pad Files" function in the 'pad mode' - after I have done the 'Fix SBEs' - I get this error message in the Process Log:

'shntool: error: invalid mode or option: pad
shntool:
shntool: type 'shntool -h' for help'

Any idea what this means and how to fix it?What exactly have you done? First fixed SBEs, then padded the fixed files, or padded the original files, or ...???

range_hood
2005-11-13, 03:17 AM
Thanks roann. :)

Just one thing I´m really missing.
The ability to process (test) a big batch of files... f.e. I have a folder full of flac shows, some have subfolders, some sub-sub... What I do is doing a search for *.flac in explorer, but if I use the context menu feature the test encoded files sometimes is not available, and if, I get an error "List index out of bounds (0)".

The Encode feature looks great, could you implement other formats than wav as input files. Also an option to compare the sets after converting would be great additional to "Test encoded files". Maybe an st5 for each set (before-after) and an option to save this to a txt file?

-range

roann
2005-11-13, 04:21 AM
... Just one thing I´m really missing.
The ability to process (test) a big batch of files... f.e. I have a folder full of flac shows, some have subfolders, some sub-sub... What I do is doing a search for *.flac in explorer, but if I use the context menu feature the test encoded files sometimes is not available, and if, I get an error "List index out of bounds (0)".Added to the list.

... The Encode feature looks great, could you implement other formats than wav as input files. Also an option to compare the sets after converting would be great additional to "Test encoded files". Maybe an st5 for each set (before-after) and an option to save this to a txt file? ...So you want some kind of "convert format" function (f.e. shn to flac)?

range_hood
2005-11-14, 12:29 AM
Added to the list.
So you want some kind of "convert format" function (f.e. shn to flac)?
Thanks.
Yes, that would be great. And for documentation the evidence that the audio content didn't change.

cmaz
2005-11-15, 03:41 PM
roann, if you're still checking in I have a suggestion. Can you make it so that when you switch tasks the files stay in the window ready to be uh, tasked? So that if you verify and they're fine you can switch over to decode and go for it. Unless I'm missing something it seems that you have to reload the files when you switch tasks.

i would echo fera's above suggestion.

And...as everyone else has said, Roann, i thank you so very much for this program. It has been immeasurably helpful and timesaving.

tjmackzyxw
2005-11-25, 08:08 PM
One thing I've noticed in the new version that seems to differ from the old is when you associate md5s with TLH and you double click on one to open it; in the previous version if you did this verification started automatically, but in the new version you seem to have click on 'verify' to start the verifying each time.

Or am I missing something?

fireman00
2005-11-26, 07:00 PM
Hello all! I trade quite a bit in a couple of Yahoo groups and Traders Little Helper was suggested as a "one stop shopping" app instead of chasing around 4 or five different apps.

I've emailed the developer and figured that I'd post the problem I'm having here also.

I run the install on a XP home edition machine with 512 Mb memory, 120 Gig of free drive space, 3.2 Gig processor and I get "Internal Error" Expression Error 'Run Time error (at 6:476): out of string range.' three times while installing. I reboot the machine and when I try to launch the app I get "Range Check Error" then the app opens but all the buttons on the right side of the screen are blank - no letters.

I used "End It All" before installing a 2nd time to make sure that AVG or ZoneAlarm or Micro$oft's spyware app isn't interfering with the install and I get the same problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Side note - I successfully installed TLH on a Win2K 733Mhz laptop that I use for Web surfing so I know the install works.

Thanks in advance - take care, Doug

roann
2005-11-27, 03:26 AM
Because on my machines this "out of string range" error *never* occured I can't track it down or help you out at the moment. I'm gonna completely rewrite the setup program and implement some kind of detailed install log so the next release (which will be out in February 2006) will show what goes wrong during the installation procedure (I hope).

Robert

cmaz
2005-11-27, 02:17 PM
What i found on my machine was when i downloaded the program and clicked <Run> on the "Download Successful" dialog box, i got the out of string error.

When i downloaded the install program and then ran the install from <Start> <Run> "install" or even double clicking the install prog from windows explorer, i didn't get the out of string errors.

One caveat, however, regardless of whether i got the out of string error during the install or not, TLH seemed to work perfectly for me.

zep69fan
2005-12-19, 07:58 PM
I get the same error message when installing...I've installed it on my computer at work (XPPro SP2, just like at home) and it works great. What's funny is I can't get the mkw Audio Compression Toolkit to work on my office PC, but at home it works fine. Traders Little Helper is great at the office for it's one stop and shop capability. At home I use FLAC and the mkw toolkit, but I'd much rather use TLH. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

roann
2005-12-20, 02:57 AM
I get the same error message when installing...I've installed it on my computer at work (XPPro SP2, just like at home) and it works great. What's funny is I can't get the mkw Audio Compression Toolkit to work on my office PC, but at home it works fine. Traders Little Helper is great at the office for it's one stop and shop capability. At home I use FLAC and the mkw toolkit, but I'd much rather use TLH. Any suggestions?Until the new setup routine isn't coded (see my post above) the only thing I can offer is the old version of Trader's Little Helper (no encoding features) that will install properly. Please contact me if you want me to email you the setup files.

Borlag
2006-01-04, 04:00 PM
I have a different type of problem with the latest version of TLH. I've used it ever since it was first released and never had any problems with it at all. Earlier today however when I was moving shows to computer from DVD's with the SHN's and FLAC's and then verifying them to be copied ok first by the md5's when they existed and then by the test encoded files function. It verified all md5's without any problems, same with ffp files but for some reason I had a single show without either of those, thus I had to verify it with the test function. Right after choosing the files to be tested and clicking the test button, it claimed that the files can't be opened or they don't exist.

Now it claims this same with every single SHN show I have on the computer, yet those other shows verify ok with md5, I can see the audio details just fine, I can even decode them without any problems. I just can't test any SHN files. I'm aware that some of the files may have been made with MKW instead of Shorten or TLH, could this be what confused it? And if so, how would I go in fixing the TLH instal so that I can test SHN's again? Both FLAC's and APE's work just fine. And I did try reinstalling the latest version already.

wharfrat73
2006-01-07, 10:21 AM
It looks like TLH is not available for download at this point. Is that temporary?

I hope so.

shakedown271
2006-01-07, 01:37 PM
:clap: :clap: :clap:
nice!
Warfrat73:
I Just got it today, so it should be up.

wolfsorrow
2006-01-10, 01:22 PM
howldy
great lil tool... TLH... when fixing SBE's the option to bckward round forward are available... which would be best to use...? thinking round... but then I don't know exactly what it's doing...
any input appreciated...
Wolf

pmonk
2006-01-10, 02:42 PM
howldy
great lil tool... TLH... when fixing SBE's the option to bckward round forward are available... which would be best to use...? thinking round... but then I don't know exactly what it's doing...
any input appreciated...
Wolf

http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showpost.php?p=121259&postcount=125


pity uhclem is MIA :(

gusphan89
2006-01-11, 05:32 PM
Hey, I was just wondering if someone could help me out. I have installed Traders little helper, and i have all the files needed in c:/windows, but it is still telling me AT least one of the required subcomponets was not found in the windows directory. Processing will be terminated. Can someone please help me?

inside'eye
2006-01-12, 07:29 AM
Hey, I was just wondering if someone could help me out. I have installed Traders little helper, and i have all the files needed in c:/windows, but it is still telling me AT least one of the required subcomponets was not found in the windows directory. Processing will be terminated. Can someone please help me?
you should read the thread through.I had the same problem,I threw away all other similair programs(foobar,eac,etc....)then uninstalled tlh and reinstalled tlh and the rest was a dream.I recomend reading this thread through first.

roann
2006-01-12, 09:33 AM
It looks like TLH is not available for download at this point. Is that temporary?

I hope so.It was temporary. Sometimes the setup file is gone and I have to re-upload it. It's rather annoying ... I think the guy who runs the server does some clean up from time to time.

Hey, I was just wondering if someone could help me out. I have installed Traders little helper, and i have all the files needed in c:/windows, but it is still telling me AT least one of the required subcomponets was not found in the windows directory. Processing will be terminated. Can someone please help me?Seven files have to be located in your Windows directory:
(1) aucdtect.exe, (2) cygwin1.dll, (3) flac.exe, (4) mac.exe, (5) metaflac.exe, (6) shntool.exe, (7) shorten.exe
If one of them is missing you'll get the error message "At least ... was not found ...".

roann
2006-02-01, 08:35 AM
I've just upped a new installer for Trader's Little Helper to http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/ that fixes the "out of string range" error some people got during installation. Fingers crossed ... I hope things will running fine now for everyone.

Only use the new installer if there were errors during the setup with the old one and Trader's Little Helper doesn't run properly. If everything was/is fine using the old installer leave it that way.

A big thanks to all the kind people who helped beta testing the new installer.

Robert

Sid
2006-02-01, 09:09 AM
I've just upped a new installer for Trader's Little Helper to http://thor.prohosting.com/roh0205/ that fixes the "out of string range" error some people got during installation. Fingers crossed ... I hope things will running fine now for everyone.

Only use the new installer if there were errors during the setup with the old one and Trader's Little Helper doesn't run properly. If everything was/is fine using the old installer leave it that way.

A big thanks to all the kind people who helped beta testing the new installer.

Robert

Robert :wave:

It installed very easy..... :D

I had difficulties with the last installation but not this version .....very smooth ;)

Thank you

sid

showtaper
2006-02-14, 09:12 AM
The installer file appears to be gone again.......

roann
2006-02-14, 10:29 AM
The installer file appears to be gone again.......It's still there. Download works fine for me ...

herman
2006-03-02, 06:55 PM
now I want to check my number!

Jerry Owens
2006-03-02, 08:14 PM
Just doing this so i can check my number, first post in this forum.

range_hood
2006-04-14, 06:53 AM
Just wanted to say thank you. Just verified a bunch of files from different folders. Took me five seconds to start this in TLH. :D

great work roann
:thumbsup

jukesfan
2006-05-10, 07:30 AM
I've been using the program for months with no problem then started getting this error yesterday when attempting to check/fix SBE's of FLAC files:
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe[2984]:***fork;can't reserve memory for stack 0x240000,Win32 error 4 [? can't see...text out of window area]11 [main] shntool 2964 fork_parent: child 2984 died waiting for longimp before inialization.
shntool: fork: No error
Error: error while forking child process, see above.

The files test fine, decode fine and I can check SBE's as .wav files....just not as FLAC. I tried uninstalling/re-installing the program but it didn't make a difference. I haven't changed settings or anything else. As I said, the program has been working fine and I *was* using it on a daily basis. Any ideas as to what's going on?

roann
2006-05-10, 08:52 AM
I've been using the program for months with no problem then started getting this error yesterday when attempting to check/fix SBE's of FLAC files:
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe[2984]:***fork;can't reserve memory for stack 0x240000,Win32 error 4 [? can't see...text out of window area]11 [main] shntool 2964 fork_parent: child 2984 died waiting for longimp before inialization.
shntool: fork: No error
Error: error while forking child process, see above.

The files test fine, decode fine and I can check SBE's as .wav files....just not as FLAC. I tried uninstalling/re-installing the program but it didn't make a difference. I haven't changed settings or anything else. As I said, the program has been working fine and I *was* using it on a daily basis. Any ideas as to what's going on?To be honest, no - only Bill Gates knows the answer. A few users reported the same you've experienced - no probs, then exactly the error message above. The simple solution: just run Trader's Little Helper in a mode for older DOS programs.

jukesfan
2006-05-10, 09:33 AM
Thanks roann....I tried that too [mode for older DOS programs] and it still didn't work. I guess I'll continue to convert the FLAC files to .wav and check them that way.

roann
2006-05-10, 09:51 AM
Thanks roann....I tried that too [mode for older DOS programs] and it still didn't work. I guess I'll continue to convert the FLAC files to .wav and check them that way.Please contact me via email (roann at women-at-work.org).

pauglife
2006-05-16, 06:16 PM
wow this is great! don't believe i'm just finding it now :clap: :clap: :clap:

Five
2006-05-16, 06:47 PM
I made a bit of a tutorial for this great tool here:
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17951