[Five]

my shntool info page mirror, 2001-03-17

Originally Posted by Diana Hamilton

7/12/02 note: Below is a mirror of an old page created by Chris Green. It is apparently long gone from its original site, and a couple links are outdated, but I thought it was useful enough to save and republish here. I have not altered/updated this mirror significantly, except to strip off the geocities adware and note updated urls . Chris, if you're out there give me a buzz about this if you like. Diana Hamilton

Originally Posted by Chris Green

***

Have you ever recieved a show in shn format and wanted to quickly find out what the length and size of the wav's are?

shntool is a command line utility which reports information about the compressed wav inside a shn file.

click here for a screenshot. [DSH note- not saved, no longer available]
There's more to shntool than what I describe here, but the 'len' parameter displays the playing time (length) and wav size in shn files. These directions will help you create a batch file to run the command line shntool.exe and associate it in Windows95/98/NT/2K so that you can get this info about the wavs quickly and easily.

• get shntool
  go here : http://shnutils.freeshell.org/ to get shntool
  once your at the shnutilities page, click the shntool link.
  download the zip archive (or archive file type of your preference) and unzip to a folder such as c:\utils\
  
  
• copy the program & library files to a directory that is in your path
  go to the c:\utils\ folder and move the files below to a directory that is in your path
  
  shntool.exe
  shorten.exe
  cygwin1.dll
  
  the files above need to go in a directory that is in your path so that they can be found no matter what directory you are running the command from. common locations would be:
  
  c:\windows\ [on win95/98]
  c:\winnt\ [on winNT/2K]
  
  go back to c:\util\ and create a new text file, name it shnlength.bat
  enter the following for your batch file
  
  cls
  shntool -len -mb *.shn
  :: cmg 4/18/2001
  :: the syntax above uses the new parameter style,
  :: previous ver was "shntool len -u mb *.shn".
  :: alternately, you may use other params,
  :: such as "shntool -len -mb -debug *.shn" for more info.
  :: see "shntool -len -h" for specific help on the '-len' param.s
  pause
  exit
  
  NOTE: you could modify the batch file to be the following if you wanted to save the output of the console window to a textfile.
  
  The following would put place the info in a file
  named 'shnlength.txt' in the same directory as
  the shn files that you are checking :
  shntool -len -mb *.shn > shnlength.txt
  You could also specify a directory before the output
  file to always put the file in the same place:
  shntool -len -mb *.shn > c:\shnlength.txt
  
  
• create a new association for .shn files to your batch file
  Win95/98/NT
  
  Open an Explorer window
  Select View from the menu
  Select Options
  Under 'file types' select (shn) from the list
  (MKW users may notice that the association is
  named "Compressed Audio "Shorten)"
  Click the Edit button
  Click New..,
  call it 'shnlength' or whatever you like
  Browse to the batch file you made back at c:\util\shnlength
  
  Win2000
  
  Open an Explorer window
  Select Tools from the menu
  Click on the 'file types' tab
  Select (shn) from the list
  Click the Advanced button
  Click New..,
  call it 'shnlength' or whatever you like
  Browse to the batch file you made back at c:\util\shnlength
  
  Jeremy Clarks shn page http://www.cstp.umkc.edu/~jclark/shn/ has great info on creating associations & shn files [DSH note- Jeremy's writeup now hosted at http://pcp.gridpoint.com/shn.phtml ]
  
  
• test it out
  go to a folder where you have shn's
  select a shn file, right-click and select 'shnlength' from the popup menu
  a console will open displaying the information about all the shn's in that directory
  
  
• problems?
  try going to a dos prompt and type 'shntool -h' if you get an unrecognized command error, check the location of the files back in step 1
  if the above works, check the file associations
  see the supporting txt files that come with shntool or reference the shnutils website

created: 03-17-2001
updated: 04-18-2001
I thought this was a helpful utility so i made a page to help others set it up. email me with questions.
this page is a work in progress, please report errors or discrepancies to me

Sites referenced in this page
http://shnutils.freeshell.org
http://www.cstp.umkc.edu/~jclark/shn/ [DSH- updated to http://pcp.gridpoint.com/shn.phtml ]

Other useful sites
http://research.umbc.edu/~hamilton/shnfaq.html [DSH- url updated]
http://etree.org/howto.html
http://home.att.net/~mkw/