Trader's Little Helper

[feralicious]

Great tech support!

[roann]

Originally Posted by symon

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]

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]

Originally Posted by symon

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]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by roann

is your decoded file smaller than the encoded one?

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

[feralicious]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Originally Posted by feralicious

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]

Originally Posted by feralicious

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.

Originally Posted by Five

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]

Originally Posted by roann

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]

Originally Posted by roann

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...

Originally Posted by jazzbo

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/...7&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.