SHN, Shorten files is a lossless audio compression format. Lossless means that
all audio data is retained while the source wav-file is compressed into a file
about 30-40 % smaller than the original.
SHN requires a compression tool. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will
use the mkw Audio Compression Tool, which is a free download from www.etree.org/mkw.html.
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This is the main screen in mkwACT. As the hints
point out, you can drag and drop wav-files you've extracted from a CD
onto the program, and it will compress them. Before you compress anything,
though, it might be a good idea to set some program options from the
Options menu, though. |
| This is the file options screen. Here, you can set where
the compressed SHN files (or the decompressed wav files) will end up
on your harddrive. You can set these options to your preference, but
you should always have the program set to generate md5 checksum files.
I'll explain why later on. |
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This is the SHN options window. There's nothing of much
note here. If you intend to play SHN files, though (there's a Winamp
plug-in called shnAmp available from www.etree.org),
it might be a good idea to append a seek table onto the compressed file,
so you can fast forward and rewind while playing the shn file. |
| Onto the compression, then. mkwACT puts some handy links
into the Explorer context menus. if you right-click on
any wav file (or files), you get an alternative "encode to shn".
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If you click the "encode to shn" alternative,
mkwACT will take over and compress the files into SHN. Depending on
the options set for the program, it may or may not delete your source
wavs. SHN-compression is reasonably fast and won't put a huge strain
on your system.
Notice the new file called "noname.md5" that also appeared
when you compressed. |
| Similarly, if you select and right-click the SHN files,
you get an alternative to "decode to wav". This will decompress
the SHn files back into wavs, without any loss of audio fidelity whatsoever. |
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Back to "noname.md5" for a while.
Without getting too technical, and md5 checksum is a sequence of characters
generated from the source file. It is largely unique, and a file will
generate the same md5 checksum each time.
This is used to verify the integrity and "fingerprint" them.
Since shns are large files, they can get corrupted more easily than
smaller files during data transfer or during data CD burning. A SHN
file copied without glitches should always be identical to its parent
SHN, and have the same checksum "fingerprint", meaning the
md5 verification will report no errors. If the SHN was changed through
corruption, it will no longer match its original fingerprint and the
check will fail. |
| If you double-click on an md5 file, or right-click
and select "verify", mkwACT will check the checksum of the
existing files against the checksum in the md5 file. If it's identical,
you will receive a message saying so.
If there is an error in the md5 check, mkwACT will tell you which
files have failed the check. |
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This is just a short introductorial tutorial to SHN. Below are some links to
further reading:
