Trader's Little Helper

[ZeppHead72]

Thanks Roann! That makes sense.

One more question. How do you verify files when all you are given is the following info? No MD5 checksum. Just this info in notepad.

85cc2ed53674bead97df82fd109c5be8 *Track07.shn
ac61f7e7e4a3aae65d72691d3d1b19fb *Track08.shn
ab74e58385e4674ba72b65200a275e05 *Track09.shn
a50972acccdc3ea5332732ad08c0eb7e *Track10.shn
cd585f8214311c92267c5445bb5858b4 *Track01.shn
5530fc3d87fb632a873afad272222ac6 *Track02.shn
daed6907922fb3d5107b3e307af72281 *Track03.shn
c45fe95e6fa3f5a7a50e082e2125f799 *Track04.shn
b1d8d13e9735e4115c453886b436f807 *Track05.shn
6fa27f4da94ed02d1bec8a839e0fcd39 *Track06.shn

Can you create a checksum with this info?

Thanks!

[wharfrat73]

Right click on the folder, choose TLH, choose verify, TLH will tell you that there is no checksum in the folder, click okay, click add, pick the checksum text file, open, verify.

[ZeppHead72]

Originally Posted by wharfrat73

Right click on the folder, choose TLH, choose verify, TLH will tell you that there is no checksum in the folder, click okay, click add, pick the checksum text file, open, verify.

Thanks wharfrat! I'll try that.

[roann]

Originally Posted by ZeppHead72

<snip>

How do you verify files when all you are given is the following info? No MD5 checksum. Just this info in notepad.

85cc2ed53674bead97df82fd109c5be8 *Track07.shn
<snip>

Can you create a checksum with this info?

Thanks!

What you have is the md5 checksum info / file! BTW, Trader's Little Helper comes with an user manual. In the Glossary section you'll find alot of information about md5 checksums and/or md5 files, for example.

[wharfrat73]

Originally Posted by ZeppHead72

Can you create a checksum with this info?

Thanks!

Sorry I missed this part of your question. If you want to make that .txt file into a checksum file open the text file > file > save as > all file types > name it and add the extension .md5, .ffp, etc. and you should end up with a checksum file.

[MGStreak]

First of all, a huge thanks to Roann... I've been using this program since it came out, and I love it... I never left a post in here because I got this program from a friend... never even saw the post!!! So thank you. Very much.

........and now I have to mention the one problem I've been having with TLH. When I found out that I could set md5 (ffp, etc) file associations to TLH to double click to verify, I nearly jumped out of my seat... only to find that it doesn't work on my computer. Every time I try to double click an md5 associated with TLH, I get the error shown in the attachment below. If I add the md5 through the "add" button in TLH, it works fine, so I know the problem isn't the md5... any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am running SP2 patched Windows XP, and have had no other problems on my PC. I should also note that I HAVE read through this thread, and I couldn't find anyone else with my problem.

Finally... thanks again for this exceedingly useful tool.

[roann]

Originally Posted by MGStreak

<snip> ...and now I have to mention the one problem I've been having with TLH. When I found out that I could set md5 (ffp, etc) file associations to TLH to double click to verify, I nearly jumped out of my seat... only to find that it doesn't work on my computer. Every time I try to double click an md5 associated with TLH, I get the error shown in the attachment below. If I add the md5 through the "add" button in TLH, it works fine, so I know the problem isn't the md5... any advice would be greatly appreciated. <snip>

File associations are handled via Windows registry, and in your case some registry entries were altered. The installer of TLH is very conservative when it comes to file associations and does not change existing ones. Installers of some other programs (Winamp, for example) just overwrite existing file associations. Likely that's the reason for your problem.

The good news is that you can correct this manually (no un/re-install needed). Please contact me via email (you'll find my address in the About dialog of TLH or in the user manual under the Contact topic).

Robert

[sammywho]

First of all Robert, thanks for the cool program and thanks for checking this thread, much appreciated. Now:

Originally Posted by YokohamaJ

2.
***AND*** every time I try to verify ffps, I always get this error message on every track:

Line 001: file'gd86-12-31d1t01.flac'failed verification (checksum in metadata block does match, but md5 checksum does not match)

I have this same problem. The MD5's match fine.

Originally Posted by roann

You can run a test to see if the problem in (1) is the reason or if your flac files are really corrupt: take a wav file, then use flac frontend to encode it to flac format and to create a ffp file. Then use TLH to verify that ffp file. If there are no errors reported by TLH it's likely that your Dead files are corrupt ...

I tried this and and I still get the same error. I made an MD5 of the same FLAC file and it checks fine with no errors.

Turkka

[roann]

@sammywho:

1) A bit oversimplified an audio file consists of two parts: a non-audio data part (the so called file header) and an audio data part (wav data, or flac data, for example). Among others the file type and the properties of the audio data (number of channels, sampling rate, etc.) is stored in the file header.

2) When you encode a wav file to flac format the flac encoder by default computes the md5 checksum of the raw wav data and stores the checksum in the header of the flac file (this is the so called flac fingerprint).

3) When a program creates a flac fingerprint file (.ffp) it just reads that fingerprint from the header of the flac file. That's all. No checking is done whether the flac file has become corrupt or not.

4) When you verify a flac fingerprint using TLH two steps will be performed: First the checksum in the ffp file will be checked against the checksum in the flac file header. Then the flac audio data will be decoded back to wav format, and a md5 checksum of the raw wav data will be created. Only if all three checksums (that in the ffp file, that in the flac file header, and that newly computed checksum of the decoded raw wav data) do match you can be sure that the flac file is not corrupt. (Note that a) in earlier versions of TLH that second step will be performed only if you check the "Full vrfy." option, and b) in the last releases of TLH you can uncheck that option in the Preferences dialog (this is not recommended).)

5) If you get the error message file '...' failed verification (checksum in metadata block does match, but md5 checksum does not match) the checksum in the ffp file and the checksum in the flac file header are identical. But they do not match the newly computed checksum of the decoded raw wav data. In other words: either the audio part of the flac file has become corrupt (at least one bit of audio data was altered), or the fingerprint data in the flac file header has become corrupt before the ffp file was created.

Robert

[sammywho]

Thanks for the summary Robert, very helpful, cleared some things for me. But what to do when the MD5 refuses to match, what could be causing this, what should I check?

I did the test (recorded a short WAV file, encoded it to FLAC and verified the checksum) and repeated the encoding/verification 10-15 times but get the same error every time.

Sorry to bother you with this, but I'm a bit lost here.

[roann]

Originally Posted by sammywho

Thanks for the summary Robert, very helpful, cleared some things for me. But what to do when the MD5 refuses to match, what could be causing this, what should I check?

I did the test (recorded a short WAV file, encoded it to FLAC and verified the checksum) and repeated the encoding/verification 10-15 times but get the same error every time.

Sorry to bother you with this, but I'm a bit lost here.

Please run two tests. Take a flac file whose fingerprint TLH won't verify and process it

a) using the Test encoded audio file(s) tab,
b) using the Audio file details tab.

What does TLH report?

[sammywho]

This are the reports for the whole process:

ENCODE WAV FILES
----------------

levy.wav:  successfully encoded to 'levy.flac'

No errors occured.


levy.flac:dc939a9f5eabeb2160247aeb754d0322

No errors occured.

Checksum file saved to disk.

VERIFY CHECKSUM FILES
---------------------

File 'C:\levy.ffp'

Line 001:  skipped (comment).
Line 002:  skipped (comment).
Line 003:  skipped (empty line).
Line 004:  file 'levy.flac' failed verification (checksum in metadata block
does match, but md5 checksum of audio data does not match).

There were errors.

TEST ENCODED AUDIO FILES
------------------------

levy.flac:  tested ok (file will decode properly)

No errors occured.

AUDIO FILE DETAILS
-----------------------

length     expanded size   cdr  WAVE problems filename
      6 [main] shntool 5324 C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fatal error -
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack
0x239970 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
      5 [main] shntool 5248 C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fatal error -
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack
0x239970 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
      6 [main] shntool 4760 C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fatal error -
C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fork: can't reserve memory for stack
0x239970 - 0x240000, Win32 error 487
     10 [main] shntool 452 child_info::sync: wait failed, pid 4760, Win32
error 0
    196 [main] shntool 452 fork: child -1 - died waiting for longjmp before
initialization, retry 6, exit code 0x1000000, errno 11
shntool: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

error while forking child process, see above

There were errors.

I tried it with both 1.5.21 and a later version of cygwin1.dll just for kicks but with the same results.

[roann]

Thanks for the details, sammywho. I hate to say this but I have to bring you bad news ...

As you can see from the error messages when requesting audio file details you're having a problem with Windows OS. All the functions that won't work properly use the command-line application shntool (shntool does the job, TLH mainly analyses/logs the output messages of shntool).

A couple of users reported the same fatal error - C:\WINDOWS\shntool.exe: *** fork: can't reserve memory error message. The problem is that Windows OS (WinXP SP2 to be precise) refuses to give shntool the memory needed. I think this "behaviour" is introduced by either one of the Windows security updates or the way the update was received (direct file download or use of Windows Update).

Until now there is no workaround/fix known to get Windows "back to normal"! Even an un-install of the latest release and re-install of the previous release of TLH will not help at all. This really sucks ... #&!§% ...

I know of two users who got so "frustated" that they did a complete new WinXP SP2 installation. And TLH/shntool works properly again ...

For me it's impossible to track that error down because on one of my machines I'm running WinXP SP2 with all updates and there aren't any problems with TLH. So I can only hope that somehow I'll get my hands on a machine where that error occurs ... but I'm afraid this won't happen. Maybe someone out there knows what to do???

Robert

[sammywho]

Thanks, that's too bad. I'm gonna fiddle with the XP updates, I'll post here if I figure it out.

skipping unknown sub-chunk 'PAD'.

- What does it mean?

My flac files play fine. Is this negligible?