Trader's Little Helper

[gmbseoxx]

Trader's Little Helper Alternative – Plenty of alternatives app to Trader's Little Helper that available to download out there.

[oshular]

Hello everyone. I'm having an odd issue with TLH 2.8.4. I have several TB of flac files with ffp and st5 that I created in past months/years. When I try to verify them now I get error in red 'format of file 'filename' is not supported.' I can create a new ffp file with those same flac files, but if I try to verify the new ffp file I get that same error. Also, if I try to create a new st5 file I get that same error. Everything was working fine until just recently. I did try uninstalling and reinstalling but still same thing. Very strange. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

[roann]

Originally Posted by oshular

Hello everyone. I'm having an odd issue with TLH 2.8.4. I have several TB of flac files with ffp and st5 that I created in past months/years. When I try to verify them now I get error in red 'format of file 'filename' is not supported.' I can create a new ffp file with those same flac files, but if I try to verify the new ffp file I get that same error. Also, if I try to create a new st5 file I get that same error. Everything was working fine until just recently. I did try uninstalling and reinstalling but still same thing. Very strange. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

I just checked verifying ffp and st5 files on an old Win 10 system - no problems at all...

Does "format of file ... is not supported" refer to the checksum file (TLH cannot open/read the checksum file) or to audio files listed within the checksum file (TLH can open/read the checksum file but fails to open/read audio files listed within)?

[oshular]

Originally Posted by roann

oes "format of file ... is not supported" refer to the checksum file (TLH cannot open/read the checksum file) or to audio files listed within the checksum file (TLH can open/read the checksum file but fails to open/read audio files listed within)?

Hi Roann,
Thanks for responding. I'm getting that same message for each flac file in the st5. I tested some more and actually this is only happening with the 24 bit flac files. The st5 for my 16 bit 44.1 kHz flac files are verifying okay and allowing me to create new st5 files. But for all my 24 bit flac files, regardless of sample rate, I get that message when trying to verify previously created ffp and st5 as well as when trying to create new st5. I can create new ffp but then can't verify it.

[roann]

For a lot of tasks TLH uses free third party command-line tools.

When creating/verifying ffp checksum files flac.exe is used. flac.exe is able to handle 24-bit files, so no problems here.

When creating/verifying st5 checksum files shntool.exe is used. shntool.exe in turn calls flac.exe for decoding the audio data. Though shntool.exe is able to handle 24-bit WAV files it is not able to handle lossless encoded 24-bit files. In other words: shntool.exe is not able to handle st5 checksums of 24-bit audio files if an external decoder is involved. That's why TLH gives you the "format of file ... is not supported" error message.

Note: FLAC fingerprint and st5 checksum of a FLAC file are always identical because both are simply the md5 checksum of the raw WAVE data of the audio file. So there's no need to create st5 checksums for FLAC files.

[gmbseoxx]

When I was attempting to update to a newer version of the program Traders Little Helper it was flagged by Malwarebytes as being Generic.

[roann]

Originally Posted by gmbseoxx

When I was attempting to update to a newer version of the program Traders Little Helper it was flagged by Malwarebytes as being Generic.

This was and is a pain in the ass - see this old post.

If you don't trust me you're free to use one of those...

Originally Posted by gmbseoxx

Trader's Little Helper Alternative – Plenty of alternatives app to Trader's Little Helper that available to download out there.

[Bobbin TB]

Originally Posted by roann

For a lot of tasks TLH uses free third party command-line tools.

When creating/verifying ffp checksum files flac.exe is used. flac.exe is able to handle 24-bit files, so no problems here.

When creating/verifying st5 checksum files shntool.exe is used. shntool.exe in turn calls flac.exe for decoding the audio data. Though shntool.exe is able to handle 24-bit WAV files it is not able to handle lossless encoded 24-bit files. In other words: shntool.exe is not able to handle st5 checksums of 24-bit audio files if an external decoder is involved. That's why TLH gives you the "format of file ... is not supported" error message.

Note: FLAC fingerprint and st5 checksum of a FLAC file are always identical because both are simply the md5 checksum of the raw WAVE data of the audio file. So there's no need to create st5 checksums for FLAC files.

I have this issue with ffp and st5 files. Not sure what to do about it, short of manually comparing checksums.

[roann]

Originally Posted by Bobbin TB

I have this issue with ffp and st5 files. Not sure what to do about it, short of manually comparing checksums.

Without any further information I only can tell what you've quoted.

It would help to do some testing on my side if you could upload a ffp file, a st5 file, and an audio file as .zip/.rar/.7z archive to a free file hoster of you choice. Just PM (or email) me the download link.

[Bobbin TB]

Originally Posted by roann

Without any further information I only can tell what you've quoted.

It would help to do some testing on my side if you could upload a ffp file, a st5 file, and an audio file as .zip/.rar/.7z archive to a free file hoster of you choice. Just PM (or email) me the download link.

Here's one:
https://archive.org/details/sp2007-06-24.mk4.flac24

That year in the collection has a lot of shows with this problem because the band played a lot of shows at the Orange Peel, doing a short sort of residency, and one person taped a lot of them in 24bit.

I tried updating flac.exe but it didn't help.

[roann]

Originally Posted by Bobbin TB

Here's one:
https://archive.org/details/sp2007-06-24.mk4.flac24

Thanks very much. Downloaded the files and tested a bit... The reason for the issue seems to be third party app flac.exe.

The last official release of a FLAC Windows binary is v1.3.2. There never was an official Windows binary of the latest v1.3.3 release, but there are unofficial binaries available (at RareWares, for example). The latest TLH release (v2.8.4 build 185) comes with unofficial FLAC v1.3.3 binaries, the previous TLH release (v2.8.3 build 182) comes with the official FLAC 1.3.2 binaries.

To make a long story short: with the v1.3.2 binaries there are no issues when verifying/creating checksum files. I don't know why the v1.3.3 ones don't work - my knowledge of the C programming language is too poor to really understand the FLAC and shntool source code. If someone knows what's going on or can help please PM me.

So, as a workaround just copy the v1.3.2 releases of flac.exe and metaflac.exe (download) to the subfolder CmdlineApps of the TLH installation folder.

Robert

[Bobbin TB]

Originally Posted by roann

Thanks very much. Downloaded the files and tested a bit... The reason for the issue seems to be third party app flac.exe.

The last official release of a FLAC Windows binary is v1.3.2. There never was an official Windows binary of the latest v1.3.3 release, but there are unofficial binaries available (at RareWares, for example). The latest TLH release (v2.8.4 build 185) comes with unofficial FLAC v1.3.3 binaries, the previous TLH release (v2.8.3 build 182) comes with the official FLAC 1.3.2 binaries.

To make a long story short: with the v1.3.2 binaries there are no issues when verifying/creating checksum files. I don't know why the v1.3.3 ones don't work - my knowledge of the C programming language is too poor to really understand the FLAC and shntool source code. If someone knows what's going on or can help please PM me.

So, as a workaround just copy the v1.3.2 releases of flac.exe and metaflac.exe (download) to the subfolder CmdlineApps of the TLH installation folder.

Robert

Awesome, thanks for the help. I just assumed it used 1.3.2 since that was the latest Windows one. Didn't think to check. Things seem to be working ok now. C is a little old school and beyond my capability. I didn't see an issue in github but I'll check again and submit one if there isn't. Thanks again.

[TTDaddy]

Howdy

I use TLH daily and love it. I'm trying to create checksums of a folder full of Beatle stuff, and I get a message that any file titled "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" "does not exist". Everything else is recognized, but every time THAT name comes up the program skips it. Can anyone enlighten me as to why? Thanks in advance!

[tunic]

Originally Posted by TTDaddy

Howdy

I use TLH daily and love it. I'm trying to create checksums of a folder full of Beatle stuff, and I get a message that any file titled "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" "does not exist". Everything else is recognized, but every time THAT name comes up the program skips it. Can anyone enlighten me as to why? Thanks in advance!

Is it just one file, or are there more files named as such?
Did you try renaming the file? I just tried to rename a flac file to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.flac and it didn't fail to create the md5 checksums, but perhaps your operating system has issues with some characters e.g. a comma in the filename. (I'm on Windows 11)
However I assume it's more likely that the file is corrupt. What happens when you test the file, e.g. run the option "Test Encoded Files" or "Show Audio file details"?

Can you copy/paste the Process Log?

[roann]

Originally Posted by tunic

Is it just one file, or are there more files named as such?
Did you try renaming the file? I just tried to rename a flac file to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.flac and it didn't fail to create the md5 checksums, but perhaps your operating system has issues with some characters e.g. a comma in the filename. (I'm on Windows 11)
However I assume it's more likely that the file is corrupt. What happens when you test the file, e.g. run the option "Test Encoded Files" or "Show Audio file details"?

Can you copy/paste the Process Log?

Second the questions...

Whenever TLH has to process a file it first checks (via a Windows function) whether or not the file exists. The file contents can be any crap the OS just checks its internal list of file names for the path given. So I don't think file corruption is the reason - and, because of the initial check for file existence, running other tasks on the file will fail too.

As tunic I guess this is a problem with the filename that may have some Unicode characters in it (TLH is not able to handle such characters). As suggested, copy a file, rename it and try again to create the checksum.