Topic: mkwact conversion woes

[dancing with elihu]

I can't seem to win here lately. I was trying to convert some shn files to wav using mkwact. Most of the show converted, but 4 of the files came up with this:

     Error reported by shorten-premature EOF compressed stream

Anyone encounter this before? What does it mean? Is there a way to fix it?

[sygdwm]

wow, we're both up late or early. was it possibly an incomplete download?

[dancing with elihu]

I'm up late-I'm shooting for 24 hours...hehe    I don't think I downloaded this show. I've been organizing shows this evening/morning and found it on my hard drive. I think I may have copied it from some shns that were burnt as a data disc-I know I've that I've probably had it for a while if I can't remember where I got it from. The text file is no help because it's a Pink Floyd show, so there's no info on source or who seeded the show.

Should I convert the wav files back to shn and try to generate an md5-perhaps that may solve the problem? I'm curious as to what 'EOF' is that I saw in the error message. I've heard of EAC, but not EOF.

[sygdwm]

a google search yielded these results:

When you decompress a shn you may occasionally see an error. If so, did you check the shns against the md5s first (see above)? If the md5 check fails, you know there will be some kind of problem. If you have a corrupt shn, it's best to delete it and obtain an uncorrupted copy. Here are some typical error reports and what they mean:

"Premature EOF on compressed stream"- The shn file is shorter than it's supposed to be, often due to a file corruption, perhaps caused by an error during download. Alternatively your hard drive may be full. Depending on the version of Shorten, you may get a note to contact Softsound. Don't bother with that, since they can't fix the music file.
"Failed to write decompressed stream"- Your hard drive is too full.
"Sanity check fails trying to decode function: (number)"- Usually the result of a corrupt file.
"No magic number"- Indicates a corrupt file.
If the md5 check passes but you still get an error message indicating corruption, it's an unfortunate situation. The shn may have been corrupted at the time it was compressed from wav. This happens rarely but does occur. The typical remedy is to have the original "seeder" create a fresh shn for distribution.

[dancing with elihu]

Thanks so much for the help!! I know my hard drive is not full...it's still got about 4 gig of space available. So I guess my problem is the first one listed: "Premature EOF on compressed stream"- The shn file is shorter than it's supposed to be, often due to a file corruption, perhaps caused by an error during download.

Basically I guess this means I'm totally phucked and 4 songs short of a complete show.

[sygdwm]

such is shns. +t for your troubles. another vote for flac?

drew

[dancing with elihu]

Well flac is cool, but most of the time I find it easier to fix shns (at least ones that can be fixed) by generating a new md5. I've heard that corrupted flacs can be fixed, but it seems difficult to me since I'm not all that great with DOS.

[mgleason007]

such is shns. +t for your troubles. another vote for flac?

drew

You can't fix a flac file if it's not all there.  That argument for FLAC makes no sense.  I probably have 1000 shows in SHN and have never had a problem like this with them.



And EOF is End Of File.

[MattD]

You also can't fix SHNs by generating a new MD5 ... that'd just be an MD5 of the corrupted data. The original MD5 is the only way to check and see if what you got is an exact copy of the original source. If they don't pass the MD5, you need to redownload.

[nic]

Ive had this problem before with MKWact and it ended up being a bug in MKW, not bad shn files...hence, I no longer use MKWact

download shorten and see if you get the same errors
http://www.softsound.com/Shorten.html
*note: shorten does not have md5 creation/verification bundeled
http://www.md5summer.org/

[sygdwm]

my point was i have seen that error before in mkw. i have yet to have an error w/ flac. ymmv.

[mgleason007]

I use this to verify shn's.

[F.O.Bean]

once you go FLAC, you never go back

[dancing with elihu]

once you go FLAC, you never go back

 :rotflmao: