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Have you ever recieved a show in shn format and wanted to quickly find out what the length and size of the wav's are?

shntool is a command line utility which reports information about the compressed wav inside a shn file.

1. get shntool
• go here : http://shnutils.freeshell.org/ to get shntool
• once your at the shnutilities page, click the shntool link.
• download the zip archive (or archive file type of your preference) and unzip to a folder such as c:\utils\
2. copy the program & library files to a directory that is in your path
• go to the c:\utils\ folder and move the files below to a directory that is in your path

shntool.exe
shorten.exe
cygwin1.dll

• the files above need to go in a directory that is in your path so that they can be found no matter what directory you are running the command from. common locations would be:

c:\windows\ [on win95/98]
c:\winnt\ [on winNT/2K]

3. go back to c:\util\ and create a new text file, name it shnlength.bat
• enter the following for your batch file

cls
shntool -len -mb *.shn
:: cmg 4/18/2001
:: the syntax above uses the new parameter style,
:: previous ver was "shntool len -u mb *.shn".
:: alternately, you may use other params,
:: such as "shntool -len -mb -debug *.shn" for more info.
:: see "shntool -len -h" for specific help on the '-len' param.s
pause
exit

• NOTE: you could modify the batch file to be the following if you wanted to save the output of the console window to a textfile.

The following would put place the info in a file
named 'shnlength.txt' in the same directory as
the shn files that you are checking :
   shntool -len -mb *.shn > shnlength.txt
You could also specify a directory before the output
file to always put the file in the same place:
   shntool -len -mb *.shn > c:\shnlength.txt

4. create a new association for .shn files to your batch file
• Win95/98/NT

Open an Explorer window
Select View from the menu
Select Options
Under 'file types' select (shn) from the list
(MKW users may notice that the association is
named "Compressed Audio "Shorten)"
Click the Edit button
Click New..,
call it 'shnlength' or whatever you like
Browse to the batch file you made back at c:\util\shnlength

• Win2000

Open an Explorer window 
Select Tools from the menu
Click on the 'file types' tab
Select (shn) from the list
Click the Advanced button
Click New..,
call it 'shnlength' or whatever you like
Browse to the batch file you made back at c:\util\shnlength

• Jeremy Clarks shn page http://www.cstp.umkc.edu/~jclark/shn/ has great info on creating associations & shn files [DSH note- Jeremy's writeup now hosted at  http://pcp.gridpoint.com/shn.phtml ]
5. test it out
• go to a folder where you have shn's
• select a shn file, right-click and select 'shnlength' from the popup menu
• a console will open displaying the information about all the shn's in that directory
6. problem's?
• try going to a dos prompt and type 'shntool -h' if you get an unrecognized command error, check the location of the files back in step 1
• if the above works, check the file associations
• see the supporting txt files that come with shntool or reference the shnutils website

created: 03-17-2001
updated: 04-18-2001 

Sites referenced in this page
http://shnutils.freeshell.org
http://www.cstp.umkc.edu/~jclark/shn/ [DSH- updated to http://pcp.gridpoint.com/shn.phtml ]

Other useful sites
http://research.umbc.edu/~hamilton/shnfaq.html [DSH- url updated]
http://etree.org/howto.html
http://home.att.net/~mkw/