When compressing shorten files to musepack, the encoder gives an error "Install at least version 3.4 of Shorten..." After finding version 3.4, I got an error saying something about an invalid wav header. There was no readme, so I have no idea if there is a syntax error. For the record, shorten.exe 2.3 works like a charm...

Does anybody else do this? Has anybody got the error? Is there a quality difference between the two shorten versions?

Did mppenc quit after showing the error? I use shorten that comes with mppenc and everything works fine. Remember to keep shorten.exe in path.

Edit: Forgot to say, the warning message is displayed no matter what version of shorten you have.

"For the record, shorten.exe 2.3 works like a charm... " Yes it does work, but the latest version 3.4 does not-it says the file is not a wav (I know it is a.shn, but why is the shorten saying that?)

version 3.4 shows a change (which is over my head) made by Frank, so I figured I should be using it (even though 2.3 works fine). I will continue to do so until I can figure the newer version out...

Hi macdaddy,

You can get a good shorten 3.4 here: http://shnutils.etree.org/shorten/

It uses cygwin, so it is a bit bigger to download, but it works fine.

Thanks speek, but that is the one I am using...

This sounds like the issue I have with Monkey's Audio despite the fact that I have both mac.exe and mppenc in the same directory which is listed in the path. My question would be whether you're running things from the command line and a separate directory, or if you're running things from the directory mppenc is in. Test out the following, replacing relevant file locations for your own machine.

This works for me:
c:program filesaudiomusepack>mppenc --xtreme --verbose d:rippedtest.mac

This doesn't:
d:ripped>mppenc --xtreme --verbose test.mac

I get an error telling me the file isn't a wav file.

The musepack directory contains all the files in "mppenc 1.01i.zip" and "c:program filesaudiomusepack" is in my path with the quotes. So, in the mean time I'm running everything from the musepack directory.

That does the trick, gd. I knew I had everything installed properly. It sucks that I cant use the batch encoder, though I am sure this will be resolved soon...

the error message ("use version 3.4") does still show up-even when using version 3.4...

(ot: even though it still works, why does replaygain read "too many parameters?" Has this always been there, or is something happening incorrectly?)

Anyway-thanks to all the developers who write the stuff, and the community members for helpingme out...

I wish you had told this earlier... Don't use long names in path, they can be troublesome to some programs. Change "program files" to "progra~1" and everything should work like a charm.
Update: You'll also need to remove the quotation marks.

I did not know what the syntax is because I use Speek's batch encoder. I ran from the command-line myself, following gd's post, only for testing-I would prefer to not have to do this all the time. I will mess around with the syntax in the batch files when I get home from work today...

Thanks again.

macdaddy,

I have no problems using MPC Batch Encoder for this job. I use the shorten.exe included in the MPC 1.01i download file (dated 19-04-2002) to decode. The MPC directory also has a long filename (with spaces).

BTW. For wav -> shn I use the official 3.4 version (with cygwin) because Klemm's version messes up with appending seektables.

When exactly did you get the error message with replaygain?

I have no problems, either. The confusion is in the fact that one cannot see the version number when hitting "?" (-h) switch, so I went and found 3.4 (as instructed by the error message). Mind you, the encoding worked. But I was afraid I was using an old version-and thus asking for trouble. I found the shorten (with cyg.dll) and used it-thinking this was the ONLY 3.4. This is the one that does not work unless following gdougherty's tip...


I should clarify-I am running everything across my home network. The encoder, decoder, winamp all work this way; replaygain never has. It works fine, however, when it is run from its target directory's host computer....

Now, when using replaygain on my file server's drive R, it works, but reads "too many parameters" first. This is akin to the shorten "3.4 warning" in 2 ways. First, the only replaygain I have ever used on this computer, and the only version I have seen this message with, is the one that came with mppencoder version i (which was also when I first saw the "shn3.4" message). Second, since replaygain works fine, despite the error message, I was wondering if like the 3.4 error message, it cold be an apparent hard-coded false alarm (assuming the shorten binary included with the current mppenc bundle is 3.4)...

As always, thanks for the help.