MD5 Check Sums

Hi!

I just joined The Trader's Den and want to start seeding some shows. So I've been going over the policy. I came to the section on MD5 Checksums and have a question.

When requested in a trade, I will rip a show with eac and make a shn set for archival purposes. I like the way mkw is integrated into the context menu and I can just use the right mouse button and then move to another folder. No time wasted navigating explorer and dropping files into flac or trader's helper. Or using those frontend's folder navigation. If I forget a folder after the process starts, I can still add with mkw.

So I read about the md5's that mkw creates. So to adhere to the Den's policy, I want to make new check sums for the shn sets when I am putting a show together for seeding.

I use shntool for checking and fixing shows. I've created batch files for len, fix sbe's, and strip headers. So I followed a link from the policy page to raindawg's site for the info to create a batch file to make shntool md5's. I got the page 404 not found message.

So I went to Trader's Little Helper page and see it uses shntool md5. So I have a couple questions.

1. Is it true Trader's little Helper uses the shntool md5?
2. If so then why are the md5's I made with mkw and trader's little helper identical? Is it because the audio files have no header info?
3. I never add tags to music files. I also delete tags on files I get because many times they are wrong and then use shntool strip. So if I've never added tags to files I've ripped, then would the md5's from mkw be identical to shntool md5's?

Thanks!!

[Five]

TLH can do md5, ffp and st5. there is a little dropdown box on the right when you generate the checksum that can change the type.

There's a tutorial in my signature which shows where all the buttons etc are and will hopefully explain a few things more clearly. I think that all the information you are looking for can be found there, if there is any confusion whatsoever just post back here, don't be shy.

also worth mentioning is that mkwAct is not longer supported by the autor and is not recommended (at least, not to new users!). Also, not many new sets are being encoded to the SHN format due to its inefficient compression and lack of true "self-testability". Its not an unuseable format, just inefficient... there was one large Beatles set that was around 14GB in SHN that was 7.5GB in FLAC (!!!)

Thanks Five! Yeah I know shn is dinosaur stuff. But I've been using mkw for years and when I've just ripped with eac 20 discs for a trade and now want to archive in lossless, I find shn much more time efficient. I just have to go from folder to folder via windows explorer, highlight the tracks, and then right click -> choose encode to shn. Call me lazy hehe.

I checked both links in your sig. I see the eac link has a page on how to name tracks. I wrote a little tutorial on how to name tracks in eac. I don't deal with getting cd info tho since dealing in boots many things are mistitled, labeled and so on. My tut just deals with configuring eac once so all one needs to do is enter band name and date. Here's the link

Name Tracks With EAC

feel free to post anywhere.

cheers!