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Shn's to .wav

Greencardman

Greencardman

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 24, 2003
490
2
Madison, WI
Ok, yeah, this is a PC question, but only because I don't have the Powermac G4 hooked up to the internet yet, I promise.

Anyways, I downloaded a few live shows in shn format, and now I'm trying to convert them to .wav using mkwACT. (I tried foobar 2000 but couldn't figure it out). Anyways, it converts them just fine, but they still have the same old file names from the shn files (which are long and ugly and don't tell you much). So when I import them into iTunes, the song titles and artists names, etc. don't show up, only one big long title. Now I know I'm missing something, cause theres a bunch of files that came with the music, I just don't know how to get my music labeled correctly with the right info. Any help?
 
Greencardman said:
Ok, yeah, this is a PC question, but only because I don't have the Powermac G4 hooked up to the internet yet, I promise.

Anyways, I downloaded a few live shows in shn format, and now I'm trying to convert them to .wav using mkwACT. (I tried foobar 2000 but couldn't figure it out). Anyways, it converts them just fine, but they still have the same old file names from the shn files (which are long and ugly and don't tell you much). So when I import them into iTunes, the song titles and artists names, etc. don't show up, only one big long title. Now I know I'm missing something, cause theres a bunch of files that came with the music, I just don't know how to get my music labeled correctly with the right info. Any help?
Click to expand...

those wave files do not have any artist information .. you can right click, get info, and look at the filename and then alter the ID3 tag accordingly. you will have to do it by hand
 
Ugh, that sounds scary. Any way at all to get track names to show up in iTunes from the original shn files? I'm just looking to have an organized library here. There must be some solution, right? I mean, this seems like a big problem, how do people who trade a lot of tracks know which song is which? Do they add them all by hand? Yikes! :)
 
Greencardman said:
Ugh, that sounds scary. Any way at all to get track names to show up in iTunes from the original shn files? I'm just looking to have an organized library here. There must be some solution, right? I mean, this seems like a big problem, how do people who trade a lot of tracks know which song is which? Do they add them all by hand? Yikes! :)
Click to expand...

if they are in a logical format such as

01-artist-trackname.ext

then you can use programs that extract the information from the filename and adds the id3 tag to an existing mp3.. but using itunes this way is messy... note you cannot add id3 tags to wav files so you'd have to convert them to mp3's with another program that isn't itunes (if you do use itunes you have to remove them from the library and then add them after you alter the id3 tags i think). You will likely HAVE to add the date, location, and venue information to the tag yourself since i don't recall many filenames containing that kind of information. do a search for mp3 tag tagging on versiontracker or your favorite mac application website.
 
will these mp3 taggers name apple AAC files? I can just convert them from wav to AAC right in iTunes. (I imported the wav's)
 
My Bob Dylan bootleg collection is out of hand (up around 400 shows now), most trades are done with SHN or FLAC files. The problem here is that, so far as I know, these types of files do not contain tags. HOPEFULLY, whomever prepared your download also included a txt file with names for all the tracks. I use xAct (good mac software...does SHN and FLAC) to create AIFF, import that to iTunes, convert to Apple Lossless (I'm a big fan of that), and then edit each tag by hand. First I edit the artist, album name, artwork, and genre for all at once...then I go through and do all the track numbers and then start over at the beginning and do all the track names. Takes a couple minutes--but it's done right...

I'm also very anal...
 
Afaik, SHN doesn't support tagging, so no wonder they don't show up. Depending on how and where you download the Live shows, there may be a text file with artist and title info included.

Slightlyt OT: FLAC support tagging, have built-in verification and so does BitTorrent, which is usually used to download the shows. But strangely enough, even though they have changed to FLAC, they don't tag them, and they include checksums for all the files, even though it's (twice) redundant.

I don't get it. Just old habits that's hard to break?
 
There are text files (or XML) with the songs. They were downloaded from the internet archive. I was just wondering how to somehow get some program to apply the text file to the songs without me having to do it by typing it all by hand.
 
I didn't even realize FLAC supported tagging. I can't seem to find any, but are there any plugins that allow FLAC files to play in iTunes--this would make things ridiculously easy!
 
also note that most traders frown upon trading lossy encoded material. in other words, don't give that AAC or MP3 encoded file to friends who will in return give to friends and so forth. If you're going to give anyone a copy, make it the direct SHN files or those converted to wav and then burned. You lose sound quality when you encode to AAC (except lossless) and MP3. most are pretty anal about the quality which i can understand. I have a 120cd folder full of bootleg shows i've snagged.
 
I have noticed that people are really anal. And I plan on respecting their wishes, cause they're the ones doing all the work. Some don't want their shorten files made into mp3's, and I won't, but others don't say anything about the subject for your personal use, and lets face it, wav files are big, and I really can't keep them all, so I kinda need to switch to AAC. I don't trade the AAC ones though, cause that seems to be a big no no, and even though I can't tell much difference, others can, and I know the trading community puts a lot of hard work into taping, so I don't plan on messing anything up of theirs. I'm really just trying to get out of renaming each and every file, and since I figured they put XML files in the folder you download for a reason, there must be some sort of way get get it so that iTunes or some other program can apply that information to the song file in the way iTunes uses the gracenote database to get information about the wav files on a CD.

On another note, I can't get FLAC to work in iTunes, but Foobar 2000 does convert them to wav files just fine (I figured out how to do it, but they don't appear with names either)
 
Greencardman said:
I don't trade the AAC ones though, cause that seems to be a big no no, and even though I can't tell much difference, others can, and I know the trading community puts a lot of hard work into taping, so I don't plan on messing anything up of theirs.
Click to expand...
As long as you don't trade those AAC files then you're in good shape!

One of the issues with mp3 and AAC is that, I believe, encoding them inserts a tiny blank space at the beginning and end...so when you convert back to WAV and burn to and Audio CD, there is a tiny glitch between tracks.

I have several shows in AAC for my iTunes listening pleasure--these are shows for which I possess CDs. Now that BitTorrent has emerged as a great way to get shows (so sad for easytree.org), I do a lot of downloading, and I keep those on my hard drive in Apple Lossless--rather than burning CD after CD.

What artists do you trade? I'm a Dylan, Van Morrison guy mostly.
 
I just got into it actually, thus my ignorance. I actually haven't traded anything, although I'm not sure what the definition of trading is. I was mainly estatic that i could listen to live concerts, thats just the coolest thing. I have been teling my friends about the site, but I'm not sure if thats counts as trading, since trading seems to be spreading music to strangers, and I just found the site, so I'm only really telling my friends, plus I don't plan on getting into taping or anything like that.

Anyways, to answer your question, I've pretty into G-Love and Special Sauce, and Jack Johnson, Guster, Howie Day and Donovan Frankenreiter. I haven't seen any Dylan or Van Morrison shows on the Internet Archive yet, but i could be missing them, I haven't really looked, but I do really like Van Morrison, I'll have to check that out.
 
Trading is just what it sounds like--Person A and B correspond and decide what shows they want from the other person. Person A burns the discs that Person B wants and mails them; Person B does the same.

There's a whole weird culture of tapers and traders...find yourself a community you like that is devoted to your artist(s)...and enjoy!

ALSO, don't forget to support the artist by attending concerts and purchasing official releases!
 
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