SHORTEN(1) local SHORTEN(1)NAMEshorten - fast compression for waveform files
SYNOPSISshorten [-hlu] [-a #bytes] [-b #samples] [-c #channels] [-d #bytes] [-m
#blocks] [-n #dB] [-p #order] [-q #bits] [-r #bits] [-t filetype] [-v
#version] [waveform-file [shortened-file]]
shorten-x [-hl] [ -a #bytes] [-d #bytes] [shortened-file [waveform-
file]]
shorten [ -e | -i | -k | -s | -S<name> ] shortened-file
shorten [ -s | -S<name> ] < shortened-data
DESCRIPTIONshorten reduces the size of waveform files (such as audio) using Huff‐
man coding of prediction residuals and optional additional quantisa‐
tion. In lossless mode the amount of compression obtained depends on
the nature of the waveform. Those composing of low frequencies and low
amplitudes give the best compression, which may be 2:1 or better.
Lossy compression operates by specifying a minimum acceptable segmental
signal to noise ratio or a maximum bit rate. Lossy compression oper‐
ates by zeroing the lower order bits of the waveform, so retaining
waveform shape.
If both file names are specified then these are used as the input and
output files. The first file name can be replaced by "-" to read from
standard input and likewise the second filename can be replaced by "-"
to write to standard output. Under UNIX, if only one file name is
specified, then that name is used for input and the output file name is
generated by adding the suffix ".shn" on compression and removing the
".shn" suffix on decompression. In these cases the input file is
removed on completion. The use of automatic file name generation is
not currently supported under DOS. If no file names are specified,
shorten reads from standard input and writes to standard output. When‐
ever possible, the output file inherits the permissions, owner, group,
access and modification times of the input file.
From release 2.3 the RIFF WAVE (Microsoft .wav) file type is the
default. These files contain enough information to set most of the
switches presented below, so effective operation is obtained just by
setting the desired level of compression (-n or -r switch).
OPTIONS-a align bytes
Specify the number of bytes to be copied verbatim before com‐
pression begins. This option can be used to preserve fixed
length ASCII headers on waveform files, and may be necessary if
the header length is an odd number of bytes.
-b block size
Specify the number of samples to be grouped into a block for
processing. Within a block the signal elements are expected to
have the same spectral characteristics. The default option
works well for a large range of audio files.
-c channels
Specify the number of independent interwoven channels. For two
signals, a(t) and b(t) the original data format is assumed to be
a(0),b(0),a(1),b(1)...
-d discard bytes
Specify the number of bytes to be discarded before compression
or decompression. This may be used to delete header information
from a file. Refer to the -a option for storing the header
information in the compressed file.
-e Erase seek information from an existing file.
-h Give a short message specifying usage options.
-i Inquire as to whether the given file is an external seek table
file, a file with seek tables appended to it, or neither. If
seek tables are present, the seek table revision number is
shown.
-k Append seek information to an existing file.
-l Prints the software license specifying the conditions for the
distribution and usage of this software.
-m blocks
Specify the number of past blocks to be used to estimate the
mean and power of the signal. The value of zero disables this
prediction and the mean is assumed to lie in the middle of the
range of the relevant data type (i.e. at zero for signed quanti‐
ties). The default value is non-zero for format versions 2.0
and above.
-n noise level
Specify the minimum acceptable segmental signal to noise ratio
in dB. The signal power is taken as the variance of the samples
in the current block. The noise power is the quantisation noise
incurred by coding the current block assuming that samples are
uniformally distributed over the quantisation interval. The bit
rate is dynamically changed to maintain the desired signal to
noise ratio. The default value represents lossless coding.
-p prediction order
Specify the maximum order of the linear predictive filter. The
default value of zero disables the use of linear prediction and
a polynomial interpolation method is used instead. The use of
the linear predictive filter generally results in a small
improvement in compression ratio at the expense of execution
time. This is the only option to use a significant amount of
floating point processing during compression. Decompression
still uses a minimal number of floating point operations.
Decompression time is normally about twice that of the default
polynomial interpolation. For version 0 and 1, compression time
is linear in the specified maximum order as all lower values are
searched for the greatest expected compression (the number of
bits required to transmit the prediction residual is monotoni‐
cally decreasing with prediction order, but transmitting each
filter coefficient requires about 7 bits). For version 2 and
above, the search is started at zero order and terminated when
the last two prediction orders give a larger expected bit rate
than the minimum found to date. This is a reasonable strategy
for many real world signals - you may revert back to the exhaus‐
tive algorithm by setting -v1 to check that this works for your
signal type.
-q quantisation level
Specify the number of low order bits in each sample which can be
discarded (set to zero). This is useful if these bits carry no
information, for example when the signal is corrupted by noise.
-r bit rate
Specify the expected maximum number of bits per sample. The
upper bound on the bit rate is achieved by setting the low order
bits of the sample to zero, hence maximising the segmental sig‐
nal to noise ratio.
-s Write seek table information to a separate file (uses shortened
file name with '.skt' extension). If the shortened data is read
from standard input, then the seek table information will be
saved in 'stdin.skt'.
-S<name>
Write seek table information to a separate file given by
"<name>".
-t file type
Gives the type of the sound sample file as one of aiff, wav, s8,
u8, s16, u16, s16x, u16x, s16hl, u16hl, s16lh, u16lh, ulaw, or
alaw.
The simple types are listed first and have an initial s or u for
signed or unsigned data, followed by 8 or 16 as the number of
bits per sample. No further extension means the data is in the
natural byte order, a trailing x specifies byte swapped data, hl
explicitly states the byte order as high byte followed by low
byte and lh the converse. Hence s16 means signed 16 bit inte‐
gers in the natural byte order (like C would fwrite() shorts).
ulaw is the natural file type of ulaw encoded files (such as the
default sun .au files) and alaw is a similar byte-packed scheme.
Specific optimisations are applied to ulaw and alaw files. If
lossless compression is specified with ulaw files then a check
is made that the whole dynamic range is used (useful for files
recorded on a SparcStation with the volume set too high). Loss‐
less coding of both file types uses an internal format with a
monotonic mapping to linear. If lossy compression is specified
then the data is internally converted to linear. The lossy
option "-r4" has been observed to give little degradation and
provides 2:1 compression.
With the types listed above you should explicitly set the number
of channels (if not mono) with -c and if the file contains a
header the size should be specified with -a. This is most
important for lossy compression which will lead to data corrup‐
tion if a file header is inadvertently lossy coded.
Finally, as of version 2.3, the file type may be specified as
wav (the default). In this case the file to be compressed is
interogated for the specific data type (chosen from the above)
and the number of channels to be used. The header length align‐
ment (-a flag) is also automatic so lossless compression
requires no switches to be set and lossy compression requires
only that the compression level be set with -n or -r.
-u The ulaw standard (ITU G711) has two codes which both map onto
the zero value on a linear scale. The "-u" flag maps the nega‐
tive zero onto the positive zero and so yields marginally better
compression for format version 2 (the gain is significant for
older format versions).
-v version
Specify the binary format version number of compressed files.
Legal values are currently 1, 2 and 3, with higher numbers gen‐
erally giving better compression. 2 and 3 are identical, with
the exception that 2 does not generate seek tables, while 3
does. Detection of format version on decode is automatic.
-x extract
Reconstruct the original file. All other command line options
except -a and -d are ignored.
METHODOLOGYshorten works by blocking the signal, making a model of each block in
order to remove temporal redundancy, then Huffman coding the quantised
prediction residual.
Blocking
The signal is read in a block of about 128 or 256 samples, and con‐
verted to integers with expected mean of zero. Sample-wise-interleaved
data is converted to separate channels, which are assumed independent.
Decorrelation
Four functions are computed, corresponding to the signal, difference
signal, second and third order differences. The one with the lowest
variance is coded. The variance is measured by summing absolute values
for speed and to avoid overflow.
Compression
It is assumed the signal has the Laplacian probability density function
of exp(-abs(x)). There is a computationally efficient way of mapping
this density to Huffman codes, The code is in four parts: a run of
zeros; a bounding one; a fixed number of bits mantissa; and the sign
bit. The number of leading zeros gives the offset from zero. Some
examples for a 2 bit mantissa:
Value zeros stopbit mantissa signbit total code
0 1 00 0 1000
1 1 01 0 1010
2 1 10 0 1010
4 0 1 00 0 01000
7 0 1 11 0 01110
8 00 1 00 0 001000
-1 1 00 1 1001
-2 1 01 1 1011
-7 0 1 10 1 01101
Note that negative numbers are offset by one as there is no need to
have two zero codes. The technical report CUED/F-INFENG/TR.156
included with the shorten distribution as files tr154.tex and tr154.ps
contains bugs in this format description and is superceeded by this man
page.
EMBEDDED OPERATION
Shorten may be used embedded within other programs. shorten is a func‐
tion call implemented in the file shorten.c. The file main.c provides
a wrapper for stand alone operation. A simple example of ebedded oper‐
ation can be found in the file embedded.c. Full windows DLL operation
is provided in the windll subdirectory.
SEE ALSOcompress(1),pack(1).
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is normally 0. A warning is issued if the file is not
properly aligned, i.e. a whole number of records could not be read at
the end of the file.
BUGS
An easy way to test shorten for your system is to use "make check", if
this fails, for whatever reason, please report it to <shnu‐
tils@freeshell.org>.
No check is made for increasing file size, but valid waveform files
generally achieve some compression. Even compressing a file of random
bytes (which represents the worst case waveform file) only results in a
small increase in the file length (about 6% for 8 bit data and 3% for
16 bit data). There is one condition that is know to be problematic,
that is the lossy compression of unsigned data without mean estimation
- large file sizes may result if the mean is far from the middle range
value. For these files the value of the -m switch should be non-zero,
as it is by default in format version 2.
There is no provision for different channels containing different data
types. Normally, this is not a restriction, but it does mean that if
lossy coding is selected for the ulaw type, then all channels use lossy
coding.
The technical report CUED/F-INFENG/TR.156 (included in the shorten dis‐
tribution) report contains errors in the bitfield format description
and is superceeded by this document.
See the file "ChangeLog" for a history of bug fixes and feature addi‐
tions.
Please mail Jason Jordan at the address below if you find a bug in
shorten involving seek tables.
Please mail Brian Willoughby at the address below if you find a bug in
the AIFF implementation.
Please mail Tony Robinson immediately at the address below if you find
a bug in shorten that is NOT related to seek tables or AIFF support.
Make sure you can reproduce your bug using version 2.3a, the last ver‐
sion known to be released by him.
AVAILABILITY
The latest 2.x and 3.x versions can be obtained from
<http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shorten/> or <http://shnu‐
tils.freeshell.org/shorten/>.
AUTHORS
Copyright (C) 1992-1999 by Tony Robinson and SoftSound Ltd (ajr@soft‐
sound.com)
Unix maintenance of 3.x versions by Jason Jordan <shnu‐
tils@freeshell.org>.
AIFF support and maintenance by Brian Willoughby
<shorten@sounds.wa.com> of Sound Consulting <http://sounds.wa.com/>.
Shorten is available for non-commercial use without fee. See the
LICENSE file for the formal copying and usage restrictions. For sup‐
ported versions please see http://www.softsound.com/Shorten.html and
for commercial use please contact shorten@softsound.com
shorten 3.6.1 March 2007 SHORTEN(1)
