Shorten: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 10:47, 28 December 2021

Shorten is one of the oldest lossless audio formats. It was created by Tony Robinson in 1993.

Being the first open source lossless compressor, it became popular in its time, especially in the bootleg trading community. Shorten files are still occasionally encountered e.g. at archive.org.

Now considered a legacy codec, it lacks most features of modern codecs, like tagging, streamability / seekability (although there is a "hack" that adds seek support), and support for multichannel and high sampling rates. Due to its historical status, it has been included as a reference in lossless comparisons long after its final maintenance release in 2007.

Shorten files can be converted or played back with several tools including ffmpeg (after a bugfix in 2016, ticket 4712).

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-Shorten is one of the oldest [[Lossless]] audio formats. It was created by Tony Robinson in the mid-nineties.
+'''Shorten''' is one of the oldest [[lossless]] audio formats.  It was created by Tony Robinson in 1993.
-It lacks several features like seekability (although there is a "hack" that adds seek support), [[Streaming|streamability]], support for [[Multichannel]] and high [[Sampling rate|sampling rates]], tagging...
+Being the first open source lossless compressor, it became popular in its time, especially in the bootleg trading community.  Shorten files are still occasionally encountered e.g. at archive.org.
-The reason why it became very popular is that it was the first open source lossless compressor. It gained huge momentum years ago because of this, and to this day it's the most popular format for lossless audio encoding, being used mostly at live recordings (bootlegs) trading communities.
+Now considered a legacy codec, it lacks most features of modern codecs, like tagging, [[streaming|streamability]] / seekability (although there is a "hack" that adds seek support), and support for [[multichannel]] and high [[sampling rate]]s. Due to its historical status, it has been included as a reference in lossless comparisons long after its final maintenance release in 2007.
+Shorten files can be converted or played back with several tools including ffmpeg (after a bugfix in 2016, ticket 4712).
-==Addtional Reading==
-* [http://www.softsound.com/Shorten.html Official Shorten website]
+==See also==
-* [[Lossless_comparison|Lossless Codec Comparison]] by Rjamorim
+* [[Lossless comparison]] by Rjamorim
+* [http://www.etree.org/shncom.html Extra-official Shorten website] at etree {{webarchive|https://web.archive.org/web/20180904214941/http://www.etree.org/shncom.html|2018-09-04}}
+* [http://shnutils.freeshell.org/ Shorten and the shnutils utilities (with support for other lossless compressors)] at freeshell.org
+* [https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_input_shorten foo_input_shorten,] foobar2000 playback component
+{{navbox audio codecs}}
+[[Category:Codecs]]


Audio codecs: type/usage	for end-users to encode	on physical media etc.	legacy formats
Lossless	(Uncompr. LPCM) • ALAC • FLAC • Monkey's Audio • MPEG-4 ALS • OptimFROG • TAK • TTA • WavPack	MLP/Dolby TrueHD	La • LPAC/LTAC • RealAudio Lossless • RK Audio • Shorten • WMA Lossless • (others)
Lossy	(ADPCM formats) • AAC • AC-3 • MP2 • MP3 • Musepack • Opus • Vorbis	AC-3 • DTS • (Bluetooth codecs)	ATRAC • QDesign • Real Audio • RK Audio (lossy modes) • Speex • VQF • WMA
Hybrid lossless&lossy	OptimFROG DualStream • WavPack	DTS-HD MA • MPEG-4 SLS	ATRAC Advanced Lossless • mp3HD