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What the heck are .skt files?
A .skt file is Shorten seek data.
Shorten seek data can either be embedded inside a Shorten file, or "live" outside the Shorten file.
A .skt file is seek data that happens to "live" outside the Shorten file.
The reason for a separate seek data file is because the original seeder did not encode that particular show
with Shorten v3. Re encoding the old Shorten file with the seek data embedded into it would change the MD5 checksum, and cause
much confusion. Because of this, you should never append seek data to older Shorten files. You can create .skt files
for your older (non seeking) Shorten files with SHN v3 tools.
.skt files are only necessary if you want to listen to Shorten files in ShnAmp
or XMMS-SHN and be able to seek.
Seeders that encode new shows with the SHN v3 tools will have seek data automatically embedded into the SHN file by
default. The seek data is there so people can take advantage of seeking without needing additional (.skt) files.
Remember, SHN v3 (with or without the .skt files) will always be 100% backward compatible. This means you
will always be able to decode any Shorten file with any Shorten decoder. The only difference between the different versions
of Shorten is the ability to take advantage of new features (currently seeking).
Will creating .skt files change the MD5's of my Shorten files?
Creating .skt files will never affect the MD5 of your Shorten files. This is the whole
purpose of .skt files; to avoid the potential nightmare of having two sets of MD5's floating around.
Remember, creating .skt files is the ONLY way to seek-enable older SHN files.
What's this I'm hearing about rule #33?
Yes, there is indeed a new etree.org rule... Rule #33: Never append seek data to old (non-seeking)
SHN files!!!!
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