The long awaited file analysis app, TrueCheck is now available!! This app was created from multiple features requests from YOU, our loyal users and an older comparison app called ShotSum. This one of a kind app is a vital tool for anyone who works with large amounts of files in the media and entertainment industry. Read on for all the awesome features and learn how TrueCheck will change data integrity forever.
Compare
One of the most highly anticipated features of TrueCheck is the comparison option. Easily compare files, folders and volumes for sameness and differences based on user specified settings. Locate files with in a folder or volume easily.
Working with a team? Compare two volumes together to ensure they are a mirror image of one another. Settings for these comparisons include; checksum, file name and size, as well as date created and modified. This is a game changer for file management and will save users hours of manual work.
Generate
Straight out of the ShotPut Pro features requests! At its core, ShotPut Pro is a copy utility (albeit with a bunch of cool and useful features!) so making a report without copying anything would go against the very nature of its purpose.
Insert TrueCheck: Generate multiple reports of ANY files, folder or volume without making a copy. Need a PDF report with thumbnails and metadata for every file on your drive? We got you. MHL reports required for this project? No problem. CSV and TXT more your style? Ok! Need all four?? Heck yeah you can!
There’s also a fancy history tab where you can go back
and accessed older jobs. Not only can you generate reports, you can also import the results from ANY of the features!
Search
And then there’s the search feature…. Why not just search in Finder? You can.. but can Finder get down to the nitty gritty of search parameters to find you exactly what you want? Not the way TrueCheck can. Set camera manufacturers and creation date range, with specific file type AND the name and size.
View
Checksums are a crucial part of data integrity. With the view feature, drop a file, folder or volume into TrueCheck and allow it to create and display the checksums for you! Multiple checksum options including xxHash-64, MD5 or SHA are available.
Verify
TrueCheck supports two different types of checksum verification files: an industry standard Media Hash List (MHL) and a simple text list of files and checksums. Verify the integrity of each with thumbnails! TrueCheck will compare the referenced checksums against those calculated for the files within the associated volume. Side note: there’s light and dark mode too!
TrueCheck File Analysis app is available now for direct download at www.imagineproducts.com. Perpetual licenses are $149 and come with a 12 month update plan. 45 and 15 day rental licenses are available for $50 and $25 each.
6 Comments
TrueCheck seems like a perfect tool for doing a checksum audit. But after looking at your tutorial it’s not clear to me what steps I’d take to do it.
At the IRC we’ve been building a pretty large video archive on a NAS starting a year ago. We used Shotput Pro for the transfers and kept detailed reports as both text and CSV. How would I use these reports (and the checksum values therein) to conduct a verification (audit) of the related files?
Please keep in mind there are many reports since the archive was built up in a series of submissions over time and that process continues to this day. It should go without saying that we would need automation as there are massive numbers of files, making any manual item-by-item verification impossible.
I think the archival community is hungry for this functionality.
Thanks,
Paul Dougherty
Video Archivist
International Rescue Committee
What ShotPut Pro has had for many years is an industry standard Checksum Text file output. This isn’t a report, but a simple listing of file names and relative paths along with their corresponding checksum values. Similarly, MHL (Media Hash List) is becoming an industry standard and is also an output option in ShotPut Pro too.
Both MHL and Checksum text files are ‘sidecar’ type files meaning they’re intended to travel with the referenced material in its root folder. That’s because both contain relative path information so to use them the files must be in the specified location alongside them.
TrueCheck can verify (test contents of a folder or volume) against either MHL or Checksum Text files.
ShotPut Pro reports are a bit different. They may or may not contain checksum values depending upon user preferences, and list out file information in a more ‘human readable’ manner. The full file paths may or may not be repeated on each file (depends upon generation of SPP and options selected).
While we haven’t incorporated parsing out SPP reports into TrueCheck, but that’s a great feature suggestion but bears some thought. For instance, in your proposed usage ShotPut Pro reports contain absolute path information, not relative paths, so those would need to be extracted and regenerated into an MHL type file and then appropriately placed alongside the media files it references.
We’ve not added automation to the application yet such as Watch Folders or testing for bit rot, etc. but welcome suggestions in this regard. That would be a bit different use mode since you would not expect a final report or GUI update, but rather an ongoing status or perhaps remote alerts of some sorts.
Thanks Dan,
Thanks Dan! With an eye towards running verifications at later dates, I’m not clear from reviewing the manual how one generates the initial MHL for a given folder?
Then with the MHL doc in hand an archive might want to run an audit monthly, and schedule this to run automatically. While others might be content to run them manually, often based on some triggering event.
Thanks,
Paul Dougherty
Video Archivist
International Rescue Committee
MHLs are a ‘report’ choice at the top of the Report Preferences in ShotPut Pro to create during an offload. You may also generate MHLs using the new TrueCheck application at any time.
We agree that the ‘sidecar’ spec for these type files is a bit cumbersome and are awaiting a new ASC standard (that we’ve had input to) that addresses this among other short comings of the existing MHL standard.
Automated audits are a good idea, but currently outside the scope of our applications.
I’m starting to test TrueCheck to audit my company’s video archive, and for this basic service it works… flagging any file that has changed. I had been using a free program to do this but it wasn’t robust/fast enough to handle large volumes. However it does perform the following function besides monitoring file integrity… it also does “file attendance through monitoring and reporting on new, missing, moved, and renamed files.” I tried to run a TrueCheck test where after I had made a MHL file for a folder and successfully validated the folder, I next simply added a new file to a folder. And on the next validation TrueCheck generated an error with any explanation, nor pointing to the new file. Am I missing something?
The TrueCheck manual says the following about the location of the MHL… “MHL lists contain relative paths to files and their original checksum values. These are always saved just outside the referenced folder or file’s location.” However if you’re trying to create a tidy archive you can’t have all these sidecar (MHL) files cluttering the root level the target folder is on. I’d like to be free to place the MHL files where I choose and then direct the TrueCheck app to the target folder being validated if it needs help. The aforementioned free product does this.
Thanks,
Paul Dougherty
Video Archivist
International Rescue Committee
You’re right Paul about MHL sidecar files being unhandy. This is something that’s being addressed in the upcoming MHL-ASC standard. But for now, the MHL standard specifies where the files must be located.
When testing an MHL, you can export the report of results by right-clicking on the progress/status and choose Report. The Report does indicated “Erred items” so you can see what caused the error.