written by Holger Dors
Version 1.4.1
December 01, 1999
E-Mail: Razor.Blade@gmx.net
Homepage: http://www.dors.de/RazorBlade/
RazorBlade is a so-called "front-end" for use with Tord Jansson's BladeEnc. BladeEnc is a great MP3-Encoder: it's fast, it produces high-quality files, and it's freeware. Unfortunately, it is a command line utility, and that is where RazorBlade comes in: It provides an easy-to-use graphical user-interface which makes MP3-encoding even easier!
You can put the contents of this archive anywhere you want. I'd suggest you put BladeEnc and RazorBlade within the same folder, but this isn't necessary.
In the rare case that you would want to uninstall RazorBlade, simply delete all files named "RazorBlade.*" in the folder you've installed it. That's it. RazorBlade doesn't use any registry entries, nor does it need any runtime libraries or OCX-files.
RazorBlade should be quite straightforward. But in case your unsure, I'd suggest you read the following short notes on the usage of RazorBlade.
First I'd suggest you take a look at the Options. Here you can set the MP3-Options with which you want your files to be encoded. Also, you should specify where BladeEnc.exe resides. If you've put both programs in the same folder, you don't need to change this, as that's RazorBlade's default.
Second, you should collect the files you want to be encoded. You can do that by using the Choose Files menu entry or pressing the equally captioned button. An comfortably way of adding files is to use drag-and-drop: Simply drop some files onto the list. You can also drop whole folders onto it: RazorBlade will search it recursively and add all audio files it has found.
You can clear the whole list with the Clear List command, or you can delete selected files by pressing the Delete button.
You can change the order of the files by clicking on a header of the listview. The files are then sorted accordingly. When you click again, the sort order changes. Also, you can sort the files using drag anbd drop.
Once yourt all set, simply press the Encode button. A window will show up showing the status of your encoding session. You can minimze the whole application by pressing the minimize caption button. You can interrupt the process by pressing Cancel. You'll be asked if you want to stop encoding immediately, or if you want RazorBlade to first finish the currently processed file and stop then.
You also can send RazorBlade into the System-Tray next to your clock; simply press the strange butten left to the minimize button. You also have the option to shutdown Windows when the batch is through; simply check the box on the progress dialog.
Once the batch is through, you might want to take a look at the log-file of the last run. Just choose View/Last Log from the menu. (You can also open the file RazorBlade.log.)
The toolbar is configurable from the menu using View/Toolbar. You can choose whether you want only icons, only captions, or both. Additionaly, you can turn it off completely.
RazorBlade needs Win9x or NT4. And of course you need BladeEnc in order to use RazorBlade. You can get BladeEnc here.
RazorBlade is distributed "as-is", with no warranty of any kind.