Added Python Port of Sample Shrinker with Parallel Processing (sample-slicer-python subdirectory)

[seajaysec]

I really liked the original sample-shrinker.sh and wanted to improve its performance by adding parallel processing. Since managing parallelization in Bash is tricky, I decided to rewrite the script in Python.

What’s included:

• Python Port: I’ve ported the entire Bash script into Python, keeping all the original functionality like bit-depth reduction, auto-mono conversion, and channel adjustments.
• Parallel Processing (-j option): Added support for running multiple jobs in parallel, which significantly speeds up the conversion process, especially for directories with lots of files.
• Performance Improvements: The Python version performs much faster than the original Bash script, especially when using the -j flag with multiple jobs. In testing, it handles large directories more efficiently.
• Consistent Behavior: I’ve run both the Bash and Python versions on the same directories, and they produce identical results, except where certain malformed wav files produced errors. There is now automatic correction logic in place that attempts to fix those, then fails over to leaving them as-is if they cannot be fixed easily.
• Logging & Error Handling: The Python script includes more detailed logging and improved error handling, including automatic handling of certain audio format issues with malformed wav files that could cause failures in the Bash version.