Is there a nice way to split an int into two shorts (.NET)?

This can certainly be done with no loss of information. In both cases you end up with 32 bits of information. Whether they’re used for sign bits or not is irrelevant:

int original = ...;

short firstHalf = (short) (original >> 16);
short secondHalf = (short) (original & 0xffff);

int reconstituted = (firstHalf << 16) | (secondHalf & 0xffff);

Here, reconstituted will always equal original, hence no information is lost.

Now the meaning of the signs of the two shorts is a different matter – firstHalf will be negative iff original is negative, but secondHalf will be negative if bit 15 (counting 0-31) of original is set, which isn’t particularly meaningful in the original form.