File compression technique
File compression technique
Looking for the best file compression method to shrink large files (1-2GB each) while preserving quality. I’m checking if 7zip or WinRAR offers effective settings beyond just reducing size or quality. Any advice on optimizing the archive process?
It varies based on the file format you're working with. Each type compresses differently. Sometimes you can shrink a file to a quarter of its original size. Occasionally, it's rare and I've observed it. In other instances, you might only reduce it by a few megabytes. Other times, the size could even increase.
When dealing with video files (especially h264) or .zip archives, the results will be minimal since they're already compressed. 7zip works well for documents, images like jpegs and bitmaps, and audio. Linus previously did a quick look into compression techniques.
the videos are mp4 with h.264 encoding, totaling around 100 files worth 100gb. during transfer over the internet, you often see sizes drop to about 200mb from a 2-3gb file. there are numerous compression methods available, and it's hard to say exactly how they work.
Consider PNG image files in batches of 2 to 3 thousand. Look for efficient methods to manage and process that volume.
png supports lossless compression with built-in features. When maximum is enabled, further reduction is unlikely. The main option for smaller sizes then is lossy methods like jpeg. This sacrifices quality, so it’s only worth considering if necessary. Generally, plain text files compress effectively, while already compressed formats (h264, zip, png, jpeg) don’t gain much benefit unless you switch to lossless compression.
Oh, nice, hadn't considered optimizing with optipng yet. A few unoptimized ffmpeg screenshots suggest it can reduce file size by about 30%, which isn't bad. And it's straightforward to script from the command line. For comparison, I also compressed the same PNG files using JPEG at quality 90 with imagemagick. The resulting sizes dropped to roughly 10% to 20% of the original. Detail retention was solid, though colors appeared slightly muted. I'm not a JPEG specialist, and I haven't spent much time tweaking this, so the color problem might be fixable—though not entirely certain. Just wanted to note it. Regarding tools like 7zip: those are truly lossless, meaning you recover exactly what you sent when reversing the process, which isn't always guaranteed with PNG optimization as I understand. In my experience, space savings are minimal for already compressed files, and I even managed to slightly increase file size by packing some PNG files into xz.