Archive and Compression, what file type is the best?

[BChico]

What program will compress a file to the smallest size, zip, rar, ace...?

 

[Modus]

Well they're all very close, but last time I checked, RAR was slightly better than ZIP, though slower. And supposedly the new SIT format, ported from Macintosh Stuff-It, is 20% smaller than ZIP on average, though I find that hard to believe.

Never tried ACE.

Modus

 

[Moonbender]

Well according to a *certain* scene, ACE and RAR are the best, while ZIP is the fastest and widest supported - for general use that is, for things like graphics and sounds (ever heard of MP3? 😉) there are better things.
I've never seen any PC file as SIT, it's really only used on mac, and has been for at least 6 years (so it's not new). On a sidenote, of course Mac had drag-and-drop file compression and extraction ages before PC did...

 

[xtreme2k]

I would stick with zip myself since by going with RAR and ACE(??) you arent gona save much more space but u loose a lot of 'compatibility' with other people

StuffIT is BS not even 5% better than Zip

 

[Modus]

xTreme2k,

I read your link and it confirms my suspicions about the current (and likely final) state of lossless binary file compression. When it comes down to it, the process is limitted solely by mathematics and logic, which are absolute. That means that any compression gains from here on in will be slight and incremental, and more time will be spent making compression software faster and easier to use.

So WinZip or some freeware clone is probably the best bet.

On the other hand, lossy compression of audio, video, and still images, is still moving ahead at a fast pace and there seems to be no limit to how far innovative minds can push it. Just look at MPEG4 -- at given quality, its file size is significantly lower than MPEG2.

Modus

 

[LordLoneWolf]

After some experiment , i found out in 2 test :

1)Multimedia Compression .
-Movie Clip : Avi , Mpeg1 , MJpeg 3:1-
-Pictures : Jpeg , BMP , GIF -

Smallest File Size , Best Compression 1)Winzip v.8.0
2)WinRaR v.2.7.1
3)Winace v.1.3.2

2)Application Compression .
-Some programs with and without picture files-

Smallest File Size , Best Compression 1)WinRaR v.2.7.1
2)Winace v.1.3.2
3)Winzip v.8.0

Editor's pick : WinRaR v.2.7.1
Conclusion : This baby can handle both Zip and RaR file well although the difference is not very sinificant in smaller applications , you'll most see the differnece when handling with Big Application . Throw in a recovery record and it's almost perfect .

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