Rant: Why do people use rar files for videos?

[Red Squirrel]

Not only do some use rar files, but they feel the need to split it up in a million pieces. I can't do anything with that shit, use tar.gz, .7z or .zip or hell, why even try to compress it, it's a video, it's not going to compress well anyway just leave it alone. Stop it!

/rant.

 

[manimal]

ten years ago this rant was relevant. You must be downloading some really old porn

 

[ThatsABigOne]

I got 99 problems but compression ain't one.

 

[bearxor]

What if it had to be split in to multiple parts to be uploaded to where the person is putting it because of individual file size limitations?

 

[Eug]

ten years ago this rant was relevant. You must be downloading some really old porn

+1

 

[Red Squirrel]

Not porn just misc stuff in general. I've been seeing this more and more, people split them up in a million individual compressed files. With broadband being fairly normal there is zero reason for this. In Linux these files are completely useless to me. If it's something I badly need I'm stuck using winrar in a windows vm. Pain in the ass.

 

[Majcric]

I agree with the OP, I had use Winrar just the other day to open Micrsoft toolkit 2.5. Oh and I hate those MKV files that won't stream on my 360 without 3rd party support.

 

[bearxor]

Rar with multiple parts works just fine in Ububtu.

 

[destrekor]

Both XBMC and VLC (or was it MPC) will open and play entire video from the rar part files, so long as all of them are in the same directory as designed.

The whole point of those files being in parts is to make repairing/replacing individual segments easily in the event of corruption.

Old and still standard approach on, ahem, alternative services.

 

[mmntech]

Red caught downloading porn off Mega. Priceless.

 

[sdifox]

Not only do some use rar files, but they feel the need to split it up in a million pieces. I can't do anything with that shit, use tar.gz, .7z or .zip or hell, why even try to compress it, it's a video, it's not going to compress well anyway just leave it alone. Stop it!

/rant.

err, whut? next you are going to tell me the par2 files are useless.

 

[sdifox]

I agree with the OP, I had use Winrar just the other day to open Micrsoft toolkit 2.5. Oh and I hate those MKV files that won't stream on my 360 without 3rd party support.

Blame Microsoft for that.

 

[her209]

Its easier to transfer a large file that has been broken into smaller parts into different types of medium.

- a file transfer on a single large file has to be restarted from the beginning if there's an error
- can transfer as many blocks that will fit on different media before putting the remaining on additional media or different storage
- corruption will only affect a part of the file which can shorten the recovery time should a recovery method be employed before its corruption

 

[her209]

I agree with the OP, I had use Winrar just the other day to open Micrsoft toolkit 2.5. Oh and I hate those MKV files that won't stream on my 360 without 3rd party support.

First World Problems

 

[Colt45]

unrar e <file>.part1.rar

and everything else is automatic, it will unrar all the parts.

 

[Bateluer]

I suspect its an attempt to disguise any potential illegal activities. Harder to tell that its a pirated movie if its compressed to a RAR archive and split into 20 pieces.

 

[Mixolydian]

I prefer StuffIt archives, myself.

 

[pcslookout]

So you pirate ?

 

[Maximilian]

So you pirate ?

What are you doing at google to deal with pirates like this?

 

[Red Squirrel]

err, whut? next you are going to tell me the par2 files are useless.

Sounds like some other proprietary format. People have to stop doing this, there's no reason for it. Stick to universal formats. In fact there is practically no point in using archives anymore with the size of hard drives and speed of internet connections. Only time an archive should be used is to distribute content that is naturally lot of files (ex: a Linux program that has lot of lib files and stuff). You want to make 1 package, not turn 1 package into 1000 little ones.

Unrar command does not really work either on these messy rars, I imagine it works for some archives but depending on how they're encoded or w/e it just fails half way through.

 

[sdifox]

Sounds like some other proprietary format. People have to stop doing this, there's no reason for it. Stick to universal formats. In fact there is practically no point in using archives anymore with the size of hard drives and speed of internet connections. Only time an archive should be used is to distribute content that is naturally lot of files (ex: a Linux program that has lot of lib files and stuff). You want to make 1 package, not turn 1 package into 1000 little ones.

Unrar command does not really work either on these messy rars, I imagine it works for some archives but depending on how they're encoded or w/e it just fails half way through.

sigh


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive


http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/

 

[Pray To Jesus]

7zip

 

[bbhaag]

I rar and par all my content. It's the sensible and courteous thing to do. Just because you can't unpack them properly doesn't mean I'm wrong.

EDIT:I do this on my external drive for back up purposes. Don't want any one to get the wrong idea.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How is it courteous, it just adds an extra step for nothing and a bunch of files to deal with for nothing, and slows down transfers. (slower to transfer a bunch of small files than one big one) Just leave the file alone, it's already 1 file. If it's multiple files, then zip it as 1 file. Though unless it's text based data there's no reason to compress anyway.

 

[pcslookout]

I rar and par all my content. It's the sensible and courteous thing to do. Just because you can't unpack them properly doesn't mean I'm wrong.

EDIT:I do this on my external drive for back up purposes. Don't want any one to get the wrong idea.

I do the same thing.