winzip or winrar - which is more efficient?

[Wigwam]

need to compress some movie files as small as poss so wonder which is better to do this with

 

[sandorski]

If an archiver can compress a video file(they are already compressed), then I'd think WinRar would likely do it better.

 

[Wigwam]

aah - never thought abot that
anyway will give winrar a go then.
thanks

 

Winrar has the edge with its par file option incase one or more parts of the archive gets corrupted.

 

[Lonyo]

Try them both and see which one works best
Unless its a huge file that would take ages to do.

 

[Wigwam]

will do and report the results nack here

 

[Smilin]

Winrar is going to whip butt.

Use .rar files with high compression and solid archives.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: DrJohnMarkway
Winrar has the edge with its par file option incase one or more parts of the archive gets corrupted.

I thought you could use PAR files for any file type?

I think WinRAR can compress to a more compact size, but it is generally slower than WinZip I think.

 

[Wigwam]

the results do not make pretty reading:
winrar: 717,172kb file now 712,363kb
winzip: 711,198kb file now 703,897kb

winrar was somewhat faster but both took around 20min

 

[Lonyo]

How come the initial filesizes are different?

 

[Wigwam]

2 diff files: part 1 and 2 of same movie!

 

[Smilin]

did you use .zip for both?

how about solid archives under winrar?

surprising.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Originally posted by: Wigwam
the results do not make pretty reading:
winrar: 717,172kb file now 712,363kb
winzip: 711,198kb file now 703,897kb

winrar was somewhat faster but both took around 20min

That's not a fair comparison. Part 1 might be more compressible than Part 2. If you're going to compare output size, you need to have the same output file.

And like Smilin asked, did you use ZIP for both? Or did you use ZIP for WinZip and RAR for WinRAR?

 

[Wigwam]

to be honest i am not very familiar with winrar and didnt know you could use it to zip so i zipped with winzip and rarred with winrar.

i also note the diff thingy so to make it fair i shall zip the 2 files the other way round too then we have 2 files for each compression method.

will post the results either l8er 2day [or 2morow depending how badly/easily my O/C goes!]

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Generally, binary (cd images) and/or media (movies, music, images) files don't compress very well.

 

[BatmanNate]

You should run them both on identical files of different types, ie Text, Image, Video, Music, etc. Avoid compressed files like DiVX and MP3 and report back with results.

 

[Wigwam]

Originally posted by: BatmanNate
You should run them both on identical files of different types, ie Text, Image, Video, Music, etc. Avoid compressed files like DiVX and MP3 and report back with results.

okay here are the results:
movie file 1 [717172kb] : winrar = 712363kb, winzip = 712355kb
movie file 2 [711198kb] : winrar = 703212kb, winzip = 703897kb
music [wma files] [63.9mb]: winrar = 62.7mb [64284kb], winzip = 62.7mb [64276kb]
pds files [384 mb]: winrar = 338mb [346595kb], winzip = 350mb [359368kb]

speed wise they really were abotu the same.

so there you have it: multimedia samish; for docs winrar wins!

 

[Haden]

Strange, what options for rar archives did you use? (dictionary size, compression level)
Usually zip looses hands down on any data which is compresable.

 

[TheWart]

correct me if i'm wrong someone, but a/v files are already in compressed formats so further compression is just a packaging for them. uncompressed files like text or whatever would see more compression.

 

[Sid59]

....

you can't compress an already compressed format, AVI, JPG, RAR, ZIP, ETC

winrar/zip will work on big files that can still be compressed. BMP, TXT, Raw Images, MPEG, exc

 

[Wigwam]

i know that NOW! but i had asked for advice earlier about compressing movies and ppls here suggested winrar so i gave it ago.

i used winrar on the "default" settings - i installed it, right-clicked on the file and did the "add to 'file.rar'" option.

i do like it though and even i was suprised how close it was to winzip