Deep Compression?

[ikermalli]

Hey,

I have a file on my computer which I would like to send to a friend. It is 3.48 GB in size. I cannot burn it and send it to the friend as it is an online friend and I don't want to ask their address... Is there a way to compress the file to the point of being 1GB or less so I could upload it to zShare or MegaUpload?
Thanks

- ikermalli

[GGJstudios]

Depends on what kind of file it is. Text files, for example, compress a lot. Video or audio files, not much at all.

[Makosuke]

As said, depends entirely on what kind of file it is. It's easy enough to test, though:

Right/control click on the file and select "Compress [filename]" from the menu. Wait a few minutes for it to finish, then check the size of the file you get; if it's not much smaller, the file isn't going to compress significantly. The default ZIP compression isn't the best in the world, but it's going to give you an indicator of how well that data will compress.

That said, I assume anything that large is a video file, which isn't going to be compressible at all lossless. You can, however, reencode a video file into a lower-quality one to reduce the file size significantly. Try Handbrake for an easy, free tool to do so.

[ikermalli]

It's an old version of an application suite, will that compress at all? Are there any programs which could compress it down to a very small size?

[mkrishnan]

Sorry, I'm going to go with...

- There aren't many 3.5GB freely distributable app suites, and the ones that do exist can be downloaded from the public internet.

- Therefore, please don't ask for help with redistributing commercial software....