Archiving

[cdt168]

Hey,
I've filled-up 4 500GB HDs with audio and video. One way to cram more onto the HDs is to archive files.
I just did this on OS 10.4 using the Finder archive feature with a video file: the original was 777MB while the archive (zip) was 772MB. Thus only a 0.65% saving in file size. Not much. Am I missing something here?
I just google searched "mac compression application" and got quite a number of options. Can anybody recommend an application and format (zip, rar...) that they have used for a while and that is likely to be widely enough used in the future that I'll have no trouble un-compressing my files?
Thanks!
cdt

 

[Makosuke]

No, you're not missing anything, that's what's going to happen. Video is, by nature, already heavily compressed, so no archiving tool is going to make much difference in file size. Some video formats might see a slight gain from some of the more advanced compression tools, but even then you're probably looking at more or less insignificant file size decreases.

If it were that easy to decrease the size of a video file, it'd already be done as part of the format.

More or less the same goes for audio, for the same reason.

Depending on the purpose of the video/audio, your best bet would be to transcode it into a more advanced format to save some file size at a relatively small loss of quality. For example, if it was a bunch of MPEG2 video, you could transcode it into h.264 and see a significant improvement in file size without much decrease in quality, thanks to the more efficient video codec.

If it's already all in modern video codecs, then you're basically out of luck.

 

[cdt168]

Thanks

Thanks for the info Makosuke!
I wasn't aware that video and audio was already very compressed.
Thanks again,
cdt168