Compressing a folder in windows..lots of pic files and vid..what software?

Adam Senior · 29 Jun 2006 at 16:03

Hi iv got a massive ammount of captured videos from my xbox and my faimlys digi cam. (about 23g OUCH :eek:

) i was wondering if thier was and good free software that i can compress this file till i need it next? would winzip do?

Pyrosoft · 29 Jun 2006 at 16:21

Yup, although don't expect too much compression on the video's though

TomTomTom · 29 Jun 2006 at 19:24

Sounds like you need an external drive. You could either assemble your own with separate enclosure and HDD or buy one ready. I use a WD MyBook 250 gig with USB interface. Great for backups and just the type of clutter (that you don't need right now) as you mentioned.

As the above mentioned, compression won't do you much good with the vids.

squiffy · 29 Jun 2006 at 19:44

Don't bother compress those files, you won't save any space.
If you've got Excel or Bitmaps that's a different matter, those compress well. Just buy a hard drive.

Energize · 29 Jun 2006 at 20:42

Use programs like virtual dub to compress the video files using x.264 shrinks mpeg2 files by about 75% and shrinks worse formats like dv from a camera even more.

celliott · 29 Jun 2006 at 21:24

To answe your question i'd reccomend 7zip which has a slightly better compression ratio than Rar/.Zip. However as mentioned video doesnt compress so well, especially .avi format and so on. www.7-zip.org

bledd · 30 Jun 2006 at 00:42

Pyrosoft said:
Yup, although don't expect too much compression on the video's though

depends what format they are now.. if they're uncompressed. then will see a hell of a difference!

use www.7zip.org (7zip) to create 7z archives (much better than zip)

and its freeware

bledd · 30 Jun 2006 at 00:44

celliott said:
To answe your question i'd reccomend 7zip which has a slightly better compression ratio than Rar/.Zip. However as mentioned video doesnt compress so well, especially .avi format and so on. www.7-zip.org

depends which avi codec is used tho, if its divx/xvid etc then no it won't compress much, if its uncomressed avi (default), then it'll compress it loads!

as said above, the best thing to do is to actually re-encode the videos, use "dr divx" on www.free-codecs.com if you're new to it.. or use virtualdub with codec of your choice if you feel comfortable with re-encoding video

Jimbu · 30 Jun 2006 at 14:07

The pictures can be resized with VSO image resizer which is free and does batch processing

http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/image_resizer.php