Hate to sound like a noob, but I'm afraid that in this case that's exactly what I am.
I'm trying to use 7-Zip, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I know very little about file compression - basically, as I understand it, file compression takes a file and 'compresses' it to use less space in memory, allowing faster transmission and lower space requirements. My plan was to store a small library of data on my flash drive in a compressed form, extracting it with 7-Zip whenever I need to use it. Unfortunately, I have had absolutely no luck in using 7-Zip, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Whatever I do, I end up with some .zip or .7z file that is larger than the original file(s).
Am I doing something wrong? Is my understanding of 7-Zip and compressed files completely messed up? Am I making some stupid mistake? I searched all over these forums and the internet, but had no luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Basically youre right. 7zip and other compression progs are to compress files = make them smaller. But if you try to compress certain filetypes, for example *.jpg, then the archive will be bigger than the original because jpg's are very compressed by themselves. So you cant compress them any further. But if you try other larger image files (tif, bmp), you can compress them very well.
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What I'm trying to do is compress a small library of media - mostly audio, maybe video - to carry around on my flash drive. Whenever I need to use a file, I would just de-compress it and use it. As far as I know, these files aren't compressed already (else they wouldn't play, right?) but when I try to compress them it always comes out 1 MB larger than the original.
Most video/audio files are also compressed, mp3, ogg, wma, wmv, avi, mp4, etc. For example, a wav (audio) file is not compressed, so when you zip it, it is roughly the same size as an mp3.
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Well, that solves my problem. Drats, looks like my plans won't work. Oh, well. Thanks for the help.
I've been trying to use MP4 converters to make my video files transportable. Is this not the right way?