Compressing with WinRAR

[Bluejay0]

How effective is WinRAR win compressing large files? I heard it will shrink the size until Uncompressed or "Unzipped".

 

For example, a 12GB file being zipped?

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

Raring a zip is pointless. Rar uses the same method as zip does. It is just Run Length Encoding. If you rar a zip (or the other way round) you are just adding more header information, so it will carry on increasing in size.

 

Text type files will compress the best, and things like video and sound will compress very little if at all. You are better off transcoding video and sound to a lower bitrate/quality.

[Vitalius]

How effective is WinRAR win compressing large files? I heard it will shrink the size until Uncompressed or "Unzipped".

 

For example, a 12GB file being zipped?

Raring a zip is pointless. Rar uses the same method as zip does. It is just Run Length Encoding. If you rar a zip (or the other way round) you are just adding more header information, so it will carry on increasing in size.

 

Text type files will compress the best, and things like video and sound will compress very little if at all. You are better off transcoding video and sound to a lower bitrate/quality.

This is the answer^

The reason that's the answer is because compression works based on repeats in the data. That's why audio/video don't compress very well. Most of it is unique data. 

That's why Lossy/Lossless compression formats exist. Lossy formats basically guesstimate. If it sees varying shades of red in a video, it will just go "Ok, this is all the same color because they are 'close enough' to be the same." which allows it to make the file size smaller, but costs quality when you actually see it because we can distinguish between shades of red pretty easily. 

Lossless compression formats basically stick to "If it isn't exactly the same, don't shorten it." so it compresses less of the info, but you keep a higher quality.

There is no "quality" in terms of text, so .. yeah. But there obviously is with audio and video. 

Here's the video I watched to learn that: