How to truly compress a folder

[Vatablous]

I am having a problem with compressing a folder with old YT footage. I right click, send to and then compressed folder. It compresses but the file size is still the same (properties) Does anyone know how to compress the folder to shrink the size properly? 

[manikyath]

filesize or size on disk?

 

those are very different things

EDIT: video is also really bad at being compressed, dont expect huge differences in size here.

[Levent]

afaik only solution is for you to change video properties (bitrate, fps, etc)

[Vatablous]

5 minutes ago, manikyath said:

filesize or size on disk?

 

those are very different things

EDIT: video is also really bad at being compressed, dont expect huge differences in size here.

Whats the difference between file size and on disk?

[dalekphalm]

7 minutes ago, Vatablous said:

I am having a problem with compressing a folder with old YT footage. I right click, send to and then compressed folder. It compresses but the file size is still the same (properties) Does anyone know how to compress the folder to shrink the size properly? 

Zip folders are what we call "Lossless compression". That means that when you compress the file to save space, when you extract it, it is extracted perfectly into the same state it originally was in.

 

Video is basically impossible to losslessly compress.

 

Furthermore, YT video is already compressed to some degree.

 

If you want to save space with old YT footage, you need to transcode them into a file with a lower bitrate. You could try a more efficient codec, such as H.265.

 

Ideally, if you want to keep that YT video, you should create an archive drive of some sort, that you move your videos to after you no longer need them.

[manikyath]

Just now, Vatablous said:

Whats the difference between file size and on disk?

filesize is the amount of bytes the file is big. (for example, a 1000 character TXT file would be 1000 bytes)

size on disk would be the actual amount of space taken up on disk, which is affected by the size of the file, compression, the file's name, and the specific formatting settings of your storage solution. in before mentioned example, that text file would most likely be 4KB on disk, because thats the smallest space it would be able to allocate on disk.

[Vatablous]

Just now, manikyath said:

filesize is the amount of bytes the file is big. (for example, a 1000 character TXT file would be 1000 bytes)

size on disk would be the actual amount of space taken up on disk, which is affected by the size of the file, compression, the file's name, and the specific formatting settings of your storage solution. in before mentioned example, that text file would most likely be 4KB on disk, because thats the smallest space it would be able to allocate on disk.

So size on disk is more accurate? 

[AshleyAshes]

15 minutes ago, Vatablous said:

I am having a problem with compressing a folder with old YT footage. I right click, send to and then compressed folder. It compresses but the file size is still the same (properties) Does anyone know how to compress the folder to shrink the size properly? 

It's not going to work.  Lossless compression like ZIP or RAR or anything like that work by compressing redundant data patterns.  Lossy compressed media like JPEGs, MP3s, or H.264, HEVC or other video all have already removed as much redundant information as part of the very design of their formats.  As a result of this, your Zip or RAR program manages negligible compression since there is next to nothing to compress.  In some rare cases, you can even have resulting files that are LARGER than the files inside them due tot he overhead of the compression scheme at all.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Vatablous said:

So size on disk is more accurate? 

Hard Drives are made up of things called sectors. A sector has a specific capacity (Eg: 4KB, or 512B). A sector can only have one piece of data inside it. So if you have a single 10B file, it still takes up an entire sector. Larger files can be spanned across multiple sectors, but a single sector can only one one file (or part of a file).

 

Size on disk is accurate to the sense that this is how much space it's taking up on your HDD. It's not accurate in the sense that if you copy that file into Memory (RAM) or another HDD/SSD, etc, it may (or may not) take up a different amount for "size on disk".

[Mira Yurizaki]

16 minutes ago, Vatablous said:

I am having a problem with compressing a folder with old YT footage. I right click, send to and then compressed folder. It compresses but the file size is still the same (properties) Does anyone know how to compress the folder to shrink the size properly? 

Most likely because the video is already compressed as is. It's hard to compress something even further if it's already compressed.

 

Think of it this way, let's say you put some fluffy comforters in a vacuum bag. It compresses it quite a bit. But now try getting that to compress even further.

[manikyath]

Just now, Vatablous said:

So size on disk is more accurate? 

size on disk is what matters in terms of storage space usage, filesize is what matters in terms of "how much data does this file contain"

 

its not about accuracy as much as it is about what is more useful in which situation. if you'd for example want to read a text file into a script, filesize would indicate the amount of expected characters, and if you'd want to calculate how much free space you have, size on disk is what actually tells you how much space is being used.

 

an example where these two values create very weird scenarios is for example when space is allocated for big files to be downloaded, or in the opposite, where this one intense smartass i found replaced an 8GB file by one that was 1KB big, but had a "filesize" of 8GB so it was properly recognised by the software that read it out. said software was just reading out zeroes, but at least it wasnt complaining the file wasnt there

[vanished]

13 minutes ago, Vatablous said:

Whats the difference between file size and on disk?

File size is the actual data in the file, size on disk is how much it's taking up to store it, which will generally be the file size rounded up to the next 4 kB interval, but if you enable compression, it could be less.  Lossy video however is already very "Dense" and so you are unlikely to see any benefit from compression.  It works best on many small files, due to the rounding I mentioned, and/or on files that compress well, like exes, other uncompressed formats like bmp, etc.

[Shadow_Storm56]

2 hours ago, Vatablous said:

I am having a problem with compressing a folder with old YT footage. I right click, send to and then compressed folder. It compresses but the file size is still the same (properties) Does anyone know how to compress the folder to shrink the size properly? 

Hydraulic press

[dalekphalm]

18 hours ago, Shadow_Storm56 said:

Hydraulic press

Think of the Hydraulic Press, in this scenario, as Handbrake.

 

You can make already-compressed-video smaller, but you "destroy" it a bit in the process (you lose quality), that you'll never get back.

 

The Press can make the vacuum sealed bag smaller, but it'll probably tear some threads or a bit of plastic in the process.

[Shadow_Storm56]

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Think of the Hydraulic Press, in this scenario, as Handbrake.

 

You can make already-compressed-video smaller, but you "destroy" it a bit in the process (you lose quality), that you'll never get back.

 

The Press can make the vacuum sealed bag smaller, but it'll probably tear some threads or a bit of plastic in the process.

I was making a joke but actually a physical press is a good metaphor. It makes it smaller but at a point starts making damage. Eventually distroying the object... a file in this case.