A program, distributed under the GNU LGPL, called 7-zip can compress to zip at higher ratio - www.7-zip.org.

cdcopy.zip - 2178181 bytes - original downloaded from www.cdcopy.sk
cdcopy.zip - 2123019 bytes- packed using 7-zip
cdcopy.7z - 1834760 bytes*- in 7z format
cdcopy.exe - 1906952 bytes* - SFX 7z format

cdex_150b7_enu.zip - 1815979 bytes
cdex_150b7_enu.zip - 1808502 bytes
cdex_150b7_enu.7z - 1779701 bytes*
cdex_150b7_enu.exe - 1851893 bytes*

Conclusion: 7z format is best, ZIP created by 7-zip is smaller than zip created with any other program. SFX 7z is sometimes smaller than normal ZIP.

If you want to publish many *.ZIP files on slow, popular server (e.g. rarewares) use 7-zip ZIP and consider switching to 7z format.

* - You can increse compression ratio by changing value of special parameters like dictionary size for LZMA, number of fast bytes for LZMA etc.

PS. For UPX users: use latest UPX 1.24 from http://upx.sourceforge.net/ with "--best" setting.

UPX forum: http://upx.sourceforge.net/phpBB/index.php

I been using this program for awhile now, but its hard to get the 7z format widely supported. But I recommend you Zip with the 7z program cause it saves some space and since bandwidth is valuable on the net.

Can it be decoded with winzip?

How does it compare to ACE?

The Zip portion can be decoded by WinZip, but the 7z function cannot. You need to use its own decoder program.

I don't know if it is better than ACE compression though, I never used 7z or ACE compression extensively.

ACE 2.X and RAR 3.X are always better than any ZIP.
7zip has better compression ratio than RAR or ACE, but not always.

7-zip can use multiple compression methods. One of loseless WAV compressors will be added to 7-zip. Author of 7-zip told me, that he can`t use Monkeysaudio - it`s not GNU compatible, but he found another good compressor. We`ll see...

02/09/24 11:23 AM 1,692,185 cdex_150b7_enu.rar
02/09/24 11:30 AM 1,485,313 cdcopy.rar

RAR's all the way bebe!

Improving zip using an incompatible format with very small compression advantage is pretty much pointless.

Using a different (widely available) format with even better compression ratios would be the way to go.

Just look how bz2 outperforms zip on source code.

7-Zip is indeed impressive...

cdcopy.ace: 1 468 274 bytes
cdcopy.7z : 1 378 688 bytes

cdex_150b7_enu.ace: 1 717 443 bytes
cdex_150b7_enu.7z : 1 677 803 bytes

Free program and beats the competitors, nice.

zip compression:

1-cdcopy.zip - 2178181 bytes - original downloaded from www.cdcopy.sk
2-cdcopy.zip - 2123019 bytes - packed using 7-zip (using Maximum preset)
3-cdcopy.zip - 2121786 bytes - packed using 7-zip (with extra setting..)
just copy/paste this into parameters: fb=255 pass=4
4-cdcopy.zip - 2121686 bytes - repacked using ADVZIP.exe (based on 7-zip zip..)
this is done for stage 3

RAR compression:
5-cdcopy.rar - 1488192 bytes - packed with v3.0

ACE compression:
6-cdcopy.ace -1458702 bytes - packed with v2.22

CAB compression:
7-cdcopy.cab -1526889 bytes - packed with mscab.exe v0.61

7z compression:
8-cdcopy.7z -1378661 bytes - packed with 7-zip (using maximum preset)
9-cdcopy.7z -1342416 bytes - packed with 7-zip with extra settings..
just copy/paste the following into parameters:

0=BCJ2 1=LZMA 2=LZMA 3=LZMA b0:1 b0s1:2 b0s2:3 1fb=255 2fb=255 3fb=255

so you can see that 7z win easily .. don't forget that 7-zip has extra parameters for users that need more compression (of course advanced users..)

the zip implementation in 7-zip has provided more reduction in any format that uses zip-compression.. for example (zip,png,mng,tiff,....)

For now there is tools for using 7-zip (zip) implementation for:
1-zip (advzip.exe)
2-png (advpng.exe)
3-mng (advmng.exe)

for these tools go here http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/scan-readme.html
...

sorry i've forget a small thing..

when using 7-zip (7z) format always let "solid archive" ON so it can work better..all my tests included that..

BTW: winace, winrar uses SOLID ARCHIVE by default..

Compression is fun.

I hadn't tried 7-zip since it performed so badly on the ACT test suite. Perhaps it's worth a try now.

-h

Nopes

You have to tick "solid archieve" in winrar to make it solid

btw does 7zip have context menu extraction ? i would hate to have to open a programs just to extract or compress

yes it has contect menu options.

7zip indeed does compress better than winrar, but imo its performance is unacceptable (on a p4 2.2 ghz). Even the time on compressing a 30mb file is insane. Winrar is a nice mix of speed and compression for most people. 7zip needs some more time in the oven before prime-time.

Don't be ridiculous. 7zip does not compress better than RAR v3. Maybe only in rare cases such as this. And, RAR v3 has far better performence. (edited: check following posts )
Anyway, if you want to compress a text document to an AMAZINGLY AMAZING SMALL size, use RK. Damn... And also, RK is the best general compressor in the world, but has awful performence.
Audio compression for instance, using RK, is almost as good as Monkey's Audio, nearly identical, But again, bad performence.

http://compression.ca/act-sound.html a bit old though

The 7z compressor is really damn cool. Compression that can often beat rar and ace, and open source to boot! Yes, it's slower than rar, but the 2.3 series is the first to offer 7z support. 2.2 and lower were "just" zip compressors.

sk1, the 7z compressor CAN compress better than rar 3. For a good demonstration: hop over to Rarewares, and recompress everything with rar 3 and 7z. Keep the smaller files. You'll be tossing quite a few rar files.

If you want to see 7z handily spank lots of competition, test it on WinXP Visual Styles. This appears to be more of a "When should I swich compression models?" issue than anything else, but the results are startling.

RK can really get stuff tighter than anything else out there, but you're really paying the price when it comes to time and RAM usage. It's really scary when you go to decompress stuff later: it takes almost as long.

It'll be interesting to see how 7z does in the ACT. (Note: The 2.0 version of 7-Zip that's in ACT now doesn't use 7z compression.)

Yes, RK has HORRIBLE performence i wouldn't recommend it for anything but text files.
And.. 7z, yes i guess i will check it out, maybe things have really changed since the last time i checked it out. I HOPE so..
Thanks.

Holy fast moving thread Batman!

If you haven't tried the 2.3 betas: Yeah, it's changed a lot.

Now, if only it could get into a good GUI like PowerArchiver or UltimateZip. QuickZip looks interesting, but every time I try t out, I can never get it to work quite the way I want to.

I agree, the GUI is not nice at ALL . But i can live with that for one file format i guess . I'll still be using WinRAR for all other archives except for compressing zips.
And, yes, i've tested the 7z compression with some stuff and it actually is better than RAR. About audio i still don't know though, i don't think it'll beat RAR at audio compression.
The compression speed is pretty slow (edited: not pretty slow, more like annoyingly slow ), but who cares, the extraction is very reasonable!
So.. Things HAVE changed .
Moving to 7z. 7z from now on.

Hey, I thought that I was the only one who used this program. I like it because its open-source and simple. What more do you need? I don't think that the 7z format is going to get too popular though. Maybe people could use the SFX 7zs though.

I thought about doing this, but decided against it from the advice of another person. If using SFX make sure the archive are left on CD-Rs or on a totally secure system, because imagine if a virus managed to worm its way onto your system. Wouldn't that be the craps if your files were damaged! NOT HAPPY!

For personal backups 7z is fine, but when it comes to distribution of the files, it becomes a hassle.

Ardax:



I'm perfectly happy with 7Zip's "GUI" (it's no real GUI as you know, it's just a modified Explorer window, and I like that). The only thing that annoys me is this bug - is anyone else experiencing this?

Also it would be nice if the view options were saved, so I can have a detailed view by default, and if the last used directory was saved. Apart from that, it's a nice program though. No mess, no fuss.

I've been using 7zip for quite some time now, but only for the increased compression for .zip-files.

What would be interesting, is how it compares to tar+bzip2, which is also open-source. Like bzip2 vs 7z vs rar3 ?

Edit:

Did some tests: Packed my folder of Nero, uncompressed = 29 625 456 bytes.

10 363 306 NERO.RAR
10 365 307 NERO.7z
10 723 238 NERO.ACE

Command used for 7z was: 7zn a -r -t7z -mx NERO.7z
I don't know all the switches so 7z could probably do much better...

What worries me is this (stated in 7-Zip.chm):

tar+bzip2 lags pretty far behind rar

I did some additional testing by compressing setup directory for Microsoft Office XP with Frontpage SP2 (size 621 MB [651 830 998 bytes]).

7-Zip 7z format: 279 MB (293 017 247 bytes)
7-Zip Zip format: 339 MB (356 147 205 bytes)
WinRAR 3.0 RAR format: 289 MB (303 755 628 bytes)
WinACE 2.2 ACE format: 292 MB (306 389 564 bytes)

All compressions were done with highest possible mode from the program menus, no command line options were touched. Solid was used for everything but normal zip.

I WAS WRONG, i know. You didn't check the following posts .

I only use Winrar and that 7z don't appear to be so great

http://www.compression.ca/act-win.html

I linked to that site first ..
Too bad it's outdated, i hope he'll update it soon.

Here's a more up-to-date comparison: http://artst.narod.ru
Slow server, though

Oh yeah! I forgot about his site. And the encoder is very good too.

yeah, but how long did 7zip take compared to rar? Speed was excrutiating when I last tried 7z, but I suppose its possible they've made some optimizations (tried it about a month ago)

I'd say 7z takes about 3 to 4 times longer than RAR to compress. But i guess it's not so bad because the decoding speed compensates for it. Personally i'm willing to spend more time compressing in order to get a smaller file.

You'll probably want to stick with the version you have right now then. The latest beta removes the Explorer add-in for a 2 pane file manager thing. Yes, the Explorer context menus are still there though. I just don't want two shell extensions loaded when one could do.

AgentMil: Why not toss the decompressor onto the CD? Even with the help file you're looking at ~512 KB.

madah: While the format may change, it's possible to add support for other formats with a DLL.

I've tried 7-zip and liked it, and is more than fine to take WinZip out of my machine. AFAIK, zip files done by 7-zip are the best compressed zip files also.

About 7z? To fit data in a floppy, is great, but i use .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 dor archiving...
...i was a compression freak, used zip, lha, arj, rar (from version 1.30), uc2, even ace..., but i got tired of decompressing and recompressing, so i went for an open compressor like .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 (combination of tar and gzip/ bzip2). Maybe these are not the best compressors, but these surely are *standard*.

...if 7z is going to be a standard, well, i'll use it more often...

If you are in to the emulation scene, you have heard of ClrMamePro http://www.clrmame.com/ , a rom management utility. Roms are usually zipped, and the same author of ClrMame created a program called ZipMax to automatically parse and re-archive your zip files to the 7-zip zip format. It is very handy and I use it all the time. It would be nice if it could convert all my zips into 7z files, but what it does is also very cool. Yeah, i've been using 7-zip for the longest time now.

hey, thanks for the link. thats a cool program.. 7zip is really nice for just doing zip files for emulators that don't use better compression than zip. If the 7z format ever gets any support, than maybe I'll accept the poor speed and give it a try

Weeew, i've been following the emulation scene for years. I know tons of stuff ..
I personally prefer RomCenter instead of ClrMamePRO, it's much more user friendly as well, and i think just as good.


...EMULATION ROXXX!!

The source and algorithms are out there for anyone to use. Unlike RAR or ACE. RAR wins for some of my files and ACE for others. But on the majority of my Files 7-zip visibly beats both ACE and RAR3. On 1Mb files I can expect on average 60-100Kb smaller files than with ACE and RAR3.

7-zip is a win win situation and that is why I have been using it for the last year or so. It does ZIP better than the pay software. No longer will versions of Winzip etc disgrace my computer. As to speed I will always prefer the better solution over the speedy one. So even though it may be slower than others it is a keeper. Remember slow and steady wins the race.

As to the 7-zip format itself..... well I see only one major problem ATM. It does not support multisegmented archives. But that is a feature I would only use once in a blue moon. I "do" use the z7 format on a regular basis and I encourage my friends to as well. I want it to prolifferate and be fruitfull. We need versions for Linux, Beos, MacOS, PalmOS, "add you favorite OS here"OS, etc. This software is not great simply because it is free or opensource, but because it is actually one of the best at what it does!

Let's not forget that the 7z format supports Unicode filenames. I'm not sure if RAR supports that, but I'm pretty sure Zip and ACE don't.

Yeah ACE fudges up unicode something awful. So do alot of programs. All the file sharing programs as a group have a collective score of zero for unicode support as well. Frustrating to!

Yes! I hate that as well.. So many things don't support unicode and it sucks. I wanna die!! (ahm not) but it sucks.

Ok, compressed it again just to test the speed.

7-Zip: 40 minutes
Rar: 24 minutes

Oh, so i exhagerated, it seemed slower at the time . So probably it's maximum 2.5 times slower, which is great.

Tested 7-Zip with normal mode, that Office dir compressed down to 293MB (307 711 278 bytes) and it took 22 minutes. This is only one meg larger than ACE, and I'm quite sure ACE wasn't as fast.

one error with this prgorams is that you cannot close you explorer window while compression. at least winrar let you do that.

and the contect menu missing on option
turn .z7 file into folder.
winrar has that option wth jsut one click with 7z you have to go through the extration menu..wasting my time

Here are a test from me

UT2003demo (202 MB)

.rar = 85.8 MB ~ 6mins
.7z = 78.5 MB ~ 9mins

maximu + solid

7megs saved... not to bad

**OFF-TOPIC**

RoFL! RomCenter does rock, much more intuitive than ClrMamePro.

Good to see a fellow emulation fan.

Neo Neko:

Again..., if i see it included in next Debian distro, i'll use it more often...