Explaining File Compression Formats

Zip and other file compression formats explained, including 7z, rar, gz, bz2, xz, and compressed tar files. Video also covers the related applications PKZIP, 7-Zip, WinZip, WinRAR/RAR, GZip, XZ Utils, and BZip2.

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:42 Achieving File Compression
04:48 Myriad Formats
08:28 Software Options
12:50 Compression Efficiency
14:23 Wrap

#Zip #7z #rar #FileCompression #ExplainingComputers

[ExplainingComputers]

As some people have noted below, in the word cloud "bz2" appears incorrectly as "b2z". But all is correct in the BZip 2 section at 7:11. And I have corrected the thumbnail. Also note that GZip compressed TAR files have the extensions tgz or tar.gz, not tar.tgz, as noted in the third bullet point around 7:53. My apologies. This video was checked, corrected and re-rendered many times . . . but at the moment, things like this are slipping through. :(

[JendaLinda]

It's worth mentioning that media files like pictures, audio and video formats are usually already compressed so additional file compression is not very effective.

[bitwize]

I recently wrote a decompressor for Phil Katz's Deflate algorithm. It was... one of the more difficult programming tasks I set for myself. To have been Phil Katz and come up with this way of using different kinds of compression (Lempel-Ziv and Huffman codes) in ways that play to their strengths... it's staggering how smart he was.

[johncundiff]

I'm not gonna lie, one problem "as a computer guy myself", Is getting many of my customers to understand just how ZIP files work. Your video offers a great explanation on how they work. I have to admit, I've used some of these exact "teaching tools", and sometimes people just don't get it. I feel that 90% of the battle of getting people, including senior citizens, is if you can just teach them to understand where things "LIVE" in file explorer. This is an extremely helpful video that I will send to some of my more "semi-educated" PC customers who are just starting to understand things. As always, keep up the AWESOME work Mr. Barnatt!

[SuprousOxide]

Another thing to consider is if you're going to share the compressed file.
If you're compressing the file only for your own personal use, you can use whichever format works best for you. But if you need to share the files with others in a windows ecosystem, zip is probably the best choice, especially if you're sharing with non-technical people.

[WildkatPhoto]

Sunday Morning Compressed EC.

Thank you for this. So often we assume everyone understands a lot of these terms and standards because us old people grew up with them.

[ManthaarJanyaro]

There is also another point that should be considered. And that is "Recovery Record" wich is built in to the rar format, but is disabled by default and can be enabled easily. Which can become handy in times of corruption of archived data.

Zip and 7z file can also be protected by a program called MultiPAR, which basically adds Parity Data to the end of archive which can be used to recover corrupt archive.

[Darkk]

Excellent video! There is one thing worth mentioning is that once a file is already compressed compressing it again will make the archive bigger. Newer compressors are smart enough to detect already compressed files so it gets stored in the archive.

[BartFlossom]

Bravo.
This is another gold nugget of basic yet necessary addition to the EC library. This clears up the muddy waters of compression and archiving.

[Praxibetel-Ix]

I've had my fair share of experience with 7-Zip as a lot of custom content made by folks for Sims games tend to come compressed in the .rar format. Alas, the version of Windows I use can only natively decompress .zip files. I think it's silly that Microsoft only recently has added in the ability to access more file compression formats to Windows. With all that said, this was an absolutely excellent video! :)

[malibugrove]

Fantastic video. I got interested in file compression technicalities back in BBS days and have loved teaching & discussing data/media compression topics and improvements ever since.

[SegNode]

I almost clicked off the video at the beginning since the intro was a little slow and boring, but I'm glad I stayed around because the rest of the video held my attention well and was very informative 😊. Thank you for making it.

[delight]

ARJ & LHA are the one's i've used during MS-DOS days, ARJ has multiple file archives into ideal filesize for your floppy disk, while LHA is commonly used by Japanese users for file compression.

[BillyRazOr]

I'm very happy to use WinRAR and 7-Zip for archiving files that I need to. Thanks for explaination Chris! 👍🏻

[gloiloidn]

Fantastic! I wanted to research about this but got confused with so many formats and methods. This video is a collection of all of them and I understood much better. Thanks!

[petercarter]

Ive always used WinRAR with Windows I remember using PKZIP along time ago with DOS used to think it was like magic when it was first introduced, interesting video well explained

[dmiracle]

Great video! I ran a BBS in the 90s and used pkzip, lha, arc, and arj. There were others but those were the most common. I still use zip/gzip.

[ditzydoo]

It's gratifying to see the Zip I've been using since 1990 is still leading the pack. Back then with the limited sizes of hard drives and floppy drives, Zip was such a critical game changer.

[zebrasprite]

Genuinely the best explanation for the wizardry of compression i’ve seen yet.

[jauntyfox]

I love these types videos where you explain the history of and differences between different aspects of computers that we interact with but never really think about