Best Compression For Archiving
 

Not sure if this is the right part of this forum to ask this, but?


Trying to save space on HDD by LOSSLESSLY compressing some games for archiving purposes. And later decompressing these games LOSSLESSLY to match the orginal files exactly (bit perfect).


At this stage, concentrating mostly on compressing .dds, .jpg, .ogg, and .png files from games.

So far, compressing *.dds files seem to be quite good using lolz directly with -d128 option and with all other lolz options at default settings.

Here is a sample dds file in case someone wishes to improve broch_02.dds compression?

Now, having problems compressing *.jpg, *.png, and *.ogg files (LOSSLESSLY). Since these files are already compressed (to a degree), it is difficult compressing these files much smaller.

Here are some sample files -

he-crown-solomon117.jpg

common_game_04.png

amb_in_boat_cabin.ogg


Can anyone suggest suitable tools and their settings to losslessly compress these (sample) files, please?

Thank you!

packjpg for jpeg images, png contains zlib streams so xtool or reflate should work, oggrec can compress ogg files losslessly.

turned command into code
 

Thanks for the post!

I'm experimenting with several compressors now.

But trying to compress the png file common_game_04.png using xtool produces the same sized file output (113 kB)! No compression of this file at all!?

Tried using the command on this test png file. Why is the png file not being compressed?

Try reflate. XTool doesn't work for all png streams.

Thanks again.

But where do I get the "reflate", and what (command line) settings should be used to run it?

The *.ogg file recompressor oggre doesn't seem to compress the amb_in_boat_cabin.ogg file much unfortunately. Original ogg file size ~ 1004 kB, and after recompressing, the file size becomes only ~ 971 kB. This is only about 3% reduction in file size.

Is there a better program or group of programs that would LOSSLESSLY compress *.ogg files better? Ideally something around 50% or more reduction in file size would be excellent!

oggrec is probably the best(or only) lossless compressor for ogg files. Ogg files aren't much recompressible.

Here's reflate CLS-Reflate
As it's a cls release, you don't need to edit arc.ini, just paste the files beside arc.exe

Thanks again for the comments and link.

EDIT: Not sure how to run reflate now?

1) Which version of reflate should be used "k" or "l"? And why?

2) Pasted files from "k" version into Freearc (v0.67) bin sub-directory where the command line executable version of Freearc (Arc.exe) is.

3) Tried running reflate executable under elevated command prompt and nothing seemed to happen.

4) Ran Arc executable under elevated commend prompt, but I don't see an option for "reflate"; unless I missed it?

5) So how do you run reflate?

6) And how do you run reflate ONLY without any precompression and without any compression applied?

reflate is a precompressor. Use l version. Program works like -mreflate+srep+lolz

Thanks, but which command line executable should be run? Arc.exe? Or?

I tried the command "arc -mreflate" only but only get arc showing commands help!? Also tried "arc -mreflate+srep+lolz" but still get arc showing commands help only!?

@brispuss
Batch Script Example

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I've basically got cls-reflate working now by using the command-

Similarly, I've also downloaded and installed cls-srep for Freearc as well. So the command for srep is -

As for the sample batch script, that is a little over my head at the moment!

As of now, by experimenting with different (pre)compressors, the best compression for *.png files seems to be by using -

Precomp V0.4.7 (-cn -brute options), and then using lolz V22c4b (-d128 -mc1023 options).

The test file common_game_04.png at 113 kB is compressed to 90 kB. Not too bad, but I would like better compression if possible.

As for the *.ogg files, they are proving to be extremely difficult to compress much further!


EDIT: I've got the common_game_04.png file compressed down to 77 kB by using Precomp and then using fp8 V6 at maximum compression (-8 option).

And by using paq8px V183fix1 (-9beta options) instead of fp8 V6, common_game_04.png is now compressed to 72 kB, but this compression process is VERY SLOW!

Trying to save space on HDD by LOSSLESSLY compressing some games for archiving purposes. And later decompressing these games LOSSLESSLY to match the orginal files exactly (bit perfect).