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Can I compress backups of my FLAC's?

post #1 of 8
2/2/10 at 2:13pm
Thread Starter 
Hi there,
Simple question I think - Can I use Winzip or Winrar to to compress my FLAC backups?

FLAC's are large as you know and backup space is limited due to backups of video also.

Any advice appreciated - thanks.
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post #2 of 8
2/2/10 at 2:21pm
ya i don't see why not...


edit: i just zip'd a folder of flac files and the zip file is the same size as the folder, lol. maybe it doesn't work.

edit2: i compressed using *.7z and it actually grew by 2 MB. haha.
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post #3 of 8
2/2/10 at 2:29pm
You sure can!
But do not expect any major space savings, since FLAC is already tightly compressed. 1-2% maybe, but nothing more.
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post #4 of 8
2/2/10 at 2:31pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by krmathis View Post
You sure can!
But do not expect any major space savings, since FLAC is already tightly compressed. 1-2% maybe, but nothing more.
Hah! ok then. Don't think I'll bother.
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post #5 of 8
2/2/10 at 3:00pm
I agree with the above. If there were room to compress FLAC (esp. level 8) more they would already do it. At worst you might increase the overall size because of the overhead added by the compression container.
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post #6 of 8
2/3/10 at 3:50am
It is futile and useless to zip or rar compressed audio and video formats like FLAC, MP3, MPEG, MOV, etc. The compressed audio and video formats are already compressed and are essentially random data. You can't compress random an further (it's basic theory of compression).

So it is futile to try. Even enabling compression in backup software is futile when backing up audio and video. All you end up doing is wasting time and CPU trying to compress what is uncompressable. When I back up my media files I disable any compression in the backup software. The compression would be futile.

You can however run ZIP or RAR with no compression and basically bundle up all your audio files in a convenient ZIP or RAR container. You may end up saving space due to elimination of slack space at the end of individual files. But that savings will be slight. And you'll have to offset that by whatever space is needed for the header and internal file structure of the ZIP or RAR or other compression file format.
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post #7 of 8
2/3/10 at 4:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
It is futile and useless
It is redundant to be redundant.
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post #8 of 8
2/3/10 at 4:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hybrys View Post
It is redundant to be redundant.
Much like compressing an already compressed file.
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