Compression Ratio

[devnulllore]

Hi,

 

I know it depends on what type of files are being compressed but what is currently the best compression program available? I don't care if it's free or pay I am just looking for the overall best compression ration across all file types.

 

Thanks,

[_neutrino Veteran]

so far as i know 7-zip and 7z files are the best you can get for consumer usage anyway.

[n_K]

7z probably (windows)

GZIP, LZMA, etc. (linux)

[User6060]

are we talking about compressing a file or multiple files into a zip or tar.gz or rar

 

are we talking about compressing a wav into mp3 or m4a 

 

are we talking about compressing dv video into a web format like h264, divx, webM, flv

 

i used to use 7zip a lot to make .zip and .7z for a random assortment of files in a folder  

[Andre S. Veteran]

Yup, specifically the LZMA SDK is free (in both senses of the word) and provides the highest compression entropy coding available, as far as I know. This is what the popular 7-zip program uses.

[Torolol]

but if you're looking to creates .zip format, the deflate method included in 7z program are not as efficient as those in kzip.

[ryokurin]

so far as i know 7-zip and 7z files are the best you can get for consumer usage anyway.

 

It really depends on what it is compressing.  RAR5 has beat 7zip compression and speed recently in several tests.   Not to mention RAR's built in redundancy capabilities or ability to open partial rars.    There is no clear cut best, just use the best tool for the situation.

[Phouchg]

PAQ and its derivative UDA, perhaps. Although it's extremely computationally expensive, as in hours, last time

Then there's Nanozip, although it's in blue hell now, but it's highly capable and also quite fast.

And then there's WinRK, with its own RK format, although the name says it's for Windows only and it's quite slow.

That'd be about it.

[vcfan]

i found rar to be the best all around.

[Compuspital]

uharc used to be pretty good. Havent used it in a while.

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

http://freearc.org/HFCB.aspx (as in, you should just look at benchmark results to determine this)

 

http://freearc.org/Maximal-Practical-Compression.aspx

[papercut2008uk]

7-zip, the latest one, but you need a load of memory to get the best compression.

 

if you set the 'Dictionary' size to the largest you can (note the memory used for compression will be your limit depending on how much RAM you have).

 

if you have a load of RAM, the dictionary size can be larger and so compress much more.

[Andre S. Veteran]

http://freearc.org/HFCB.aspx (as in, you should just look at benchmark results to determine this)

 

http://freearc.org/Maximal-Practical-Compression.aspx

That's interesting. Actually 7-zip wins the 2nd benchmark on that page and they're very close in both tests, but I didn't know about PPM compression.