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Best Compression Type and Settings?


GunerX

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so I'm trying to save space and compress my roms and then let Launchbox extract them as needed, this works GREAT for PS1 and earlier generation ROMs because they are already relatively small files.

But when I tried this on my PS2 games it works, but takes forever (which is understandable sine the file I tested was a Double Layered Disc that is 8 GB), so my question is, which compression settings are the best for not only saving on File Size, but also Fast Extraction Time?

 

For the record I am using 7zip and compressing to .ZIPs with these settings: Ultra, LZMA, 8 MB, 128 Word Size.

 

These settings brought my 8 GB ROM down to 6.8 GB, so its a decent amount of savings. What settings have you guys tried and what do you think would work the best?

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On 10/6/2017 at 7:29 AM, kmoney said:

@GunerX The very best compression for PS2 iso's that are gz files and they open pretty much instantly as well. Lookup how to gzip for PCSX2 files and that will be your best option for sure.

i did what you said. found a video guide. it was literally just a guy saying "use gzip compression"

tried it. its no better or worse than any other compression type.

from my own testing with all kinds of various options in 7zip, it doesnt matter what compression settings you use. if the file is huge (in this case over 1 gig) it will take a good amount of time to decompress.

thats all there is to it.

 

Good rule of thumb for anyone else out there trying to compress their ROMs to save space, just use these settings for all files under 1 GB (if the rom is over 1GB, i recommend not compressing it at all)

Archive Format: 7z

Compression level: Ultra

Compression Method: LZMA2

Dictionary Size: 128 MB

Word Size: 273

Solid Block Size: (this value will change depending on the size of the file(s) you are compressing. if your ROM (or .bin or w/e) is 500 MB, choose a solid block size of 512 MB, etc etc etc)

Number of CPU threads: Max (choose the highest number of threads 7zip will allow you to)

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33 minutes ago, GunerX said:

i did what you said. found a video guide. it was literally just a guy saying "use gzip compression"

tried it. its no better or worse than any other compression type.

from my own testing with all kinds of various options in 7zip, it doesnt matter what compression settings you use. if the file is huge (in this case over 1 gig) it will take a good amount of time to decompress.

thats all there is to it.

 

Good rule of thumb for anyone else out there trying to compress their ROMs to save space, just use these settings for all files under 1 GB (if the rom is over 1GB, i recommend not compressing it at all)

Archive Format: 7z

Compression level: Ultra

Compression Method: LZMA2

Dictionary Size: 128 MB

Word Size: 273

Solid Block Size: (this value will change depending on the size of the file(s) you are compressing. if your ROM (or .bin or w/e) is 500 MB, choose a solid block size of 512 MB, etc etc etc)

Number of CPU threads: Max (choose the highest number of threads 7zip will allow you to)

Gzip does not really save any space over other formats but PCSX2 supports it natively. The first time you run the game in this format it will take a while to uncompress but it will also create an index file as well so the next time you run the game it will load up instantly just like it was not compressed at all.

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4 minutes ago, kmoney said:

Gzip does not really save any space over other formats but PCSX2 supports it natively. The first time you run the game in this format it will take a while to uncompress but it will also create an index file as well so the next time you run the game it will load up instantly just like it was not compressed at all.

according to this post here, a lot of emulators natively support .zips and such, but in reality, they dont. 

I will try the GZIP method one more time and see what happens, but so far, all of my testing has boiled down to "1GB or more = dont compress it"

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3 hours ago, kmoney said:

Gzip does not really save any space over other formats but PCSX2 supports it natively. The first time you run the game in this format it will take a while to uncompress but it will also create an index file as well so the next time you run the game it will load up instantly just like it was not compressed at all.

it seems to be working now. idk why it didnt work before. last time i did it it did not make an index file, now it is making them and its loading very fast. thx!

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@kmoney actually i just realized why it wasnt working last time, i had it set in launchbox "extract rom before running". thats why it didnt work. I just got done going through all my emulator settings this morning playing with various arguments and such and I remember I unchecked that box.

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8 hours ago, Chris Kant said:

I use cso for ps2 games. Nearly as good as gzip but pscx 2 can use it natively and without the indexing at the beginning plus without the indexfile. So first start is also faster then

so i googled "cso game compression" and found this amazing thread.

 

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