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Definitive list of compression formats and the emulators that support them?


candre23

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Full sets take up a lot of space.  I have that space, but that doesn't mean I want to use any more than I have to.  Additionally, importing folders full of bin/cue/wav/etc for certain disc rips is messy.  In a perfect world, every game would be compressed and stored in a single file.  It seems most systems have at least one option, but with so many emulators and so many compression formats, it's been tricky figuring out what that option is.

 

So far I've determined the following system - emulator - compression combos:

PSP - PPSSPP - CSO

Playstation 1 - Beetle PSX - CHD

Playstation 2 - PCSX2 - GZ

Gamecube/Wii - Dolphin - GCZ

Dreamcast - DEmul - CHD

 

Are these the best combos for these systems?  What about other disc-based systems - Amiga CD32, Sega CD, etc?

 

Thanks.

Edited by candre23
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wbfs I think is best for Wii

maxcso app to convert PS2 to cso, great sizes and no extra index file like Chris mentions

CHDv5 can be used on Dreamcast, Saturn, Sega CD, TG-CD, PCE-CD, PC-FX, Amiga CD32 and probably some others

PSX can benefit from PBP as multi discs become one game

I had converted my whole collection and was thinking of making a list like this with best apps for conversion etc

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Thanks for the info.

 

WBFS is just the wii file system, not a compression method as far as I understand things.

 

Based on the CHD for PS2 recommendation, I'm scrapping my GZ plans and going with CSO instead.  The set I acquired has each disc 7zipped, and it's about a 70/30 split for ISOs and BINs.  Sadly, maxcso doesn't like BIN files, so it got a bit complicated.  I worked up a batch file that will extract the image (which ends up as a SLUS-xxxx file), convert to ISO if it isn't already, convert to CSO with the original archive name, then delete the intermediate disc image(s).  I've got my dual xeon server chewing through a couple instances, and another instance running on my desktop.  40 cores working their asses off, and it still looks like it won't be done until sometime this weekend.

Edited by candre23
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14 hours ago, candre23 said:

Full sets take up a lot of space.  I have that space, but that doesn't mean I want to use any more than I have to.  Additionally, importing folders full of bin/cue/wav/etc for certain disc rips is messy.  In a perfect world, every game would be compressed and stored in a single file.  It seems most systems have at least one option, but with so many emulators and so many compression formats, it's been tricky figuring out what that option is.

 

So far I've determined the following system - emulator - compression combos:

PSP - PPSSPP - CSO

Playstation 1 - Beetle PSX - CHD

Playstation 2 - PCSX2 - GZ

Gamecube/Wii - Dolphin - GCZ

Dreamcast - DEmul - CHD

 

Are these the best combos for these systems?  What about other disc-based systems - Amiga CD32, Sega CD, etc?

 

Thanks.

Might also check this thread out with similar discussion.

 

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6 hours ago, candre23 said:

Thanks for the info.

 

WBFS is just the wii file system, not a compression method as far as I understand things.

 

Based on the CHD for PS2 recommendation, I'm scrapping my GZ plans and going with CSO instead.  The set I acquired has each disc 7zipped, and it's about a 70/30 split for ISOs and BINs.  Sadly, maxcso doesn't like BIN files, so it got a bit complicated.  I worked up a batch file that will extract the image (which ends up as a SLUS-xxxx file), convert to ISO if it isn't already, convert to CSO with the original archive name, then delete the intermediate disc image(s).  I've got my dual xeon server chewing through a couple instances, and another instance running on my desktop.  40 cores working their asses off, and it still looks like it won't be done until sometime this weekend.

Search google for PS2 bin to ISO converter, it works flawlessy and runs very quickly, I have done this on my mission to convert them!

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If your whole set is ISOs, sure.  Mine is 7zipped, and the images in the archives are not all ISOs.  That's why I had to crate the multi-step batch script to handle everything.

 

To be clear, I'm not sitting here manually converting everything.  I created the script to extract, convert BINs to ISOs when necessary, and then convert ISOs to CSOs.  I set it up and now it's running on its own.  I don't have to "do" anything, but it's still going to take a long time before it's done.  Extracting each image takes 1-5 minutes, and converting each ISO to CSO takes 2-15 minutes, and I have ~1800 discs to convert.  Overall, it takes a long time.

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It's not pretty, and it uses AnyToISO which isn't free, but here you go:

 

for %%x in ("*.7z") do (
    7z e "%%x" 
    for %%z in ("*.bin") do (
        start /B /W anytoiso\anytoiso.exe /convert "%%z" "%%~nz.iso"
    )
    for %%i in ("*.iso") do (
        start /B /W maxcso "%%i" -o "%%~nx.cso"
        del *.iso
        del *.bin
    )
)

 

Edited by candre23
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