chd compression support PCSX2 (PlayStation 2)

[cleverest]

All of my Ps2 games are .GZ compressed maximum setting (9) - is .CHD going to be less or more space saved?

[DeadVoivod]

I just googled this:

 

[CriticalCid]

Funny thing, I just converted all of my PS2 games (3793 games) from ISO to CHD. My PC was running 24/7 and the whole process took almost exactly 2 weeks until it was done (I also had to extract them from their .zip files first, which alone took 2 days or so). The final CHD set is now 5.1 TB in size.

My PC has an i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz in case you guys want that info for reference.

 

[cleverest]

On 9/9/2021 at 2:06 AM, zugswang said:

Thanks for heads up on PS2, as I didn't think to get the PS2 Japan set. Now I have 5,000 PS2 games in CHD format (USA/Europe/Japan) and still downloading

Converting them is a killer, but so much better than even gz (no more temp files wasting space for every game)

Are you aware of a way to process PS2 games that have already been converted to .gz in one batch swoop? Despite the temp file, I think I prefer the better compression of gz, but I'd like to try it out on a subset of games.

[DerSchlachter]

Okay, my LB Setup is near ready, now i'm looking for errors and optimizations, let's compress some PS2 Games 😁.

[cleverest]

6 hours ago, zugswang said:

I am not aware of a bulk bat file that extracts gz first then converts  iso to CHD.

I did have one that converted 7z to gz in bulk and that was useful at the time (when I wasted another 2 weeks of my life) as it turned out doing that.

I just extracted the gz first and then as they extracted I just pulled the isos into another folder and converted them to CHD.

This has literally taken me almost 1 month solid to do this for 5,200 PS2 games (and counting) and it is an absolute killer, but I am almost there now

ps, tried converting on an old dell pc i have and to say it is slow is understating it .... 1 file every hour at best !

The better your PC, the faster it will be as I found out quickly.

PS, Converting just my USA set from GZ to CHD saved me 100gb, so compression is even better overall using CHD on top of the instant loading.

I thought that using the max setting of .gz (9) was better than .chd in providing more space saving (which is what my compressions setting is for all my PS2 games), I have about 2400 (mostly US and non-US exclusives only) but maybe your GZ set wasn't using the maximum compression?

I'll have to try it out and I'll report back.  Thank you.

[cleverest]

4 hours ago, zugswang said:

Yes, maybe, I think it was on default 5.

Whatever the difference it's minimal even on 9 compared to CHD (using latest CHDMAN 0.235)

I didn't know chdman would be any better on later versions until I noticed I was using a version years out of date and re-converted Sega CD etc with latest chdman and the difference was vast in comparison.

Cool..I'll try it out...you are just grabbing this latest CHDMAN from the latest x64 windows build of MAME, correct?

[cleverest]

So the results were promising, but not 100% across the board...two of the six games in my test were actually smaller with .gz (setting 9 maximum), those were the huge 'Rock Band 2', and much smaller 'Sonic Mega Collection Plus.'

Of course that doesn't include the .tmp file which would be very nice to get rid of the need for....

Attached are the results of the few games I tested.



TOTAL FOR .GZ:


TOTAL FOR .CHD

[cleverest]

^^^ So never mind...apparently .CHD IS smaller for Rock Band 2 when you factor in the .tmp file created by launching the .GZ file...which also took my system a full 55 seconds to load the game (the first time is always slower with .gz to product that)


A second launch with .gz took:  20 seconds
The first launch with .chd took: The exact same time as the second+ launch of .gz as far as I could time it.

BTW all these games are loading from my DS1621+ NAS, not a local or external drive, thus slower then it would be otherwise.

[Suhrvivor]

I've compared with a couple of discs and I'm getting about 50MB difference per disc between cso and chd. It's a small difference but I think it's worth it, I'm definitely switching to chd.

Now I'd hope for the Ps3 emu devs to start supporting chd or at least any disc image format, dumping and storing games in folders having thousands of files it's a royal pain in the ass.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Suhrvivor

[cleverest]

19 minutes ago, Suhrvivor said:

I compared with a couple of discs and I'm getting about 50MB difference per disc between cso and chd. It's a small difference but I think it's worth it, I'm definitely  switching to chd.

Now I'd hope for the Ps3 emu devs to start supporting chd or at least any disc image format, dumping and storing games in folders having thousands of files it's a royal pain in the ass.

That would be amazing. That should save some serious space too.

[DerSchlachter]

Should be used as a workaround. I also convert my iso files to chd, to speed things up a little, I created 5 folders (chd convert 1 - 5) in each folder I put between 200 and 300 files, alphabetical sorting) then I start in each folder the transformation. Then I go to work ... in the evening I'm through with one or the other folder and start the next batch.

What do you need? Hard drive space!

My CPU: AMD 3900x

[cleverest]

On 9/13/2021 at 9:57 PM, DerSchlachter said:

Should be used as a workaround. I also convert my iso files to chd, to speed things up a little, I created 5 folders (chd convert 1 - 5) in each folder I put between 200 and 300 files, alphabetical sorting) then I start in each folder the transformation. Then I go to work ... in the evening I'm through with one or the other folder and start the next batch.

What do you need? Hard drive space!

My CPU: AMD 3900x

I'm using a AMD 3700x.

Yeah I'm converting by the alphabet cause space is an issue, I'll move say # and A titles, upcompress them all, delete the GZ, then convert the .iso, then delete the ISO, move them back, etc...it's laborious, but it's working well. I'm up to letter H now.

Edited September 19, 2021 by cleverest

[nadonate]

I know chd can archive multiple files (bin, cue for PS1). Is there a way to compress multi-disc games into 1 archive?

 

ex: Metal Gear Solid 3 - Subsistence (USA) (En,Es) (Disc 1), 2 & 3

 

 

[sundogak]

4 hours ago, nadonate said:

I know chd can archive multiple files (bin, cue for PS1). Is there a way to compress multi-disc games into 1 archive?

 

ex: Metal Gear Solid 3 - Subsistence (USA) (En,Es) (Disc 1), 2 & 3

 

 

No, CHD cannot have multi-disks within the archive.  You can use the PBP format to compress multiple-disks into one file.  

[cleverest]

6 hours ago, nadonate said:

I know chd can archive multiple files (bin, cue for PS1). Is there a way to compress multi-disc games into 1 archive?

 

ex: Metal Gear Solid 3 - Subsistence (USA) (En,Es) (Disc 1), 2 & 3

 

 

Not as CHD.

For that you can just create an .m3u file and in one line in the text file itself you simply put the name of each CHD file in sequence, aka

Filename1.chd

Filename2.chd

(No spaces between lines... (My phone won't let me single line space)

Then you load that .m3u file as the game in Launchbox so it only sees one file....

[Runadumb]

I'm trying this script but can't get it to work.  I am receiving this error

Quote

C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test>(
rem Extract files to folder new_dir
 7za.exe x -y -onew_dir "4x4 Evo (USA).7z"
 rem Change dir to new_dir
 pushd new_dir
 rem Convert
 FOR %i IN (*.cue *.gdi *.iso) DO "C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\chdman.exe" createcd -i "%i" -o "%~ni.chd"
 rem Delete files
 del /q /s *.bin
 del /q /s *.cue
 del /q /s *.img
 del /q /s *.sub
 del /q /s *.ccd
 del /q /s *.mdf
 del /q /s *.mds
 del /q /s *.iso
 popd
 rem Delete archive
 del /q /s "4x4 Evo (USA).7z"
)
'7za.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.bin
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.cue
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.img
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.sub
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.ccd
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.mdf
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.mds
Could Not Find C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\new_dir\*.iso
Deleted file - C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test\4x4 Evo (USA).7z

C:\Users\Asval\Desktop\Test>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

Quote

 

 

I have tried renaming both the chdman exe and the one from this line of the script so they are the same but to no avail.  When I run the script (which I thankfully set up a test folder to do) it just deletes the zips without doing anything.  I have reinstalled 7zip but that hasn't helped and the zip files I want to convert are not in a folder inside the zip 

 

FOR %%i IN (*.cue, *.gdi, *.iso) DO "%~dp0_chdman.exe" createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd"

[JoeViking245]

5 hours ago, Runadumb said:

'7za.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

The files aren't even getting extracted to be able to be converted.  (as in, there's nothing there for chdman to convert)  So chances are your FOR loop is fine.  I'm not sure what "7za.exe" is.  (I've always had/used 7z.exe)  But I'm sure 7za works.  

Options:

Place a copy of 7za.exe in the same folder as your batch file.  (Should only need the one file)

OR

Change the line that calls it to include the full path to where your '7za.exe' is located.  i.e.

"C:\Program Files\7zip\7za.exe" x -y -onew_dir "4x4 Evo (USA).7z"

(adjust to the actual path where yours is located) 

[sundogak]

@Runadumb I just hit this recently since converting some iso's to CHD.  The standard 7zip install doesn't include the standalone 7za.exe.  However, if you installed 7zip through Windows installer you can simply just change the script to:

"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" x -y -o%new_dir% "%%f"

or you can copy the 7z.exe to local folder along with chdman.exe and batch and will work as well.  

Also "rem" out this line if you don't want your zips to be deleted since in my case I wanted my source 7z files to remain.  

rem del /q /s "%%f"

Edited December 16, 2021 by sundogak

[Runadumb]

Thank you  very much, that sorted it.  Unfortunately it appears my files are not named with the game name so I am having to manually extract them and use koroth's life saving script to rename the files to the folder name then I begin just a normal CHD conversion process.  

 

Again, cheers for the help.