[vskatusa]

Hi,

I am looking to backup my ISO's and H.264 files using COMPRESSED backup. Is there a software out there that will say take my 1TB ISO's and H.264 and compress it to say 300 GB backup?

I tried posting this under "Off-Topic Discussion" but I get a message that I am not authorized!

[natethomas]

I assume, since you are posting here, that you are looking specifically for a Windows solution? The most common compression tools for video are winrar and 7-zip.

Here's is a little blurb on compression tools.

http://lifehacker.com/5065324/five-best-...sion-tools

In fact, you might look through lifehacker for backup tools too.

[vskatusa]

I just tried 7-zip!

I tested with H.264 and ISO and the compression is negligible!

The H.264 and ISO are compressed to start with and I am looking for a backup software which will compress these files around 50% of the original size or better for BACKUP purposes.

[ccMatrix]

The only thing that could work is compress all your data into one solid archive. But I doubt you will ever get the compression ratio you are dreaming about. 80% is already a very far stretch. An archive with solid compression could reduce your filesize but also increases the potential of complete data loss if the archive is corrupted in any way. Better buy some large hard disks for backup instead of going through that hassle.

[TeknoJnky]

as alluded to above, your not gonna get anywhere near that level of compression without transcoding to lower quality a/v.

h.264 and other codecs are (generally) already compressed to the greatest efficiency of size vs quality.

Compressing of already compressed data is, as you have already experienced with 7-zip, negligible.

Even if you use some type of external backup solution (like tape etc) that supports compression, your still not gonna get much savings as those compression techniques are based on UN-compressed data, not already compressed data (like audio/video/zips/etc).

[althekiller]

There is ZERO point in compressing any media files. They'll just have to be decompressed before you can play them anyway. XBMC can play directly from RARs, but it is best to use a stored rar (ie no compression). This gets you the built in checksumming and parity of RAR and allows you to split files that are too large for certain file systems, while still allowing XBMC to play them without decompression.

If you're looking to make your files smaller, you'll need to reencode them at a lower resolution or bitrate.