PAQ8-based file compression

[Sylence]

This tool uses PAQ8PF and PAQ8PX. thus it needs a lot of CPU and RAM to compress.

 

Read more about PAQ compression algorithm:

http://www.anonymz.com/?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAQ

 

Download the portable tool:

http://encode.ru/threads/453-FrontPAQ-GUI-frontend-for-PAQ8PF-and-PAQ8PX

http://encode.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=1466&d=1295210308

this is fully compatible with Windows 10 and all you need to do is to drag n drop files on it. it gives you options to specify compression ratio based on RAM usage.

 

[straycat19]

This archiver has been around for years and never accepted in the mainstream.  Since you like it so much I won't tell you why it never made it as the archiver of choice since it has such ridiculous claims.

 

[Sylence]

2 minutes ago, straycat19 said:

This archiver has been around for years and never accepted in the mainstream.  Since you like it so much I won't tell you why it never made it as the archiver of choice since it has such ridiculous claims.

 

 

Yes since 2008. I switched to FrontPAQ as soon as PAQ8 came out. is there other reasons than it needs a lot CPU/RAM?

[oliverjia]

It appears this is another Freearc. It might have great potential. Good compression ratio but the development ceased. 

20 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

Yes since 2008. I switched to FrontPAQ as soon as PAQ8 came out. is there other reasons than it needs a lot CPU/RAM?

 

One of the problems is the lack of compatibility with other file archiver. Not being one of the main stream archivers, means you probably could not share your compressed file with someone else.

[Sylence]

5 minutes ago, oliverjia said:

It appears this is another Freearc. It might have great potential. Good compression ratio but the development ceased. 

 

One of the problems is the lack of compatibility with other file archiver. Not being one of the main stream archivers, means you probably could not share your compressed file with someone else.

 

Updated the topic.

yes but you can include the portable program in a separate file so they can extract it

[DKT27]

Moved to Software Chat.

 

Its high RAM problem was in previous PCs. Modern PCs do not have a problem with it.

 

The main problem is how lengthy it takes to compress and decompress though.

[kraftwerk]

1. Even in a computer with good specs, it takes ages to complete.

2. Because few people have it installed (as I have), you're almost forced to share your archive as an executable. The options to this are: forcing people to install the program or to distribute an extra executable along with your file. People prefer zip, rar or 7z files, and who would blame them for that?

3. Smaller files are always preferred because they save bandwidth, but, because (1) and (2), the benefits become very marginal.

 

[Halteclere]

Needs a bit more time for the hardware to catch up to it...

[Sylence]

12 hours ago, kraftwerk said:

1. Even in a computer with good specs, it takes ages to complete.

2. Because few people have it installed (as I have), you're almost forced to share your archive as an executable. The options to this are: forcing people to install the program or to distribute an extra executable along with your file. People prefer zip, rar or 7z files, and who would blame them for that?

3. Smaller files are always preferred because they save bandwidth, but, because (1) and (2), the benefits become very marginal.

 

 

1 hour ago, Halteclere said:

Needs a bit more time for the hardware to catch up to it...

 

It should utilize multi core CPUs, having a normal hardware is enough for it but it doesn't use all the resources, for me it uses only 30% of CPU

[RejZoR]

I prefer ZPAQ because it's being maintained, it's more modular and standardized. Best app that supports it is PeaZip (unless if you don't mind commandline tools which you can get directly from Matt Mahoney's page)). Plus it supports many other formats like ARC, 7z, ZIPX as well as extraction of likes as RAR5, ACE and other exotics.

 

I just wish ZPAQ would be more widely supported. If ZPAQ support landed in WinZIP, WinRAR and 7-zip and it could pick up the pace. Being only supported by PeaZip makes it a very minority focused compressor. And while it has absolutely superior results, it requires quite some grunt to compress data in timely enough fashion. I mean, I'm using a Core i7 5820K at 4.5GHz paired with 32GB RAM and I'm just getting some decent speed from it. Back in time with slower CPU's and less RAM I just couldn't get any meaningful speed from it. It just took way too long for the tiny improvement over wastly faster LZMA2. But now it works pretty well.

[straycat19]

Archive size is no longer an issue.  With Gigabit internet access and home NAS units (I have 220TB NAS currently) there isn't a requirement to make files smaller, it is only convenient if there are multiple files so by adding them to a single container it makes it easier to send.  WinRar has been the goto archiver for a long time and the compression is adjustable, easy to use, and has a very small learning curve.  I remember the days of command line zip files and we thought that was great, then WinZip came along and WinRar and they were so easy to use since no one had to memorize command line switches any more.  I remember using a command line unzip with switches that would test a zip file and write the results to a text file using the pipe command and then having to read through the entire text file to see if any of the zip files were bad so I could go and redownload them.  This was in the days of Zmodem and some files would naturally be corrupted so they always had to be tested. 

[DKT27]

20 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I prefer ZPAQ because it's being maintained, it's more modular and standardized. Best app that supports it is PeaZip (unless if you don't mind commandline tools which you can get directly from Matt Mahoney's page)). Plus it supports many other formats like ARC, 7z, ZIPX as well as extraction of likes as RAR5, ACE and other exotics.

 

I just wish ZPAQ would be more widely supported. If ZPAQ support landed in WinZIP, WinRAR and 7-zip and it could pick up the pace. Being only supported by PeaZip makes it a very minority focused compressor. And while it has absolutely superior results, it requires quite some grunt to compress data in timely enough fashion. I mean, I'm using a Core i7 5820K at 4.5GHz paired with 32GB RAM and I'm just getting some decent speed from it. Back in time with slower CPU's and less RAM I just couldn't get any meaningful speed from it. It just took way too long for the tiny improvement over wastly faster LZMA2. But now it works pretty well.

 

I was reading about it but felt it was just another format that offered similar compression and stopped there. After reading your post I checked out it's site and indeed it looks promising.

 

Can you give your personal examples of it's compression when compared to LZMA2 and RAR5 or even PAQ8. Just to understand how well it works.

 

Just as you mention, personally I wonder why 7-zip does not add more formats to it.

 

14 hours ago, straycat19 said:

Archive size is no longer an issue.  With Gigabit internet access and home NAS units (I have 220TB NAS currently) there isn't a requirement to make files smaller, it is only convenient if there are multiple files so by adding them to a single container it makes it easier to send.  WinRar has been the goto archiver for a long time and the compression is adjustable, easy to use, and has a very small learning curve.  I remember the days of command line zip files and we thought that was great, then WinZip came along and WinRar and they were so easy to use since no one had to memorize command line switches any more.  I remember using a command line unzip with switches that would test a zip file and write the results to a text file using the pipe command and then having to read through the entire text file to see if any of the zip files were bad so I could go and redownload them.  This was in the days of Zmodem and some files would naturally be corrupted so they always had to be tested. 

 

While you are correct, this is not true for everyone unfortunately. Some of us still have only access to 2 Megabit internet with limited HDD capacity. While HDDs are cheaper than SSD, they are still expensive for people like me, especially when you are wanting a 2TB+ HDD which is not crappy, cheap, power saving HDD. All this while still trying to have the privilege of storing as much data as one wants and can. This is the reason powerful, efficient compressors are still required I think.

[Sylence]

3 hours ago, DKT27 said:

 

I was reading about it but felt it was just another format that offered similar compression and stopped there. After reading your post I checked out it's site and indeed it looks promising.

 

Can you give your personal examples of it's compression when compared to LZMA2 and RAR5 or even PAQ8. Just to understand how well it works.

 

Just as you mention, personally I wonder why 7-zip does not add more formats to it.

 

 

While you are correct, this is not true for everyone unfortunately. Some of us still have only access to 2 Megabit internet with limited HDD capacity. While HDDs are cheaper than SSD, they are still expensive for people like me, especially when you are wanting a 2TB+ HDD which is not crappy, cheap, power saving HDD. All this while still trying to have the privilege of storing as much data as one wants and can. This is the reason powerful, efficient compressors are still required I think.

 

 

I think the problem is Internet connection, If you have a fast connection anytime any where you want (DSL, 4G etc.)  then you don't need to download everything from the Internet, you can access them on the Internet whenever you desire, using online cloud storage