Thread: Why do people rar videos?

  1. #1
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Why do people rar videos?

    Just a general complaint. Videos are already compressed. Rar'ing it is not going to make it that much smaller. Now I have to use some proprietary decoder. And on top of that, when disk space is tight, you end up needing twice as much -- 50% to hold the rar, the other 50% to hold the decompressed result.

    I made that mistake a few times -- I've got, say, 600 meg free, so I download a 500 meg archive. Whoops -- no space to decompress it. And the stupidity of it is that the compressed version isn't even that much smaller. (Don't laugh at my lack of disk space -- I use small partitions to discourage myself from hoarding stuff.)

    Dumb dumb dumb.

    (And no, I'm not downloading pirate videos, just random weird stuff)

  2. #2
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    I don't know why they do. They're dumb, maybe?
    But I also agree with you, I too, find it annoying. Disk space isn't that much of an issue, but it takes such a long time to uncompress it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  3. #3
    S Sang-drax's Avatar
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    I completely agree. RAR is stupid.

    It has to do with ensuring that a release is unmodified since its release. Here's a page that tries to explain why: <http://whyrar.omfg.se/index_eng.php>. I still think RAR is stupid, though.
    Last edited by Sang-drax : Tomorrow at 02:21 AM. Reason: Time travelling

  4. #4
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Seems odd their explanatiopn since it's just as easy to create a crc from a non-archive.

    The idea if something gets corrupted, it cuts down downloading times, is correct I guess. However, any P2P program these days does all manner of checks to make sure data is being correctly downloaded and data traveling over broadband connections (only connection that matters for these things, really) is notoriously reliable.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  5. #5
    Reverse Engineer maxorator's Avatar
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    It seems to be just a stupid habit.
    "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

  6. #6
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    It seems to be just a stupid habit
    My vote too.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  7. #7
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    It might have something to do with being able to password correct or maybe split files.
    But neither of those are good reasons. There are many free file splitters and protectors. Perhaps the offenders don't know the negligible effect and actively practice hoarding.

  8. #8
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    RAR is much better than ZIP. ZIP is very poor compression for one, and it lacks a lot of other features that RAR has. RAR has been around for ~15 years so its not like its some new standard. RAR can handle error correction, volume splitting, opens more file types, has a lot of backup features, and is just as free as winzip. Another nice feature of RAR is you can create recovery volumes AFTER the fact.

    I haven't seen you give one reason why ZIP is better than RAR.

    As far as RARing video's, RAR can compress an MPEG4 by an additional 10% on average. may not seem like much to you, but it means a lot to the guy paying the bill for the website that is hosting the files.

  9. #9
    Dr Dipshi++ mike_g's Avatar
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    Err.. No-one here said that Zip was better than RAR

  10. #10
    Registered User AloneInTheDark's Avatar
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    it's simple, they are morons.

  11. #11
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mike_g View Post
    Err.. No-one here said that Zip was better than RAR
    and out of 2 paragraphs of post, that is the one sentence you picked up on...

    As far as splitting an archive, there are a lot of good reason to do so. Ease of upload, ease of download, recovery volumes can only be made for split archives, etc.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    RAR is much better than ZIP. ZIP is very poor compression for one, and it lacks a lot of other features that RAR has. RAR has been around for ~15 years so its not like its some new standard. RAR can handle error correction, volume splitting, opens more file types, has a lot of backup features, and is just as free as winzip. Another nice feature of RAR is you can create recovery volumes AFTER the fact.

    I haven't seen you give one reason why ZIP is better than RAR.

    As far as RARing video's, RAR can compress an MPEG4 by an additional 10% on average. may not seem like much to you, but it means a lot to the guy paying the bill for the website that is hosting the files.
    Only 7zip beats rar in compression. So rar is just poor now.
    And I very much doubt you can compress a video an additional 10%. That's very hard to believe unless proof is shown up front.

    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    As far as splitting an archive, there are a lot of good reason to do so. Ease of upload, ease of download, recovery volumes can only be made for split archives, etc.
    These things are usually distributed through P2P due to the bandwidth. And when sharing through P2P, none of these are advantages at all...
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  13. #13
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elysia View Post
    Only 7zip beats rar in compression. So rar is just poor now.
    And I very much doubt you can compress a video an additional 10&#37;. That's very hard to believe unless proof is shown up front.
    7zip only beats rar on some types of compression, only by a negligeable amount, and not all the time.

    I just compressed an MPEG4 stream coming form a camera and got 33% compression. (67% of original size).

    The files are on my website
    Original File - http://www.anthonyqbachler.com/mpeg.asf
    Compressed file - http://www.anthonyqbachler.com/mpeg.rar

    Ill post the files on my website this evening.

    These things are usually distributed through P2P due to the bandwidth. And when sharing through P2P, none of these are advantages at all...
    reduced bandwidth is an issue, even if it isnt costing you extra $. It speads up the process. Recovery volumes are also a benefit since they allow you to fix any errors in the original file that werent caught before distro.
    Last edited by abachler; 02-11-2008 at 03:02 PM.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    I just compressed an MPEG4 stream coming form a camera and got 33&#37; compression. (67% of original size).
    I did a test on a 77 MB MPEG4 AVC High Profile Unlimited Level Video.
    Original size: 77 MB (80 776 639 bytes).
    RARed size: 77 MB (80 743 479 bytes, saved 33 160 bytes [0.04%]).
    7ziped: 77.5 MB (81 317 718 bytes, saved -541 079 bytes [-0.67%]).
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  15. #15
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Supply the original file so others can verify your results?

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