#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE PDF#
#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE ARCHIVE#
#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE UPGRADE#
#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE FREE#

#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE FREE#

But if you don’t want to splurge and still need more than the basics in Windows and macOS, you have a couple of free options.įor Windows there’s the long-time free and open-source 7-Zip.

WinZip and WinRAR are more for commercial or seriously heavy-duty use. It’s mainly for Windows users though, with only a command line interface available on Macs. In return for your cash, you’ll get features such as different compression algorithms for different file types, easy splitting of archives, and broad file format support. It is also $40, but has a longer 40-day free trial. Then there’s WinRAR, a direct rival of WinZip that has been around for decades.

#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE PDF#

It deploys banking-level encryption, connects directly to popular cloud storage accounts such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, and it includes extras such as PDF watermarking for additional document security. You can try it out for free, but after 30 days, it will set you back $40. WinZip is available for both Windows and macOS, and is one of the oldest and most comprehensive compression tools around. If you’ve got serious amounts of data to package or you want to save as much space as possible, they’re worth a look.

#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE ARCHIVE#

Windows and macOS give you the basics, but other applications offer greater levels of compression, plus extras such as password protection, increased security, and broader archive format support.

#COMPRESSING VIDEO FILES FOR STORAGE UPGRADE#

This is one reason why you might want to upgrade to a dedicated utility. The archive won’t go anywhere, but you’ll get a new uncompressed folder holding all your files right next to it in Finder.Īpple’s operating system won’t allow you to easily add files to a folder that has already been compressed without starting the whole process again. To open a compressed archive, all you have to do is double-click on it. You’ll get a new archive alongside the items you compressed, which you can rename and move around as needed. Select one or several files or folders in Finder, then Ctrl+click on them and pick the Compress option from the menu. Alternatively, click and drag files into another File Explorer window or use the usual copy ( Ctrl+C) and paste ( Ctrl+V) shortcuts to get files out of the archive, uncompressing them along the way. Select one or more files, go to the top left of the window, and click Extract To to send them to a specific folder or Extract all to uncompress everything in one go. A new window will open where you’ll be able to see all the files inside and some stats-in the compressed size column, for example, you’ll see how much space you’re currently saving. To open a compressed archive and extract its contents, just double-click on it in File Explorer. You can rename it and drag more documents and folders on top of it to add them to the pile. In File Explorer on Windows, right-click on a file or folder, then choose Send to and Compressed (zipped) folder to create a newly compressed archive. The two main operating systems on the market come with built-in file compression features. As an added bonus, compressed folders or “archives” allow you to put a mass of data into one compressed package, keeping things neat and tidy. This is why these documents take longer to open and why people use compression for files they want to keep around but don’t need to access often. When opening a compressed file, the process has to happen in reverse-your device needs to reinterpret “7A” as “AAAAAAA”. This is why file types like JPEG and MP3 can keep your photos and audio light and small. Digital photos and music lend themselves well to quick and easy compression, because a lot of data can be cut without your eyes or ears noticing.

You could compact that to take up less space by replacing those seven characters with something like “7A”. Imagine a file made of seven A’s in a row, which would look like this: “AAAAAAA”. The squashing algorithms that file-compressing tools use are sophisticated and powerful, but the principle behind them is easy to grasp.

Compressing video files for storage