New - ISO compression - help testing

[Janet Merai]

Okay, so I tested out a few games with Japanese text only, it worked flawlessly! :3

Thank you so much, I was afraid I would have to rename all my dumped imports to English names XD

I enjoy the idea of immersive learning, so I wanted to name all my dumps to Japanese names, can't learn without being confronted with that language every-day

Back to learning and translation! :3

[karasuhebi]

We can maybe add it to the title of that dialog. Currently it's "Select CDVD source iso...", so maybe "Select CDVD source iso - iso/mdf/nrg/bin or gz (compressed)".

Though it might be too long and weird title, and especially since the information is duplicated at the title and at the extensions dropdown list..

Ideas for a better title?

Can't think of any good ones but how about:
'Select CDVD source image (uncompressed or gzipped)'

I like this one because PCSX2 has support for more than just .iso files; it can do .mdf and .bin files as well, and I'm sure other ones too.

Also why is it CDVD? Does that stand for something? Or is it supposed to be short for CD/DVD?

[Akio]

I don't have the latest version installed. Now what is the label? If it is "All Supported," I think changing it to "Disc Images or Archives" might help.

It seems that this comment is ignored.

[karasuhebi]

I don't think it was ignored it's just that an .iso is technically an archive, so that seems a bit counterintuitive.

[avih]

I updated the browse dialog title to "Select disc image, gzip compressed disc image, or block-dump...". This will need new translations.

[Akio]

I don't think it was ignored it's just that an .iso is technically an archive, so that seems a bit counterintuitive.

I see. The wording can change.

[karasuhebi]

Interestingly, while bzip2 should usually compress better than gzip, with the few ISOs which I tested, gzip compressed about the same as bzip2.

Gzip compression takes about half an hour per .iso file, which is incredibly slow. For some reason, 7-Zip doesn't allow for multiple CPU threads to be used when compressing into gzip but it does allow it when compressing into bzip2, which makes compression take A LOT less.

So at first I was making this post to formally request bzip2 support but avih has found me a program that supports multi-threaded gzip compression, so I'm here to tell you guys about that instead. The program is CLI-only but if you want to try it, it's called Pigz and here's the link:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/pigz-for-windows.html

All that I can say about it is that it scales VERY well. Here's some comparison times:
Final Fantasy X (NTSC-U), .iso -> .gz compression on 7-Zip = 31:16 minutes
Final Fantasy X (NTSC-U), .iso -> .gz compression on Pigz = 01:16 minutes

Original file size: 4,508,221,440 bytes (4.19 GB)
FFX.iso.gz (7-Zip): 4,064,510,952 bytes (3.78 GB)
FFX.iso.gz (Pigz): 4,093,622,940 bytes (3.81 GB)

The difference in size between the 7-Zip file and the Pigz file is only 29.11 MB! So while 7-Zip might provide a more compressed file, Pigz does it in a fraction of the time.

On Pigz, the only option I used was -9, which is the highest compression strength it offers through zlib. (numbers go from 0 to 9)

I don't know what compression number Pigz uses by default when you don't specify one, but it's not 9. My guess is that it's somewhere in the middle, maybe 5. FWIW, when I compressed FFX.iso with Pigz without any options, the difference in file size between it and the -9 option was about 0.30 MB, so very negligible.

If you want to keep the source file after compression is done, be sure to add the -k option. For example:

Code:

pigz -k -9 "E:\PS2 Games\Final Fantasy X.iso"

That command would compress Final Fantasy X.iso using the highest level of compression and also it won't delete the original file when it's done.

Enjoy!!

[Akio]

Thank you for the information. Have you tried -11 option? It says, "11 is much slower, a few % better." Did you compare the load times of the gzip files produced by 7-Zip and Pigz? I guess the difference is negligible.

[willkuer]

do you really need the highest compression? I would guess you can easily decrease the compression time by setting that value to 5 and still get quite small containers...

[karasuhebi]

Thank you for the information. Have you tried -11 option? It says, "11 is much slower, a few % better." Did you compare the load times of the gzip files produced by 7-Zip and Pigz? I guess the difference is negligible.

You're welcome. I'm glad someone found it useful.

The 11 option doesn't use zlib, it uses zopfli which is MUCH slower (100x slower, according to their own site). Just for ***** and giggles I tried it. I let it run for 35 minutes (since 7-Zip on 'Ultra' takes ~30 minutes) and then I canceled out of it. It had only processed about 1.5 of the FFX.iso when I stopped it. So yeah...SUPER slow.