zipping music files!!!!!!!!!

joe.

i'm not too into computers so excuse my ignorance. just wondering if it was possible to download music files on a computer elsewhere. compress them using winzip, put them onto a floppy and then bring them home and unzip them onto my own computer??

davej

Depends on the format of the music file. If you're talking about mp3s - they are already pretty much optimally compressed so you won't get much by zipping them. Wav files on the other hand will compress to a considerably smaller size.

A floppy disk is almost useless to you these days. Consider using a usb memory stick..

davej

fletch

No 'cause mp3s are already compressed, if you try to zip them, they might compress by another few percent max but no where near enough to fit on a floppy....sorry 2 break it to ya

aidan_walsh

Put them on a floppy? Are they less than a minute long, and a low bitrate? Because you're not going to get much one one otherwise. Zipping a compresed music file will make a neglegable difference, as the file is already compressed. You can't compress compressed information.

RobertFoster

In short, no.

A floppy disc is 1.44MB while MP3 songs are generally 3MB+ - you could split the file up using a program such as WinRar (dunno if WinZip does too) - but it'd be a lot of hassle for 1 song!

You could get a USB pen drive. You plug these into a USB port and transfer files to and from it, they have much larger capacity (32/64/128/256MB etc) and are very handy for transfering larger files. You can get a 256MB one for €35 from Peats IIRC...

joe.

memory stick/pen. thanks v much folks

Bogger77

Zipping a single Mp3 can some times make them bigger, i found

Mutant_Fruit

Bogger77 wrote:

Zipping a single Mp3 can some times make them bigger, i found

If you make it a self-extracting zip/rar then yes, you will make it bigger, as an extra section of info has to be written so that the file can decompress itself.

radiospan

You could always re-encode them at a lower bitrate so that they fit on a 1.4MB floppy.

aidan_walsh

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

If you make it a self-extracting zip/rar then yes, you will make it bigger, as an extra section of info has to be written so that the file can decompress itself.

Thats not necessarily the problem. The problem is that the combined information of the re-compressed mp3 file as well as the compression table (necessary for decompression) results in a bigger file than the original.

NotMe

plazzTT wrote:

You could always re-encode them at a lower bitrate so that they fit on a 1.4MB floppy.

...but they would sound sh!t.

sceptre

He's already had the answer he wants and needs from RobertFoster. See:

bmarley wrote:

memory stick/pen. thanks v much folks

Handiest solution for what you want. Better than a nasty unreliable floppy anyway.

This site is based in Kildare and has free shipping by the way. Among the cheapest and handiest. Good customer service too by all accounts - my GF's returning a cable and has found them pretty good on that front. Or Peats and Amazon are surprisingly (particularly in the case of Peats) cheap at the moment for these.

joe.

thanks sceptre. problem solved. thanks for link