Werner Bergmans has created a new benchmark site that aims to show the best compression ratios possible for multiple file types, including English text, executables, graphics, and so on. Werner says he is running these tests with 80-100 programs for each file type!

Reader Werner B. says Useful site to compare results of different compression programs. […]

read more from " Maximum Compression "

A few notes about the ancient history of LHA on comp.compression.

read more from " LHA History Lesson "

This tool creates SFXs for your archives, and currently has both 16- and 32-bit extractor modules. Includes advanced features such as SFX files that span multiple disks. Commercial Windows software.

Version 3.0 is shipping as of February, 2003.

read more from " Smart SFX "

GermaniXEncoder is a universal Transcoder for various sound formats like MP3, MP2, Real Audio, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, ALF2CD, DSP, GSM, G.721, G.723, G.726, RAW, PCM, ADPCM, uLaw, aLaw, MPC, and Monkeys Audio. In addition, the Encoder has a transformer for some transforming features, an Audio Recorder for recording from all input sources to mp3, mp2, […]

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This program is used to read and manipulate the RDF metadata that can be stored in JPEG images.

Version 2.0 is shipping as of February, 2004.

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This article in Streamingmedia.com breaks down the family tree
of the MPEG standards, starting with MPEG-1 and working up to the
current and inscrutable MPEG-21. Written for the layman, this can
get you up to speed quick without burning up too many brain cells.

read more from " The MPEG Video Standards – from 1 to 21 "

Igor Pavlov has released his LZMA code in a separate SDK, and is claiming excellent performance characteristics that make this a potential hit in the embedded world.

read more from " LZMA SDK From 7-Zip "

This is a suite of programs which will help you to convert your existing mp3 files into ogg. The suite includes a text and a graphical frontend. Requires mpg321, mp3info, oggenc, vorbiscomment (zenity for gui).

read more from " MP3 to Ogg "

View QuickTime movies on Linux, in a nice GPL package.

Version 2.0.2 is shipping as of February, 2004.

read more from " QuickTime for Linux "

JPEG200 products provided by RomSoft. Here you find a C++ DLL implementation of JPEG2000 Part 1 standard (ISO/IEC 15444-1) and a Photoshop plugin for JPEG2000 and J2K files

Reader Petrut D. had this to say:

One of the fastest JPEG2000 codecs out there. The Intel IPP library helped a lot with performance. I also […]

read more from " RomSoft JPEG2000 libraries and plugins "

Jasper is a C-language implementation of the JPEG-2000 Part-1 standard. Michael Adams seems to run the show, with help from Image Power and a small team. This page gives you access to the software, documentation, and a nice set of links. Jasper is distributed under a free license.

Version 1.701.0 is shipping as of February, 2004.

read more from " JasPer: A Software-Based JPEG-2000 Codec Implementation "

Michael Dipperstein has written a few compression programs, which naturally requires that you be able to read and write bits one at a time, and possibly in chunks of other sizes. He has packaged up this capability as a separate library, and makes it available to the world here.

read more from " ANSI-C Bit Manipulation Libraries "

Roberto Amorim is a familiar and friendly presence on the Hydrogen Audio board. This link points to the many audio compression listening tests he has conducted. These include evaluations of AAC and MP3 encoders at a rew different rates.

read more from " Roberto’s public listening tests page "

KDar is the KDE Disk Archiver. It is a convenient graphical interface to Denis Corbin’s libdar archiving and backup C++ library. You can safely backup (with compression if you like), view and restore files using KDar, along with a few easy UNIX commands for mounting and burning CD-R’s, Zip and Jazz drives, DVD-R’s, floppies, […]

read more from " KDar — the KDE Disk archiver "

A straight-up port of the JavaZoom MP3 library to C#.

read more from " MP3Sharp: JavaLayer C# Port "

rzip is a compression program, similar in functionality to gzip or bzip2, but able to take advantage long distance redundencies in files, which can sometimes allow rzip to produce much better compression ratios than other programs. The original idea behind rzip is described in my PhD thesis (see http://samba.org/~tridge/), but the implementation in this version […]

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This is a nice article posted on Codeguru.com by Sjaak Priester. In this article Sjaak uses octree color quantization to reduce a JPEG image with millions of colors down to a GIF with 256, as
well as giving you a look or two at Microsoft’s nice GDI+ API.

read more from " QColorQuantizer Gets the Most out of Your Picture "

GIF Construction Set Pro represents the state of the art in GIF animation software. It will assemble your original animations effortlessly through its Animation Wizard, squeeze them down to as close to nothing as possible with its Supercompressor; create eyecatching banners and animated transitions; manage your GIF files; add transparency to existing graphics and a […]

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GOPchop is an MPEG2-PS editor that cuts on GOP boundries so that the resulting MPEG2-PS file does not need to be re-encoded when saving the resulting desired frames. It is useful for editing commercials out of MPEG2 TV capture files.

read more from " GOPchop "

This is a Win32 script that can be used to compress and/or delete files after a certain amount of time. Nice and simple.

Version 1.2 shipped in January, 2004.

read more from " waRmZip "

A pre-compression transform by Przemyslaw Skibinski, somewhat along the lines of Star Encoding.

Version 3.0 of this program is shipping as of February, 2004.

read more from " Word Replacing Transform "