DivX Certification Program
The DivX Certification Program was created in response to overwhelming consumer demand for DivX-powered video products. With the new program, DivXNetworks is enabling third parties to create “DivX Certified” products that are rigorously tested and fully compatible with the entire suite of DivX™ video technologies.
http://www.divxnetworks.com/solutions/certification/
ITWorx
PKZip library for PHP
This project is still in beta. The current release provides the ability to manipulate zip archives by adding and removing files.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpziplib/
WinZip Computing
The home page for WinZip Computing, makers of WinZip. WinZip is a very popular Win32 Zip program. This page has links to an evaluation version of the program available for download, plus an FAQ, and other online support.
WinZip 9.0 shipped in February, 2004. Highlights include AES encryption and 64-bit Zip format support.
JPEG Imager JPEG Imager
JPEG Imager is an interactive image compressor. It provides real-time preview of compressed image and handy means to compare it with original one. You can fiddle with various compression parameters and observe the effect of changes straight away. You also can specify a desired file size and let the program select the proper values automatically. It is perfect for “Quality vs. File Size” optimization.
CXImage
Yet another image library! This one promises to load, save, and display BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, MNG, and J2K compressed images.
Version 5.9 of this library shipped in February, 2004.
http://www.codeproject.com/bitmap/cximage.asp
DynaZIP-GT
A set of Win32 libraries, DLLs, and controls that let you manipulate tar and gz format archives under Win32.
A DCL user had this to say: Worked very quickly, very reliable, absolutely worth the money, I had it running correctly in 5 minutes, mabye less. There was also more than enough sample code to work with. It’s the best G-zip compression library I have found anywhere..
http://www.innermedia.com/gt/index.htm
Maximum Compression
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. Regularly updated.
http://www.maximumcompression.com/
LHA History Lesson
A few notes about the ancient history of LHA on comp.compression.
Smart SFX
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.
GermaniXEncoder
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, pcm, adpcm, wma and ogg-vorbis. You can also split large MP3 files with their CUE sheets into songs.
Version 1.80.1195 RC2 was shipping as of Februaru, 2002.
jpegrdf
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.
http://jpegrdf.sourceforge.net/
The MPEG Video Standards – from 1 to 21
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.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=8569
LZMA SDK From 7-Zip
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.
MP3 to Ogg
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).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp3toogg/
QuickTime for Linux
View QuickTime movies on Linux, in a nice GPL package.
Version 2.0.2 is shipping as of February, 2004.
http://heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3
RomSoft JPEG2000 libraries and plugins
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 tried the Photoshop plug-in, and managed to open all the test files from http://www.crc.ricoh.com/~gormish/jpeg2000conformance/J2KP4files/ part 0 and part 1. The plug-in handled JP2 and J2K images from 1 bit to 16 bit signed/unsigned flowlessly. Highly recomend the C++ DLL and the Photoshop plugin.
http://www.colorutilities.com/page/page/948008.htm
JasPer: A Software-Based JPEG-2000 Codec Implementation
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.
http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper/
ANSI-C Bit Manipulation Libraries
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.
http://michael.dipperstein.com/bitlibs/
Roberto’s public listening tests page
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.
KDar — the KDE Disk archiver
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, or any other disk-based storage media.
MP3Sharp: JavaLayer C# Port
rzip
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 is considerably improved from the original implementation. The new version is much faster and also produces a better compression ratio.
QColorQuantizer Gets the Most out of Your Picture
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.
http://www.codeguru.com/gdi/qcolorquantizer.html
GIF Construction Set Pro
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 lot more.
Version 2.0.44 is shipping as of February, 2004.
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html
GOPchop
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.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/gopchop/
waRmZip
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.
http://winadmin.sourceforge.net/warmzip.html
Word Replacing Transform
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.
http://www.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~inikep/research/WRT30.zip
kArchiver
An archiver program designed to run under Linux with the KDE desktop. Looks like it supports tar, zip, bz2, and gz files. Released under the GPL.
Version 3.0.10 is shipping as of January, 2004
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/coquelle/karchiver/