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Can I ZIP my pictures or MP3 files to save space?

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Summary: Most picture and movie files are already compressed, which means that they won't save space if made into a ZIP file.

Can I ZIP my pictures or MP3 files to save space?

ZIP is a very popular compression algorithm supported by many popular programs such as WinZip and PKZip, and recent versions of Microsoft Windows. ZIPping can often reduce the size of many files significantly.

Note, though that I said "often". That doesn't mean "always".

Pictures in popular formats such as .jpg or .gif are already compressed. As are .mp3 audio files. As are all popular movie formats. Depending on the type of compression being used, compressing an already-compressed file at best does very little, and at worst makes the file bigger.

So there's typically no advantage to ZIPping a photo, a movie, or an MP3.

The one time it can be handy to ZIP compressed files is if you want to take several files (for example several pictures) and combine them into a single file for a single download. People still need to unZIP before they can see them, but it can be simpler to download one file rather than several.

Article C2229 - November 21, 2004

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Recent Comments
21 Comments

Hard to say without more details. It's possible that your email provider has a limit on how big an email can be, and the mp3's as attachments excede that size.

Posted by: Leo at December 7, 2005 10:56 PM

Hi there, I'm going to be buying a new pc soon, is there any way of putting my mp3 files onto a cd so that i can just burn them onto the new hard drive instead of downloading them all again?

Posted by: Neil at February 27, 2006 8:55 AM

If you have a CD burner you can burn them to CD like any other file(s). Perhaps I'm missing the point of your question.

Posted by: Leo at February 27, 2006 6:23 PM

how do i save my pictures from my computer to a cd or a dvd? for back up in case comp/crashes or breaks. what do i do zip or what?? thanx.

Posted by: mariam at August 27, 2006 5:15 PM

I am a mac user. I send zip files daily to my office with multiple photos. Lately they have been telling me that they can not see all of they files that are in the folder I am sending. It works perfectly to everyone else I send it to except on their computer. Anyone else had this issue?

Posted by: Nichlaus at November 23, 2007 9:30 PM

just something that might make it easier for all.

you can creat a self extracting file (EXE, application) for any type of file

simply hit Start__>run__>type in "iexpress.exe"

and follow along the instruction from their.

i think its on most windows machines.

Marc

Posted by: marc at January 13, 2008 10:19 PM

My mp3 player ain't showing up on 'my comupter,'
so i can't add more music how do you fix it?
|^_^|?

Posted by: billy at April 14, 2008 10:38 AM

How do i send a very large folder of mp3 itunes songs to my friend via email - i cant sit there for hours emailing each track! Ive put all of them into one folder onto my desktop but when i go to open it it asks for a single track to attach rather than the whole folder..

Posted by: martina at April 19, 2009 5:46 AM

Too bad about the .zip method, have 1000's of mp3s on my hd. taking up too much room.
Thanks Marc for the IExpress 411. First I've seen that, although I've seen tools designed to make .exe's from other formats. And there it is right in windows! I'll have to try it out sometime (with junk files to start)!

John N.

Posted by: John N. at May 15, 2009 4:17 PM

I wish to send about 30 songs to a friend and I used iexpress and put a whole lot of music in and it worked but when I closed it I cannot see the file and when I open it again and put the name of the file in it says it does not exist and to create a new file - it must be somewhere where do I look? can you help please I am using Vista

Posted by: bianka at October 13, 2009 11:44 AM

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