Ok, first things first - Malcolm, AWESOME links for
the PDF creater things. But which one is better?
I Use Combine PDFs most. It is easier to use when dealing with lots of files. They are both free, so try them to see which you like.
I seriously can't believe Mac OS don't have a PDF
creater thats as simple as text edit, but creats
PDF's out of any documents you want..??
Any application can produce PDF's Use the "PDF" button at the bottom-left of the Print dialog. They probably consider combining PDF to be more of a page-layout function, for which they have Pages (part of the iWorks package). It's not free (but neither is Adobe's PDF generation software) but they provide a 30 day free trial version with OSX.
And as for the Zip thing,,,to Rodney and Malcolm,,
well thanks for the help, but I guess what I knew
already is all there is to know, and I have been
doing it right, its just that you cant zip MP3's any
smaller than they already are aye ?? Weird. Why is
this weird to me ? Let me explain. Can you compress
something that is already compressed ? YES actually
you can and therefore should be able to zip them even
smaller if you want (**** zip them 3 times in a row
for a tiny file)... How do I figure ? - Well if you
got a jpeg right ? and you save it again as a jpg,
you can compress the ALREADY compressed file even
more, as a matter of fact you can make it ridiculusly
small if you want, or to blow the "you can't compress
a compressed file" theory out of the water you can
just keep saving a jpg over and over again and it
will consistantly get smaller... So why can you not
zip these things to make them even smaller ?
ZIP uses lossless compression. That means a compressed file will uncompress to a file identical to the original. It works by replacing repeated patterns with pointers to the first occurrence, and by encoding frequently used characters with short bit strings, and rarer ones with longer strings. This works very well for text, less well for other data. For example, there is no way to losslessly compress a file of random bytes, because there are no patterns, and all characters have about the same frequency.
Lossless audio compression doesn't look for byte patterns or usage frequency, but looks at the numeric values of the audio waveform samples. Normal audio has most energy at lower frequencies, so adjacent sample don't differ much. By encoding small differences in shorter bit patterns than large differences, the file size is reduced with no loss of data.
Lossless image compression does the same thing in two dimensions, looking at adjacent pixels and adjacent lines. Video compression can work in three dimensions, because there is usually not much difference between adjacent frames.
Lossy compression loses data, depending on settings at the time of compression.
The output of a compressor program has the characteristics of random data, with no patterns, so will not compress. For audio, images, or video, you can uncompress, then recompress with higher compression (and data loss) to get smaller files, but if the first compression was lossy, you will get better results by recompressing the original data with higher compression.
Heres another prime example - see at this particular
task I make a mp3 for a client to hear the music so
far (I could care less about the quality for now, it
is a tester and I got the real files in million
dollar equipment, etc..) so I make a mp3, and them I
need to send a few other things and I dont want to
clog up his mailbox (you know with over 10mb) - so I
want to ZIP all this stuff down, then when he gets
it, he unzips it, and they are back to the way they
were over at my place (if a few quality levels
dropped, no biggie). Now you guys are saying it is
the same on a PC, but I swore I did this at my moms
on her PC and it worked fine and turned a 10mb folder
into like 3mb !! COOL and yes it was packed with
MP3's, PDF's and Jpgs..... So go figure, it was
simple too. Just right clicked on the folder picked
zip, and it was done. BUT like i said, I tried that
on my mac, (same exact files, same exact folder) and
it doesn't make it smaller, it just remains the same
!!! Go figure... it just doesn't zip like a PC. I
tried this on the Mac stock OS ctrl click zip way,
and then with Stuffit pro,, same thing....
This is what I am talking about. Is this still normal
?
Also, even if we do get to the bottom of this, I am a
professional recording engineer and pro studio owner,
and I know for a FACT that you can compress and
re-compress anything over and over again.... so what
is zips problems IF what you guys are saying is
right.
There are compression schemes (used to speed up downloads over slow connections) that look for audio or images, uncompress them, then recompress at a higher compression (with some reduction of quality). There are some internet providers that do this (with customers complaining about image quality).
I am going to run a test, and I will make a large
uncompressed PSD file or something, and then I will
try to zip it and see if it works...... I will post
back my results. If it does work, then ****, you guys
are right, zips just wont make compressed files even
smaller (which to me is lame, because I can do it
manually if I want with other means - but why should
I have to, zips should just make what ever you are
zipping smaller. period.) Why is a "zip" function
even trying to think and recognize something as
comressed or not ? It is not a human, it should not
think or recognize crap !! It should just make
whatever I tell it to smaller... don't you agree ?
It tries to compress anything you give it, but if it can't find patterns in the data, it can't do anything.
