700+megs of files, need to compress

[mlscola]

I bought AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0, Click 'N' Learn's AutoPlay Insights Training CD's and Digital Juice's 24 CD set. And I love 'em all. The program is great, the training is fab and DJ is a joy to behold. But I'm stuck and need your assistance.

I'm building a products/technical reference CD. My project consists of approximately 1500 files, mostly PDF's (700+ meg) along with a few programs and utilities. I need to get all this stuff on a single disk. My end users will most likely be looking to open single files at a time.

1) What's the best way to compress these files?
2) I don't want a big archive. Is there a way to compress all the files at once and have them available as singles?
3) What steps should I take i.e., include WinZip on the CD? Use Self Extracting files?

This is my last stumbling block. Your programs take care of everything else. Please, I need to finish this. Any help would be appreciated.

[tbybee]

Re: 700+megs of files, need to compress

If you have that many pdf's this will likely be a place to start on compression. It really all depends on how you're pdf's were created. If they were scanned then you could possibly reduce the resolution of the scans, at least on some of them, since you only need to re-capture on 50 mb's. If you created the pdf's from source files then you may be able to adjust the compression settings in the pdf conversion process. If some of your files are graphic files, then you could certainly compress some of them to re-capture some space, probably without impacting the quality of the picture.

Tony

[mlscola]

Re: 700+megs of files, need to compress

Thanks Tony. I should clarify the actual file size I'm facing. 700M is just the current data files (more arriving daily)> I'm not counting avi's, MP3's, wav's, jpg's ... by the time I build it it'll hit a gig easy. I need some serious file compression.
To answer your re-scan idea: Most of the PDF's are tech specs direct from the companies so they're ultraclean AND the very thought of redoing that many files is too much.
What do you think of this idea:
The compression I have in mind is using WinZip Self Extractor 2.2 in "Install software" mode. This puts a self extracting file on the CD and the end user doesn't have to have WinZip on their machine. Very transparent. Tres cool, no? EXCEPT I hit a snag. The "install" mode automatically unzips itself (no jokes) but then wants a command. I'm trying to figure out a way to fool it into unzipping, opening its folder and stopping so the user can select which file he wants. Any comments? Suggestions?

[fargus]

Re: 700+megs of files, need to compress

The one thing I can think of that may help is to make sure that your pdf's have been optimized. That may save you some space.

Here are the instructions (from page 475 of acrohelp.pdf in Acrobat). Obviously this requires the full version of Acrobat, not just the reader.

To find out if a PDF document has been optimized:
Choose File > Document Info > General, and look at the Optimized option.
To optimize a document:
Choose File > Save As, select Optimize, and click Save.
To optimize a collection of documents:
1 Choose File > Batch Process.
2 Select the folder of documents to process in the browser list. (On Mac OS,
select the folder but do not click the Select button until you’re finished setting
the options.)
3 Select Process All Subfolders if you also want to optimize documents in
subfolders of the folder.
4 Select Optimize.
5 Click OK (Windows) or Select (Mac OS).
Note: PDF documents that are already optimized, that are read-only, that
require an open password, or that are stored in a location for which you do not
have write access are not optimized (unless you are creating or deleting
thumbnails in optimized files). The Optimize.log file, located in the folder that
contains the optimized documents, lists any documents that were not
optimized in the process.