Why does WInzip not compress my files?

Question

When downloading files from the net you get zip files that contain big files but still the zip file is small in size. When I try to compress files it only compresses the files with about 10Kb difference in size?

How can I get files to be compressed with better results?

Answer 1

There are several types of compression, like zip. But many file formats nowadays are already compressed (like .jpeg, .mp3, .mpeg etc). Those files you could try to run through zip, but it won't make much of a difference.

bzip2 is a little "better" in compressing than zip, but it also takes a lot more time to compress/decompress them.