Browsing RAR/ZIP archives with Irfanview

[tlen]

I second the request, and being a long irfanview user i'm waiting this feature from long time.

I hope it will get implemented because nowadays is quite an essential function for a viewer.

Thanks

[Frank]

ability to browse through multiple images within an archive file

I think this wish does not concerning the program IrfanView!
This wish concerning file managers like Total Commander, A43 File Management Utility, Servant Salamander or compressions tools like WinRAR, WinAce, IZArc or 7-Zip!!!
And 7-Zip File Manager contains a "2 panel mode" to display two windows!
(Only WinZip includes a new internal image viewer that allows you to browse through multiple images within the Zip file.)

That's why - register at SourceForge.net and publish your wish in the Open Discussion Forum of 7-Zip!
Would be nice to have such feature in the view options of 7-Zip!

See this suggestion:



regards
Frank

[tlen]

I don't want this option in 7zip (or in any file manager) 'cause i dont' use it.

I want this in irfanview 'cause i use it, and 'cause almost every viewer has this feature, and this great program can't miss such a thing.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

That's why - register at SourceForge.net and publish your wish in the Open Discussion Forum of 7-Zip!

I found this thread and added a comment there, but I think it more likely that IrfanView would support viewing images in archives, than archive viewers would support viewing images. There are many archive formats, but ZIP support alone would be enough for most users.

@tlen If you don't use 7-Zip, you should. It is free, small, and produces much smaller archives than most other archivers. It is especially efficient when compressing folder trees with duplicated JPG files.

[wexwimpy]

I would like to be able to see pics inside zips/rar to

[impdf]

In the old thread I mentioned already that it would be the best to have a transparent solution for this.

Now I found a tool that's exactly doing this. It's called ZipMagic and I tested it with Irfanview (and others). ZipMagic is a virtual device driver for Windows which sits on top of the standard file device driver. For the user zip files are from now on just virtual folders.

So in Irfanview you can select a file from inside of a zip and scroll through the images like in a normal folder.

[dust of dust]

some weeks ago i searched through the forum but didn't find anything about cbr or cbz. i wanted to ask it in the forum but was not able to register because of the captcha. so i emailed Irfan Skiljan directly to suggest the support of cbr and cbz.

his answer:

ja, so ein plugin ist geplant, vielleicht bald ;-)

means: yes, such a plugin is planned, maybe soon.

what is this fileformat "Comic Book Archive file"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Book_Archive_file

Comic Book Archive file or ComicBook Reader File is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, especially comic books
....
ComicBook Reader File Filename extension .cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cba, .cb7 (containers)
Internet media type application/x-cbr
Type of format Multimedia, archive file

The files may be opened using the appropriate compression program simply by changing the file extension, depending on the file format:

* .cbr →.rar
* .cbz →.zip

Rare:

* .cb7 →.7z
* .cbt →.tar
* .cba →.ace

Comic Book Archive files usually consist of a series of image files, typically PNG or JPEG files. Occasionally GIF, BMP, and TIFF files are seen.

Advantages of these file formats include simplified file viewing and maintenance.

http://www.zcultfm.com/~comic/wiki/index.php/Comic_Viewers

specifically geared to reading digital comics

best regards

[winterwolf]

Reading inside ZIP and RAR

Does the ability to read inside compress file like ZIP, RAR,... could be possible? IS that something that can be added. Witch would open the thumbnails window with the content of the compressed file.

[MüNkEy]

I think this would be a very useful feature. I have lots high resolution photo sets (Most of which are over 1GB in size). Because of the size I keep them RARed. It's a pain to have to extract an entire archive just to find one file in a set.

The easiest way of doing this to me is to temporarily extract the archive. Then from that, gather all the meta-data and generate thumbnails for each file in the archive, then put that information to a file. That file generated would have to be linked to the RAR and interpreted by Infraview. Process could be set to only occur if a file for the archive being accessed doesn't exist or the archive has been modified.

I'm curious about how this plugin would handle various encryption features and passwords.

In theory it seems possible. I would get to writing a plugin, but I don't know much about infra-view. I have it, and use it sometimes, but I don't like the lack of control customization. I just joined this forum because I was looking for this type of feature on google and found it here.

If anyone has any good information/links to plugin development please tell me. I'm also willing to help (in any way that I can) any current development on this plugin (depending on the programming language used).

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't see what the advantage is of keeping photos in archives (except for backup purposes).

• They don't compress much, if at all. If you're storing a lessless format like TIF, then use PNG instead because compression is better.
• Access is slower and less convenient
• You could lose the whole lot if the archive gets corrupted.

To be frank, this feature request is a pipe dream. You can open any file from an archive in your default image viewer by double-clicking. For fastest possible and most convenient browsing, don't archive images.

[MüNkEy]

To be frank, this feature request is a pipe dream. You can open any file from an archive in your default image viewer by double-clicking. For fastest possible and most convenient browsing, don't archive images.

I know you think it doesn't make much of a difference, but the fact remains that this would be an increadibly usefull feature for a lot of people. I do agree with you on many things, PNG is a great format that can be Ultra-Compressed (With a program like PNGGauntlet) and remain in perfect quality. It is deffinately more "convienent" to have images unarchived, but that is true with pretty much everything. Corruption is always a concern, but it is still rare if you have a quality hard drive and maintain it. I would reccomend backing up everything important to you on safe drive/server to everyone.

I have located an open source program (written in C#) that will open open and display the contents of thumbs.db (file names and thumbnails). I think it entirely within the realm of possibility to write this feature into a plugin (The writer will let you do just about everything with the source).

The first version of the plugin would have to be able to open and display the contents of an archive (Just file names and general stuff). If it would find a file named "Thumbs.db", it have to be able to extract it, read it, match the file names to the ones in the archive, and display the thumbnails accordingly.

The 2nd version should have the ability to generate a thumbs.db if one is not found. This could be done by temporarily extracting all the thumbnailable files (by extension), generating a thumbs.db (or other), and using it for that directory in the archive. One of the main problems with this is that it would either require adding thumbs.db to your archive (Some people would't want that for various reasons), or loading it (or an equivalent from another location and linking it to the correct directory in the correct archive.

The Thumb.db Viewer I mentioned earlier can be found here:

http://www.itsamples.com/software/tdv.html

Source Code: http://www.itsamples.com/pub/ThumbViewersrc.zip

• You are allowed to include the source code in any product (commercial, shareware, freeware or otherwise) when your product is released in binary form.
• You are allowed to modify the source code in any way you want except you cannot modify the copyright details at the top of each module.
• If you want to distribute source code with your application, then you are only allowed to distribute versions released by the author.

If you find code to be particularly valuable, then consider sending a brief thank you note to the email address in the code comments.

There is also another open source program called "Vinetto". This one is a command line application witten in Python and has the ability to read the metadata and extract thumbnails from thumbs.db (although it doesn't write the file names to the thumbs).
It's source can be found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vinetto/

I would love to get started on development, but I have extremely limited C# experience, and I have no experience writing Infraview plugins. If anyone wants to help, reply or PM me.

[miyagiCE]

Hats off to zzenn for reviving this feature request. Having seen the other thread, and the way it went downhill (for no apparent reason), I was just about to create a new request of my own, but then I saw this.

I've been using IrfanView for years now, and the lack of compressed archive support (read: browsing images in them, not opening each manually) has been frustrating me since my personal day-one. It is literally the only thing I've ever missed from this excellent piece of software.

So, as just another user, I'm here to raise my voice. I'm sure countless other individuals in these forums would welcome this feature, not even beginning to count the anonymous masses out there that are using this program on a daily routine.


Thank you MüNkEy for expressing interest in writing a plugin for the community.

[winterwolf]

I don't see what the advantage is of keeping photos in archives (except for backup purposes).

• They don't compress much, if at all. If you're storing a lessless format like TIF, then use PNG instead because compression is better.

I notice that RARed BMP (specialy when using solid-RAR), I get more compression than PNG. I take lots of screenshots and i like to use BMP has original version since with JPG there's quality lost.

And with RAR (and ZIP) you can add password to protect your file, I don't usualy use password, exept for online backup to file storage service.

Also when RARing (or ZIPing) lots of files, you prevent the MFT (Master File Table) from exanding too much and eat you hard drive space.

[ChuckE]

I think this would be a very useful feature. I have lots high resolution photo sets (Most of which are over 1GB in size). Because of the size I keep them RARed. It's a pain to have to extract an entire archive just to find one file in a set.

If you are thinking that if IrfanView could peer inside compressed files of image sets might speed something up for you is just not going to happen. To view the images inside a compressed file, the application is still have to go through the process of uncompressing. Typically most compression tools just extract all the contents into a hidden temporary location, and bring the one up to your viewing application. You are not going to save any time in going through groups of 1GB (!!!) of combined images? what do you think you are saving, space? I don't think so; time? definitely not.

Try this for a test. Use several different 1GB RARed image sets, and without extracting the images, just open each set, one after the other (closing each before going to the next) and open one image in a set. Don't extract the image, just view it from within the RAR tool you have. See how long it takes to go from one image of one set to the next set, to the next set.

Here is what I am trying to show you an example of: while the RAR set is not being extracted in the direct sense, it really is still going through all the effort of uncompressing, in that hidden space.

If you do what I described, and you see that the time of opening a RAR file is still somewhat slow for such large files, you may realize that there is no real "magic speed up" to putting the ability to view inside of RAR and ZIP files into IrfanView.

It may be convenient, but no big time savings.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I notice that RARed BMP (specialy when using solid-RAR), I get more compression than PNG. I take lots of screenshots and i like to use BMP has original version since with JPG there's quality lost.

I noticed when trying to view inside a solid archive of just 80 MBytes that it took about 7 seconds to view one file.

Clearly, using solid archives of 1 Gbyte is not a viable option for browsing images. The entire archive would need to be decompressed into memory to view the images. Even if your PC had plenty of RAM to spare it would still take several minutes to view one file.

Sorry, but this feature request is a lame duck. There are so many caveats that it just could not be relied on to work.