Pictures / Movies 09.07.00
 
  Split and Join of large files / Programdescription  
 
 
  1. General
2. Tips


1. General
There are many reasons, sometimes to split large files. May be you want to save a large file, but the space of the disks is too small, or you want send a large file to a friend, but mailbox is too small, etc..
In the Internet are still older servers, which can not handle very large files, so you need to split them.
A very important reason is, if you want to post to newsgroups very large files like for example movies, to split them before. If you would post a large file about some hundred MB, anyone who want to get this file, needs for download some houres. But may be he get a "time out error", or the file was damaged on the way in Internet, so he need to download again some houres. If you post the large file in small parts, anyone who download these parts, must only download that file again, with which he has had problems. If not all small parts available on some newsservers, you need only to repost the missing parts.
So it is always better to post a large file in small parts.
In the newsgroups you will find some different file formats of splitted files like for example these:
*.arj and *.a01, *.a02, etc. files were splitted with "ARJ".
*.rar, *.r01, *.r02, etc. files were splitted with "RAR" (WinRAR)
*.001, *.002, *.003, etc. files were splitted with some other programs.
Some programs generates a *.000 part. In this part are stored informations about size and number of parts of the file, but you can join the parts also without the *.000 part. For splitted *.mpg (mpeg) files the most important part is the *.001 part. If there are few other parts missing, the movie will run nevertheless.
If you do not have all parts, Mastersplitter will join only the parts till the first missing part.
JadSplit is more powerfull than Mastersplitter, and JadSplit joins all parts you have, so you can view the movie although if there are some missing parts.



2. Tips:
If you have to split very large files, so you will get more than 999 parts, use a trick, if the program can not handle more than 999 parts. Split first the large file into two, three or more parts. Then split each part again. For example, you have a 900 MB file and want to split it into 500 kb parts. So split this file first into two parts of 450 MB. These parts are named now *.000, *.001 and *.002. The parts *.001 and *.002 you split into 500 kb parts. These parts are named now *.001.000, *.001.001, *.001.002 etc. and *.002.000, *.002.001, *.002.002 etc. At this way you can split every file in so many parts you want. To join these files, you joins first the both series of small files, and then you join the big files.

If you want to know first a little bit abaout a movie, before you download all files, download only the file with ending *.001. Rename this file (delete the point and the nummbers ".001"). Then you can view it. If it is to short, you can download some of the next parts, join this parts, then you can view a bit more of that movie.