PREFACE: WORKS IN WINDOWS, BUT NOT TESTED ON A MAC YET!

Unless you didn't explicitly check this in the "Preferences", Poser will save it's files uncompressed, as ASCII text.
Of course this results in -very- large files.

The advantage however is that you can open them anytime, in any text editor of your choice.

But today I've got problems because my 2 TB drive was full to the brim, and this made me think again.

Because of various reasons I don't trust the Windows full drive compression, so that was not an option.
Instead, I opted for compression "per file".

Almost 95% of the files on the drive are Poser files, and we sometimes forget that Poser also can save compressed files.
It does this in the well-known "gzip" format and the files can be unzipped by any archiving software like WinZip, WinRar, or 7Z.

Also, my beloved "PoserFileEditor" by D3D can read and save them without problems.

So this was the way to go!

In theory, you could manually "zip" already existing Poser files by using one of the programs mentioned above, but that would be a hell of a lot of work.
I remembered faintly that there was a Python tool in Poser whose name was promising, and indeed there it was:

compressPoserFiles.py
It's in your standard Poser menu: >Scripts > Utility

I tried it, and whaddaya think:

It can compress all the Poser files in any folder (and even it's subfolders!) in one go.
Just select the parent folder and run the script.:)
Tick the "delete source files" box once you've ran a test that this script really works and you get usable files.
Later this will spare you the extra work of manually deleting the source files.

I just compressed the files in a single folder:
Initially it contained thirty .pz3 files, and the folder was 7.08 GB.
After compression there are just 1.26 GB left! [cool]

Unfortunately, the script is slow, and you can't work with Poser while it's running.

But I think I'll eat that, and my HD will have a lot of work to do in the next days.

Tonight it'll have to chew on a 224 GB folder with an estimated 800 .pz3 files.
Let's see how it goes...

EDIT:
The script stopped working at some time during the night after having crunched almost 90 GB.
The last file it was compressing was left as .pz3, and the .pzz was incomplete.
Whether the script overheated or blew a gasket , I don't know.

I've now resorted to move smaller chunks of ~50 GB to a dedicated folder for compression and move them back after that.

Zitat

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Running the script is dead simple:

You'll get a UI window where you can browse for a folder who's content is to be compressed.
All Poser files in that folder and it's subfolders will be compressed.

Tick "Delete original files after compressing" so you mustn't hunt for the remaining uncompressed files yourself.
You can also tick whether you want to Compress geometry files (.obj) too.
I would NOT suggest that because it makes it harder to open the objects in other programs which can't read the .obz format.

And here's a little trick:
If you want to keep the original dates of the files, open the Python script with a text editor.
The script "compressPoserFiles" is in your Poser program folder:
"Poser {whatever}RuntimePythonposerScriptsScriptsMenuOtherUtility"

The script is not very large.
Look in line 25:
keepModificationDates = 0
Set this to 1 and save the modified script.

That's all.

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EDIT II:

WARNING:

The script CAN NOT delete original files which are "Read-Only"!
It throws a warning line in the "log" window, but that's all.
So better make sure all your files are NOT "Read-Only":
Run a search for, let's say ".pz3" files.
In the list of found files, hit [CTRL]-[A] to select them all, then right click for "Properties". Click the "Read-Only" box until it is blank white.

ALSO
know that while the script is running Poser is "out of action" (e.g.: "...not responding...)
DO NOT close Poser nor the script window!
Instead, have a cup of tea or what else and wait until the script has finished and shows the log text!


K