Torrentzip

In Pleasuredome, the abbreviation "TZ" on a torrent name indicates that the zips in the torrent are torrentzipped.

Torrentzip.NET is a much better and faster compatible alternative to Torrentzip.

What is torrentzipping
Different computers, when compressing exactly the same files to a ZIP archive, may create ZIPs archives that are slightly different.

Torrentzip is special: it creates exactly the same ZIP in any computer when the original files are the same.

Most torrents in Pleasuredome were created with archives that were torrentzipped.

That's why you have to torrentzip your ZIPs to join a torrent at a higher percentage of completion.

How to use
Torrentzip is distributed as a binary, so you don't install it, you simply unzip it to a folder.

Torrentzip recompresses all ZIP archives of the folder you specify and its subfolders.

If you specify a ZIP, only the specified ZIP will be torrentzipped.

Dropping the folder to the torrentzip binary is the easiest way of using it.

Another way is using the command processor. Examples:

If there's any error on the torrentzipping process, a file with the error log will be created on the same folder where the torrentzip binary is.

Known problem
When a  archive contains files with non-standard characters in the file names, the recompressed archive will have corrupted file names inside.

This is not a problem if the torrent contains the torrentzipped archives left the way torrentzip recompressed them because the files will match properly.

Additional information
When torrentzip recompresses a ZIP archive it adds a special comment to the ZIP archive itself.

The comment can be seen with proper compression software. The image below is an example with WinRAR:



On the image,  has the comment , which is like a hash: it is used by Torrentzip to identify if the ZIP was changed by other software.

If you attempt to torrentzip a ZIP that wasn't modified since the last time it was torrentzipped, Torrentzip will skip the torrentzipping process for that ZIP, which means a lot of time is saved.

Be careful, when you see a ZIP archive with torrentzip's typical comment, it means that that ZIP was torrentzipped at least once, but you can't say if the ZIP is torrentzipped now. The only way to know if that ZIP is torrentzipped is torrentzipping it: if the torrentzipping process is skipped, the file was already torrentzipped.

Another interesting fact is that all files when recompressed have their "last modified" timestamp set to 24 December 1996 at 11:32 PM. Some old games in torrents like eXoDOS and Win3xO rely on file timestamps as copy protection measures and because of that these torrents are not torrentzipped.

Applications that use Torrentzip

 * DrizzleZip
 * RomVault
 * TorrentCheck
 * Torrentzip.NET

Reference

 * Torrentzip in SourceForge