NSZ is an open source MIT licensed python script to lossless compress/decompress NSP files in order to save a lot of storage while all NCA files keep their exact same hash. The NSZ file format for compressed Nintendo Switch games is already widely adopted and supported by popular homebrews like Awoo-Installer, GoldBricks, OG Tinfoil, Tinfoil, Lithium and SX Installer 3.00.
Currently it improves size, speed and bandwidth used for storing and transferring NSZ files while still leading to the same size when installed but integration into Yuzu and CFW to directly play compressed games is planned. NSZ's developments started by blawar based on the idea of nsZip and its NSPZ/XCIZ file format which unfortunately was too complex to be implemented by homebrew developers. I very soon took over his project and am closely working together with all homebrew developers interested in the NSZ format.
How to install:
Put dumped prod.keys to %userprofile%/.switch, install python, execute "pip install nsz" and use "nsz" like every other cmd command.
You can get the latest release of NSZ under https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz/releases
To read the readme and take a look at its source code visit https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz
Results how well NSZ performs: https://gbatemp.net/threads/nsz-title-compression-results.549831/
An easy to use tool for NSZ compression: https://github.com/julesontheroad/NSC_BUILDER
Anoter tool for NSZ compression: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ryjin-a-nsz-converter-mod.550174/
Here some screenshots of the GUI:
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Mainscreen.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Settings.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Advanced.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/FolderBrowser.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/About.png
Changelog:
NSZ 4.5.0:
NSZ 4.3.0:
NSZ 4.2.1:
NSZ 4.2.0:
NSZ 4.1.0:
After almost 2 years there finally is a new stable release of NSZ! Sorry that it took so long. I will do stable releases more often in the future.
This version doesn't enforce the use of zstandard v0.15.2 - Please update your title-installer to the latest version to ensure it is compatible. Tinfoil, DBI, AtmoXL and TinWoo are confirmed to work. Some abandoned title-installers will still be broken. For more information see #120
NSZ 4.0.1:
Replaced PyInstaller with WinPython for the portable Windows release.
NSZ 4.0:
NSZ 3.1:
NSZ 3.0:
NSZ 2.1.1:
NSZ 2.1:
NSZ 2.0:
Differences between NSZ and NSPZ:
NSZ/XCZ:
- GitHub Project: https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz
- Uses solid compression by default. Block compression can be enabled using the -B option. Block compression will be the default for XCZ
- Decrypts all sections while keeping the first 0x4000 bytes encrypted. Puts information needed to encrypt inside the header.
- Deleted NDV0 fragments as they have no use for end users as they only exist to save CDN bandwidth
- Already widely used. Supported by Tinfoil, SX Installer v3.0.0 and probably a lot of other software in the future
NSPZ/XCIZ:
- GitHub Project: https://github.com/nicoboss/nsZip
- Always uses Block compression allowing random read access to play compressed games in the future
- Decrypts the whole NCA
- Trims NDV0 fragments to their header and reconstructs them
- Only supported by nsZip and unfortunately doesn't really have a future
Currently it improves size, speed and bandwidth used for storing and transferring NSZ files while still leading to the same size when installed but integration into Yuzu and CFW to directly play compressed games is planned. NSZ's developments started by blawar based on the idea of nsZip and its NSPZ/XCIZ file format which unfortunately was too complex to be implemented by homebrew developers. I very soon took over his project and am closely working together with all homebrew developers interested in the NSZ format.
How to install:
Put dumped prod.keys to %userprofile%/.switch, install python, execute "pip install nsz" and use "nsz" like every other cmd command.
You can get the latest release of NSZ under https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz/releases
To read the readme and take a look at its source code visit https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz
Results how well NSZ performs: https://gbatemp.net/threads/nsz-title-compression-results.549831/
An easy to use tool for NSZ compression: https://github.com/julesontheroad/NSC_BUILDER
Anoter tool for NSZ compression: https://gbatemp.net/threads/ryjin-a-nsz-converter-mod.550174/
Here some screenshots of the GUI:
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Mainscreen.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Settings.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/Advanced.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/FolderBrowser.png
http://www.nicobosshard.ch/nsz/NSZ_GUI/About.png
Changelog:
NSZ 4.5.0:
- Implemented bit-identical FileEntryTable padding recreation
- The size of FileEntryTable including any non-standard zero padding at the end is kept
- The FileEntryTable size is kept even if NDV0 files got removed as they are by default if --keep-delta isn't specified.
- The padding at the end of FileEntryTable will increase in this case
- Use --remove-padding if you don't want to keep the FileEntryTable size and instead make it the lowest possible size according to the no-
intro standard. Keep in mind that if your input is already no-intro compliant this option is not needed. - This fixes rare cases of non-standard NSP files not being able to be bit identically recreated due to the removal of non-standard FileEntryTable zero padding as reported by @nitro322
- Android CLI support
- To make NSZ Android compatible all uses of shared memory and locks had to be replaced with Android compatible alternatives
- How to install NSZ on Android
- Install "Pydroid 3" and the "Pydroid repository plugin" from the Play Store
- Open "Pydroid 3" and navigate to "Pip"
- Enter "nsz" and unselect "use prebuild" then press install
- Navigate to "Terminal" to use the "nsz" command
- The first time it will tell you where to copy your prod.keys which you should do using the "cp" command
- Use any command line arguments you want like "nsz -D file.nsz" to decompress your game
- Fixed #134 (OverflowError: can't convert negative int to unsigned)
- This was fixed inside #135 (Removal of stringTable padding)
- NSP/NSZ files with a missing stringTable padding are now handled properly
- This fixes some rare edge cases where bit-identical PFS0 recreation silently failed
- Updated all libraries inside the portable Windows version
NSZ 4.3.0:
- Bit-identical PFS0 recreation to comply with the no-intro standard
- The hash of the original NSP before compression and the hash of the NSP resulting from decompressing the NSZ will match as they are bit-identical.
- Use the newly introduced --remove-padding option to make existing NSP/NSZ files nxdumptool/no-intro compliant.
- Use the newly introduced --keep-delta option to keep all useless delta fragments (NDV0) during compression so the NSP (PFS0) can be recreated bit-identical during decompression.
- PFS0 hash verification is now part of the --verify process. --verify now requires --keep-delta when used during compression or it will detect removed NDV0 fragments as errors. Use --quick-verify to skip the PFS0 hash verification. --quick-verify only verifies NCA hashes and so does not require --keep-delta when used during compression. For compatibility reasons --quick-verify will be automatically used instead when specifying --verify without --keep-delta to match the command line argument and verification behavior of previous NSZ versions.
- This fixes #98, fixes #101 and fixes #116
- Added console output warning about missing and invalid keys
- Added support for pyinstaller as discussed in #119 (pyinstaller builds for macOS)
- Added crc32 hash of master_key_0f. Thanks to @drizzt for adding it!
NSZ 4.2.1:
- Implemented support for zStandard long distance mode inside the GUI.
=> This fixes an issue that causes NSZ to crash when trying to compress using the GUI - Close GUI window once the NSZ action got started. Not doing so was really bad design.
NSZ 4.2.0:
- Resolved title-intaller compatibility with python-zstandard versions later than 0.15.2. NSZ files compressed with modern zstd versions are confirmed to work on the latest Tinfoil, DBI, AtmoXL and TinWoo. Some abandoned title-installer who havn't updated will still be broken. See #120 (zstandard versions newer than 0.15.2 break compatibility with all title installers except DBI) for more information.
- Fixed a mistake in the FileExistingChecks code caused by specifying the wrong target file extension when calling CreateTargetDict. This fixes #123 (XCZ Source File Deleted before decompressing on the same output folder as original)
- Fixed NSP and resulting NSZ will be deleted using --rm-source when solid compression fails. This fixes #124 (NSP and resulting NSZ will be deleted using --rm-source when solid compression fails)
- Added crc32 hash of master_key_0e. Thanks to @16BitWonder for adding it!
- Implemented option to enable zStandard long distance mode for even better compression as requested in #117 (Add support for the zStandard long distance mode)
- Followed the python-zstandard author's feedback regarding flushing to fix all flushing related imperfections
- Fixed "'Counter' object has no attribute 'write'" error when using --create. This fixes #118 (--create is broken)
- Implemented directory expansion support for --create and improved documentation. This closes #119 (The syntax for --create is stupid and the documentation bad)
- Clarified the plaintext rule of the NSZ file format block compression extension as discussed in #120
NSZ 4.1.0:
After almost 2 years there finally is a new stable release of NSZ! Sorry that it took so long. I will do stable releases more often in the future.
This version doesn't enforce the use of zstandard v0.15.2 - Please update your title-installer to the latest version to ensure it is compatible. Tinfoil, DBI, AtmoXL and TinWoo are confirmed to work. Some abandoned title-installers will still be broken. For more information see #120
- Fixed #84 [GUI] broken input file Selection (Drag & Drop still works). This also fixes #102
- Fixed undupe not deleting any files, added undupe support for NSX (NSP files without titlekeys) and fixed not whitelisting the first occurrence but undupe-whitelist any other occurrence not deleting the first occurrence
- Implemented --undupe-rename
- Adopted this tool to the standard by also skipping the content meta xml and improved the skipping message to follow the print standard
- Fixed Verify not throwing an exemption when verification fails
- Implemented --alwaysParseCnmt
- Handle NSZ verification errors by deleting the corrupted NSZ
- When verifying, show "Verifying" instead of "Compressing" in progressbars
- Implemented --undupe-hardlink. Booth --undupe-hardlink and --undupe-rename now uses the output folder as output location.
- Fixed #87: nsz doesn’t respect -o flag when decompressing
- Add CRC-hash for new master keys 0b, 0c and 0d.
- open file only for reading with 'info' command
- set executable bit
- Kivy finally fixed its Linux issues so we can make installing nsz as easy as never before
- Read masterKeyRevision from either of two positions to resolve some edge cases with strange games
- Updated dependencies in setup.py to match requirements.txt/requirements-gui.txt
- There apparently are v0 DLCs so let's remove the safety check that prevents v0 titles to be deleted if there is an update of that exact titleId. The original purpose of this safety check was to protect base titles in case there is a titleID naming issue but is very unlikely to ever be needed. This fixes #105
- Updated packages inside setup.py to match the new setup.py standard
NSZ 4.0.1:
Replaced PyInstaller with WinPython for the portable Windows release.
- I spent a lot of time deleting every piece of the python standard library not required to run nsz in order to save storage and speed up extraction time by having less files to extract.
- This was done because PyInstaller triggered false positive detections on Windows Defender as reported in #82
- Tested on Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019
NSZ 4.0:
- Implemented Drag & Drop support as requested in #51
- Implemented CRC32 key validation and added support for future masterkeys
- Fixed the issue of master_key_0a not being recognized
- Added CRC32 for master_key_0a
- Windows 7 support for Windows builds
- Improved GUI font size scaling
- Set the NSZ GUI window to be TopMost (always on top) on Windows so Drag & Drop gets much more convenient
- Added a setting to specify if the Kivy window should be always on top or not
- XCI/XCZ finally extracts to folders containing the NCA/NCZ files instead of HFS0 partition dumps
- Fixed a major XCI compatibility bug by implementing compression/decompression support for NCA files with the first section having a smaller or larger offset then 0x4000. This fixes #49
- Added NSPZ (nsZip legacy file format) extraction support
- Make GUI an optional install
- Fixed #59 ncz decompression is not working
- Cleaned up imports for nsz package
- Stop bar manager to avoid broken shells
- Added pywin32 as GUI dependency for Windows. This fixes #56
- Fixed BlockDecompressorReader.seek with whence = 2 (seek relative to the file's end). This fixes #64
- Starting nsz.py from within a different working directory finally works
- Fixes the current Azure Pipeline issue
- Added solid decompression, block decompression, solid compression and block compression tests to azure-pipelines.yml
- Made NSZ new returning with error code 1 if there are any exceptions
- Fixed deadlock in BlockCompressor.py
- Highly improved block decompression speed by caching the current block
- Added Visual Studio 2019 Python Project
- Added titleId and version to the file list and highly improved its design
- The SelectableLabel items inside the game list now properly scales its height according to the available width and text length of the file path. This fixes #50
- Added a multi-language supporting open source font for #61
- Implemented input folder as output folder by default for #61
- Waiting for Enter before exit when started over GUI so errors and console output can be seen before it closes for #74
- Fixed install failing on Kubuntu 20.04 and a lot of other modern Linux distributions by improving install_linux.sh for #75
- Removed code that manipulated the XCI header size for absolutely no reason which fixes #77
- Improved decompression speed by 400% by heavily reducing the amount of performance intensive status bar refresh calls
- The decision if the last block should be decompressed or copied now matches the file format specifications by comparing the decompressed block size of that specific block with its compressed size. This issue was caused by missing the (unlikely) edge case that the last block can be larger when compressed without exceeding the general block size. This fixes #79
- Improved BlockCompression performance and overall CPU usage by reducing the amount of performance intensive status bar refresh calls.
- Ensure that the line right to the curser is clean when the application terminates
- Implemented undupe, undupe-dryrun, undupe-prioritylist, undupe-whitelist and undupe-old-versions to remove duplicate games
- Highly improved the missing prod.keys/keys.txt error message by not showing the stack trace and waiting for a user input before exiting
- Highly improved README.md
- General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
NSZ 3.1:
- Fixed broken decompression in v3.0.0 due to an optional argument not marked as such and an outdated file extension comparison
- Allow the selection of individual files inside the OpenFileDialog
- Made it visible which drive is currently selected inside the OpenFileDialog and SaveFileDialog
- Replaced the background_down image with the background_normal one as it looks ugly inside the FileDialogs
- Removed SaveFileDialog as its unused and a pain to maintain
- Highly improved the OpenFileDialog by allowing switching between the icon and list layout
- Added filter to the OpenFileDialog so it only displays nsp, nsz, xci, xcz and ncz files
- No longer showing the empty placeholder for the device selection on non-Windows platforms an made per OpenFileDialog argument specifiable file filters possible
- Finally enabled the selection of folders and selecting multiple items at the same time
- Automatically creating the empty gui folder required for settings to be saved in nsz portable which is exactly the fix manually applied to nsz_v3.0.0_hotfix1_win64_portable.zip
- Fixed the warnings that appeared in the console on every GUI launch
- Made the file browser view mode buttons in the same design as the Windows device selection buttons
- Implemented deletion of selected GameList items using the delete or backspace key
- Highly improved the GameList item selection and deletion
- Vixed verification only mode not executing when called from GUI
- Set the default amount of threads for solid compression to 3 while keeping the number of logical cores the default for block compression because the majority is now using task parallelization for solid compression
- Fixed: AttributeError: 'RootWidget' object has no attribute 'verify'
- Dirty fixed Kivy throwing "Error in sys.excepthook" during shutdown if the amount of RecycleView data was ever decreasing
- I tried multiple hours fixing this the proper way without success. I also tried removing all children what makes it to throw the same exception without even decreasing the amount of data and tried filling it with dummy data on shutdown in self.rootWidget.gameList.recycleView.shutdown() which didn’t worked because it’s already too late to spawn everything needed to avoid this exception.
- Improved the wording of the error summary
- Updated testing and deployment scripts
- Fixed orphan processes remaining after the main process terminated after block compressing a very short task resulting in the orphan processes spamming "AttributeError: 'ForkAwareLocal' object has no attribute 'connection'" exceptions
- Fixed NSZ GUI icon not showing
- General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
NSZ 3.0:
- GUI:
- Contains all functions available using command line arguments
- XCZ support
- Block compressed (default)
- Solid compressed
- XCZ to XCI decompression
- Implemented task parallel solid compression. See --multi
- Implemented titlekey extraction with titlekeys.txt and titledb support. See --titlekeys
- Added regex support to the extract option to allow the user to specify exactly which files should be extracted from the container. See --extractregex
- NCZ decompression directly in nsz #38
- Updated IndependentNczDecompressor to the latest version inside nsz
- Fully replace tqdm with enlighten
- Implemented multithreaded multiple process bars communication system for solid compression and verification while avoiding stdout race conditions
- Endless decompression/verification on a few block compressed games #25
- Fixed a major bug causing the space between block compressed NCZ files to be filled up with 0x00 to fit their uncompressed size
- Major Scripts Cleanup
- Fixed NSZ Decompressor TQDM Progress Bar
- Fixed --rm-old-version
- fixed path bug with decompression
- Removed pycryptodome v3.9.0 restriction as its latest v3.9.3 works fine
- Improved installation guide
- Fixed an exception that could occur when trying to receive keys under special circumstances during debugging
- Fixed a major bug inside the enhanced file existing check leading to files with the same name as a file already existing inside the output directory being overwritten without specifying this behavior using the –overwrite command line argument. This bug was cause by comparing the output file path instead of the output filename with existing filenames.
- Made nsz pip package building Kivy compatible
- Switched from Nuitka to PyInstaller due to Kivy compatibility
- Changed how --extract and --verify arguments are handled internally
- Set up CI with Azure Pipelines using self-hosted server
- Fully switched to pathlib. This fixes #41 and a lot of other file path related issues
- Fixed Enhanced File Existing Check. Adapting to pathlib and finally fixing --overwrite and --rm-old-version
- Improved exception handling related to outdated keys.txt which fixes issue #29 and #40
- General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
NSZ 2.1.1:
- Fixed block compression for pip and Nuitka (nsz_win64_portable) by using sys.argv[0] instead of __main__.__file__ so threads no longer need to be prevented from initializing their own nut environment
- Made installation instructions easier to see and understand
- Scripts to automate testing and publishing
NSZ 2.1:
- 98 commits worth of changes since v2.0
- Added pip support
- Added Nuitka standalone windows build support
- Enhanced File Existing Check #20
- Skip already compressed/decompressed files by default
- --overwrite
- --rm-old-version
- Extracting TitleIDs and Versions from filename if possible (#17 and #19)
- The titleID checking is now immensely faster than when extracting from Cnmt
- --parseCnmt to get TitleID/version from Cnmt if not extractable from filename
- Otherwise it falls back to simple filename checking which is much faster
- Batch error handling with tracebacks (#16)
- Some debugging codes to find out erroneous files
- Prevent batch process raising errors
- Batch error handling with tracebacks
- The --thread option now works even for solid compression however the progress bar still has some visual glitches
- NSP/NSZ file hash verification now uses the hashes inside Cnmt instead of the nca filename (#22)
- Fixed decompression memory leak (#21)
- The memory leak only occurs for dctx.stream_reader and was fixed by switching to the simple decompressing API which makes more sense for block decompression anyways
- Improved pageReadSize calculation speed by using math instead of a while loop
- Added option --remove-source that deletes the source file after compression or decompression (#24)
- For this we finally properly closed file containers too
- Fix huge compression memory leak (#13)
- Fixed wrong working directory when starting nut.py from a different directory (#18)
- Improved exception handling during TitleID/Version extraction
- Added support for prod.keys
- Reorganized file structure
- Fixed keys.txt path to always be the folder containing nsz.py
- Fixed default thread amount to be cpu_count()
- Implemented python version checking to prevent python from showing the users confusing compatibility related exceptions
- Compatible and tested with Python 3.6 and later
- General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
NSZ 2.0:
- Fully implemented block compression which can be enabled using the --block option
- Supports for random read access on compressed files
- Highly multithreaded compression when block compressing
- Technically supports playing compressed games in the future
- Current title installers do not support this yet
- Comes with a low compression ratio cost
- Implemented NSP/NSZ file hash verification
- Overwrite/Duplicate protection
- Reorganized the project's folder structure and enhanced code readability
- Improved user feedback in form of better understandable messages and errors
- Fixed a lot of bugs and non-working features
- Added MIT License so all code inside this project can be used for whatever you like
- General system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience.
- Scripts to compress and decompress NSZ files.
Differences between NSZ and NSPZ:
NSZ/XCZ:
- GitHub Project: https://github.com/nicoboss/nsz
- Uses solid compression by default. Block compression can be enabled using the -B option. Block compression will be the default for XCZ
- Decrypts all sections while keeping the first 0x4000 bytes encrypted. Puts information needed to encrypt inside the header.
- Deleted NDV0 fragments as they have no use for end users as they only exist to save CDN bandwidth
- Already widely used. Supported by Tinfoil, SX Installer v3.0.0 and probably a lot of other software in the future
NSPZ/XCIZ:
- GitHub Project: https://github.com/nicoboss/nsZip
- Always uses Block compression allowing random read access to play compressed games in the future
- Decrypts the whole NCA
- Trims NDV0 fragments to their header and reconstructs them
- Only supported by nsZip and unfortunately doesn't really have a future
Last edited by nicoboss,
