1. Overview & Core Philosophy

OmniCompress Pro is an industrial-grade batch media compression application designed to eliminate cloud upload privacy risks, data caps, and recurring fees. Everything runs 100% locally on your machine with native GPU acceleration and automated background folder monitoring.

100% Offline Privacy

Hardware Encoded

MIT Licensed OSS

2. Complete Feature Breakdown (Free & OSS)

📸 Photos & Camera RAW

Native LibRaw integration supporting .ARW, .CR2, .CR3, .NEF, .DNG, .RAF, .ORF.
Rate-distortion mathematical bit-budget solver for exact target sizes (500 KB to 100 MB).
EXIF metadata, GPS coordinates, and color profiles preserved.
Uncapped resolution handling for 32,000+ pixel panoramic images.

🎬 4K/8K Video & Hardware Acceleration

NVIDIA NVENC (h264_nvenc, hevc_nvenc, av1_nvenc).
Apple Silicon VideoToolbox (h264_videotoolbox, hevc_videotoolbox).
Intel QuickSync (QSV), AMD AMF, and Linux VAAPI drivers.
Proportional Quality levels (Low, Medium, High, Extra High) and 2-pass bitrate targeting.

👁️ Background Folder Watcher Daemon

Kernel-level OS monitoring (ReadDirectoryChangesW, FSEvents, inotify) at < 0.1% idle CPU.
Windows Startup registry integration with 2-way Task Manager sync.
Continuous background service (backend/daemon_service.py) persists even when GUI is closed.
Desktop toast notifications with exact megabytes saved.

3. Quickstart & Installation

Clone & Run with Python:

git clone https://github.com/omnicompress/omnicompress.git
cd omnicompress
pip install -r requirements.txt
python run_desktop.py

Automated Setup for macOS & Linux:

chmod +x setup_mac_linux.sh
./setup_mac_linux.sh
./run_desktop.sh

6. Background Folder Watcher & OS Startup

OmniCompress Pro registers its background service with standard OS startup hooks so dropped files are automatically compressed without opening the user interface:

Windows 10 / 11:

Registry Key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Command: "OmniCompress-Pro.exe" --daemon

macOS:

LaunchAgent: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.omnicompress.daemon.plist

Linux:

XDG Autostart: ~/.config/autostart/omnicompress-daemon.desktop

8. REST API & WebSocket Reference

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/api/hardware`	Detects CPU cores, RAM, and GPU hardware encoders
POST	`/api/scan`	Scans and streams media files from directories
POST	`/api/compress/start`	Begins batch compression queue
POST	`/api/compress/cancel`	Instantly terminates all active jobs
POST	`/api/daemon/watch`	Registers and starts a watched folder
WS	`/ws`	Real-time WebSocket event broadcaster

9. Headless CLI Reference

# Compress single photo to 2 MB target size
python backend/cli.py photo -i photo.arw -o photo_opt.webp --target-size 2000

# Compress 4K video using GPU hardware acceleration
python backend/cli.py video -i 4k.mov -o 4k_compressed.mp4 --quality high --gpu

# Start standalone background watcher daemon
python backend/daemon_service.py