it is possible to compress video as it is captured to disk. neither vidcap32 nor the osprey video capture driver perform video compression themselves. however, vidcap32 may be connected to external software-based compression modules.

    compression results in a much smaller capture file. the downside is that many types of compression are slower: you may have to reduce your frame rate in order to avoid dropping an excessive number of frames. with a “quick-compression” methods running on a fast machine, however, the extra processing time is slight enough that it is fully compensated for by the reduced time needed to write the more compact data to disk.

    when a compressor is enabled, video is passed from the osprey capture driver to the compressor, which then writes it to file. the compression dialog, accessed by the options-]compression menu item, allow you to select a compressor, or select no compression. the information below for ligos technology’s indeo compressor gives a detailed example of how to perform this task.

    note that the list of available compressors is different for each video color format selected in the osprey video capture driver’s control dialog. you should therefore select the color format you are using first, then select the compressor. otherwise, you may get an error message when you try to begin video capture.