Automator

Here are some simple Automator actions I have made for myself.

ClearPipe

This Automator action just eats all input and does not output anything. This is especially useful when used in conjunction with variables, because unfortunately Get Value of Variable passes through all input in addition to the value of the variable itself, so more or less rendering the variable useless. This can easily be remedied by prepending ClearPipe to the Get Value of Variable action.

ClearPipe.action

Automator FFmpeg action

AutomatorFFmpeg action can be used to automate movie conversion tasks such as converting MTS files to mov or avi format.

This action can configure FFmpeg’s both vcodec and acodec options and specify output format. Output directory can be preset or, using variables as shown in the image, be configured at runtime.

Requirements:

• FFmpeg is not packaged with this action and must be installed separately
• If Growl and growlnotify binary are installed, this action makes use of those.

Read more of the internals at my blog.

AutomatorFFmpeg-1.3

Changelog:

v1.1:

• Preserve original dates

V1.3:

• fixed hanging when ffmpeg encountered error – conversion takes place in a subshell making errors recoverable
• Growl notification now shows output format

Mts2mp4 Finder service

Snow Leopard has a wonderful way to run Automator workflows – Finder Services. These are workflows that are bound to contextual menus and can be somewhat fine-tuned to the filetype.

Using the above AutomatorFFmpeg action, I put together a mts2mp4 service, which is run by right-clicking a selection of MTS files, it then asks for the output folder and sets to convert the MTS files into MP4 files.

MTS2MP4