Automator usage ideas

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While I'm waiting eagerly for Tiger to come out, I thought I'd start a thread for getting ideas on how Automator (hopefully) could be used.

A few that I've already thought of:
  • Getting a Grab screen capture directly as a jpeg, without having to bother with the tiff file.
  • Sending screen captures directly via email, without having to bother with manually saving the intermediate files to the local drive
  • Quicker uploading of files (i.e. fewer manual steps) to a website via FTP
 
Automated backups to external drives. Can do it with a cron tab and script but who wants to do that :p
 
If you're a higher edutcation student, you can get a membership to Apple's Developer section for free -- you won't get Tiger previews or any pre-release software, but you will have limited access to the resources available.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
If you're a higher edutcation student, you can get a membership to Apple's Developer section for free -- you won't get Tiger previews or any pre-release software, but you will have limited access to the resources available.
Click to expand...

Actually, anyone can get access for free...

What students get (for 99$ a year, not free) is monthly developer mailings with updated developer documentation, updated OS releases every ~6 months (and when a new version is released), and a one-time hardware discount. Practically a steal for the price... and worth the money.

Although, to get back on topic, one idea I have is creating a process to be a DivX Doctor for MPEG-4-compliant material... but not sure how I am supposed to achieve it in Quicktime...
 
-folder droplets (e.g. if files are placed in this folder, send them via FTP to this address)

-parsing of XML data from Final Cut

-top to bottom processing of media (e.g. we have a client that sends us monthly photos to add to their website. We currently have to add them to the database, color correct them, create multiple-sized thumbnails and then post. This could be a one click process with Automator)

-check for file/folder revision dates, if they haven't been revised in a year, send an alert to archive

-check for file permissions, if file is not fully read/write by anyone, change it (I personally cannot stand OS X's hyper-secure permissions), it's a constant PITA for our workgroup

-automatically add certain media types to Portfolio media database

-automatically retrieve photos extracted from my digital camera (placed in the Photos directory) and put them in my photo archive. My camera does not mount for some reason, so I have to use iPhoto to get the photos out. I then have to manually move the photos and delete the Data/Originals/Thumbs folders (another task for Automator) for archival, since I use Portfolio and not iPhoto.


Those are just a few. It seems I always have a want for Automator, but don't have the skills to program in Applescript. Can't wait for it.
 
mindbend said:
-automatically retrieve photos extracted from my digital camera (placed in the Photos directory) and put them in my photo archive. My camera does not mount for some reason, so I have to use iPhoto to get the photos out. I then have to manually move the photos and delete the Data/Originals/Thumbs folders (another task for Automator) for archival, since I use Portfolio and not iPhoto.
Click to expand...


Why use iPhoto? Try ImageCapture. It downloads the pictures to your ~/Pictures directory from which you can move to wherever you want.
 
Captain Code said:
Why use iPhoto? Try ImageCapture. It downloads the pictures to your ~/Pictures directory from which you can move to wherever you want.
Click to expand...

Plus, you can select which photos get downloaded...
 
re: Image Capture.

Cool. I did not know that. I'll give it a go. Can I set a preference to automatically launch ImageCapture when plugging in the camera?
 
I realize I am posting about 6 months into this thread, but I am geeked about Automator. I used Quickeys + Applescript for many years for all kinds of things, but with OS X QuicKeys completely destroyed their application (IMO). An app I had used for years was suddenly hard to use, unreliable and a pain. CE just blew it. Any way, I used to use Quickeys to open my mail and then paste it into Text edit and read it to me. It worked okay, but that was back in the old days before so much spam! One little QuicKey I really miss - paste special as unformatted text with one key stroke. Word makes this such a pain. More seriously I used QuicKeys and Applescript to set up automated tasks for a few people with disabilities. Hopefully Automator + Voiceover together will be far slicker.
 
I really don't know exactly how Automator works, or rather, how the user "tells" him to do this this way. I'm not a programmer, so I would really like it to be something similar to Actions in Photoshop. For those who aren't familiar with Photoshop, let me tell you it's really easy: basically, you just click on a "record" button, do whatever actions you want to be automated (for example, resize the pic to 50%, change mode to RGB, save in folder X as JPG and close picture) and that's it! next time you want this sequence to be applied, you just have to click on a "play" button!
I would really like if Automator was this simple, because I'm a dummy when it comes to programming... :D
 
Saving files for a website to a folder and uploading it to a web-server. (if i could get Finder FTP'ing working)
Taking images from photoshop and adding them to my gallery dir ( to be put into my flash gallery)

Out of interest is are the scripts transferable? For example the uploading idea, could that be saved in a file of some sort, and then given to some one else?

How hard is it to make them? drag and drop or textual based, any screen shots? if NDA permits.
 
this one is boring but,

open a quicktime mov and export as avi - batch style. Useful as After Effects can't render as avi on a mac and I often deliver projects to PC based clients who want avi's. Told you it was boring!

slightly more fun might be to export a picture of me sitting at me desk, hourly, with an iSight cam to see how much I age over the course of video project where I have to manually export loads of .mov's to .avi's!! (before I work out how to do that with automator)
 
I urge PC clients to get QuickTime anyway... If they have iTunes (many do) they've already got QT, anyway. But that's another topic, almost political. ;)
 
Does anybody know how to use the XML suite in Applescript ?
There is a new class in the "system events" application ("/System/Library/CoreServices/") called "XML file" but I could not azchive to use it without errors.
 
mindbend said:
-folder droplets (e.g. if files are placed in this folder, send them via FTP to this address)
Click to expand...

BADASS, I can't wait to get something like this working. So are you saying that finder will support writing on FTP's or is this utilizing some other utility or program?
 
There's ftp in Terminal, can use that AFAIK. Or install ncftp which can do even more. Basically, here's where CLI utilities will be good... The Finder still can't upload to FTP, it seems to me.
 
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