Need one app to trim, crop, menu, chapter and author to DVD... in batch!

[bhershey]

I'm in a transition with my media transfer business, I'm up to 100's of transfers a week and I need an application with production in mind. I used to take one captured file at a time in Pinnacle Studio 14, trim, crop, add menu and chapter points and render it to an image ready for DVD burning. If I could save each project to a batch file and kick it off at night and wake up to a folder full of iso files it would be PURRRRFECT! Pinnacle doesn't do batch.

How about TMPGEnc Authoring... it has batch, I can trim the files.. it has menus.. it's, it's.. wait, there's no crop feature.. I can't give videos to customers with irregular black borders. I could get the TMPGEnc Mastering program and batch trim and crop them for the first pass, then bring them into Authoring for pass 2, but that's two nights of computer time instead of the one that I'm looking for.

If anyone is doing this I would love to hear from you. My request is for one application to do what I want, and the ones I mentioned above are ALMOST there If nothing comes from this thread I'll start sending in feature requests to those two companies.. and then maybe... just maybe.

Brian

[videopoo]

Nope....nothing that will do all that

[Bjs]

Check the program your using and see if there is a setting "close" when it completes a project or job.

If so you can write a small autoit script which will automate the process.

Ie ... Load project 1 ... Author to folder A ... ProcessWaitClose() ... Load project 2 ... Author to folder B ... ProcessWaitClose() ... and so on.

You still have to do all the other process's manually as it's likely no two video's will be exactly the same but it should run all the conversions and authoring in one long run

[bhershey]

Perfect answer Bjs! I'm glad I'm a programmer too. I can batch author Pinnacle Studio now.. are you serious? lol

Here is a AutoIt test script that waits for the Pinnacle Studo 14 image build to complete...

While 1
$var = ControlGetText("[CLASS:Studio 14]", "", "Afx:00400000:b6")
Sleep(1000)
If $var = "Disc image ge" Then
MsgBox(0,"yeah!!","DID IT!")
ExitLoop
EndIf
WEnd

So basically I'll save all the project files to one folder, then start Pinnacle and goto the "Make Movie" tab, set the DVD parameters, then start the script, which will use the FileFindNextFile function to loop through all the project files, the script will "File/Open Project" and enter the first project filename, click the "Create Image" button, then wait for the finish text, then continue to the next project file.

Oh my, this is sweet, thank you for the tip!!!

Brian

[bhershey]

I finished this AutoIt script and it's completely awesome... I can now bulk process Pinnacle Studio 14 project files directly to ISO files, ready to burn to DVD. Here it is in case anyone wants it. Just make all your projects, start Pinnacle and goto the "Make Movie" tab, then run the script, then sit back and let the $$ roll in

Setup a test run before using this on client files, I'm just sayin. ENJOY!

#Include <File.au3>
#Include <Array.au3>
;Batch Process in Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 14!
;This script will load each project in turn and "Create Image" in batch.
;Place all project files in the "&mypath" variable below.
;Pinnacle Studio must be in the 'Make Movie" tab.
;Name each project with a descriptive name.
;This was built and tested outputting to ISO file only.
;The ISO name will be the project name when complete.

$mypath="f:\clients\test"

$FileList=_FileListToArray("f:\clients\test", "*.stx")
If @Error=4 Then
MsgBox (0,"","No Files Found.")
Exit
EndIf

$num=$filelist[0]

For $lp = 1 to $num
WinWaitActive("Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection")
Send("!f")
Send("o")
WinWaitActive("Open")
Send($mypath & "\" & $filelist[$lp])
Send("{ENTER}")
Sleep(5000)
ControlClick("[CLASS:Studio 14]", "", "Button11")
Sleep(5000)
Send("!s")
While 1
$var = ControlGetText("[CLASS:Studio 14]", "", "Afx:00400000:b6")
Sleep(1000)
If $var = "Disc image ge" Then
ExitLoop
EndIf
Wend
Next

MsgBox (0,"","All Projects built!")