Processing Large Folder Structures

[jfisher]

I am looking for suggestions on how to make my rules run more efficiently to process images buried inside a large folder structure.

The problem I have is that I have a less technical user that is uploading images through a synology app and needs a simple folder structure to navigate through and paste the image into each folder. Therefore, on my side I have hazel monitoring the whole Inventory folder looking for changes in the sub-folders. I am applying rules to

- rename the file based on the name of the enclosing folder
- sort the image into a folder called "Original"
- make a copy
- move it to the enclosing folder and sort into a folder called "Web"
- run an automator action to compress/optimize the image for online

My problem is my first rule to run rules on folder contents. If I leave it as simply Run Rules on Folder Contents it is quite slow and checked every folder even if there are no changes.

If I use Date Last Modified is after Date Last Matched is does not seem to catch everything because one of the enclosing folders further up did not change so the rule does not propagate down.

I know that you would ideally have a simple folder to watch and apply rules and move things into an unwatched folder but I cannot think of a way to have the folder structure in place to view and use it to rename files. Having things move all over the place, disappear here and appear here is confusing for the user.

What is the optimal way to set this up?

[Mr_Noodle]

Note that it will be resource intensive as you have Hazel checking a ton of files. Adding a condition to filter does not mean it magically can skip checking files. It still has to check everything to see if it matches the condition.

That all said, if you check the manual, there's a chapter on syncing files from one folder to another. The sample rule there has conditions which will match if anything under a folder has been modified.