Not for the faint of heart
Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:54 amLoving Hazel for keeping my world is some semblance of order, but I've now got a project that I feel like it could handle but I haven't the slightest idea how to pull it off.
Ever since my son was born almost two years ago I've been been religiously off-loading the tons and tons of video I shoot from four different devices (all using SD cards) to a gigantic RAID array I have on a NAS server at home. I keep it organized by camera type and date added (I've been doing that manually from the beginning since Hazel is a relatively new addition). The problem is that 80% or more of the video was shot in AVCHD format which makes it nearly impossible to watch it without transcoding it.
What I'd like to do is use El Gato's Turbo H.264 HD to down-rez and transcode all the footage to something that my wife and I can browse through on our iPads or AppleTV or computers or whatever. Turbo H.264 has basic Applescript support, so I believe I can at least pass on instructions to convert and save various items from one folder to another folder. So far none of this is too complicated. However, my problem is that I want the new folder to have the same name as the folder the videos originally came from (so that I can always know where to find the original higher-rez version).
Part of the problem is, as you may guess, the AVCHD file structure is nuts. So, for example, my folder structure for the first clip shot with my Canon Vixia and copied to my hard drive on September 7th 2009 would look like this:
CANON_090907/PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00001.MTS
Turbo H.264 HD is able to parse this. So, theoretically, I could just send the whole "CANON_090907" folder to it and it should be able to find and convert just the video files. On the other side (i.e. where the transcoded videos are saved) I don't care about preserving the whole AVCHD file structure. All I care about is knowing that it came from "CANON_090907" or "NIKON_111210" or "IPHONE_100516", etc. So I'd like it to be contained in a new folder with that same name. Make sense?
The other problem that I encounter is that Turbo H.264 HD imposes it's own naming scheme on the clips as it outputs them - such that clip "00000.MTS" will become something like "Clip 1 - Aug 31, 2009 4:25:28 PM". Is there any conceivable way of resetting the names to match (or at least get the numbers from) the originals?
Anyway, I know this is a tall order. But I'm overwhelmed with the thought of doing it by hand. I, my wife and my little dude would be eternally grateful if someone could even get me started. I've got a crap-load of great memories just sitting there eating up drive space and never getting enjoyed.
Many thanks,
Eric
Ever since my son was born almost two years ago I've been been religiously off-loading the tons and tons of video I shoot from four different devices (all using SD cards) to a gigantic RAID array I have on a NAS server at home. I keep it organized by camera type and date added (I've been doing that manually from the beginning since Hazel is a relatively new addition). The problem is that 80% or more of the video was shot in AVCHD format which makes it nearly impossible to watch it without transcoding it.
What I'd like to do is use El Gato's Turbo H.264 HD to down-rez and transcode all the footage to something that my wife and I can browse through on our iPads or AppleTV or computers or whatever. Turbo H.264 has basic Applescript support, so I believe I can at least pass on instructions to convert and save various items from one folder to another folder. So far none of this is too complicated. However, my problem is that I want the new folder to have the same name as the folder the videos originally came from (so that I can always know where to find the original higher-rez version).
Part of the problem is, as you may guess, the AVCHD file structure is nuts. So, for example, my folder structure for the first clip shot with my Canon Vixia and copied to my hard drive on September 7th 2009 would look like this:
CANON_090907/PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00001.MTS
Turbo H.264 HD is able to parse this. So, theoretically, I could just send the whole "CANON_090907" folder to it and it should be able to find and convert just the video files. On the other side (i.e. where the transcoded videos are saved) I don't care about preserving the whole AVCHD file structure. All I care about is knowing that it came from "CANON_090907" or "NIKON_111210" or "IPHONE_100516", etc. So I'd like it to be contained in a new folder with that same name. Make sense?
The other problem that I encounter is that Turbo H.264 HD imposes it's own naming scheme on the clips as it outputs them - such that clip "00000.MTS" will become something like "Clip 1 - Aug 31, 2009 4:25:28 PM". Is there any conceivable way of resetting the names to match (or at least get the numbers from) the originals?
Anyway, I know this is a tall order. But I'm overwhelmed with the thought of doing it by hand. I, my wife and my little dude would be eternally grateful if someone could even get me started. I've got a crap-load of great memories just sitting there eating up drive space and never getting enjoyed.
Many thanks,
Eric