Hazel being a bit choosy about files to process.

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Moderator: Mr_Noodle

I am using Vidi to record .dv files into a capture folder. I have Hazel watching that folder. Since Vidi is constantly updating the modified date while it's recording, I've set Hazel to trigger when the date last modified is not in the last 10 minutes so that it won't try to process a file that is still recording. It triggers an Automator workflow that renames the file and moves it into another folder for further processing.

This works great 95% of the time, but for some reason Hazel is leaving certain random files behind and never processing them. When I do a manual Run Rules Now, it picks them up and works as expected.

The only odd thing I see in the console is:

Another hazelfolderwatch process is processing this directory. Exiting.

But I only see this when I run the rules manually and as far as I'm aware, I'm only running the one rule on this folder.

Any suggestions?
grovberg
 
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Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:07 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Does that console message come up consistently when you run it? If so, run Activity Monitor and see if there's a hazelfolderwatch process just sitting there. If there is, then if you could do View->Sample Process from the menu and send me the results, that'd be great. You can then try and unwedge things by killing that process.

If it gets wedged again, let me know.
Mr_Noodle
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Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:07 pm • by arauchfuss
I do not know if this is related to the previous poster's problem but it seems that Hazel screws up the sending of multiple files to an attached automator workflow. So if more than one file is dumped in a watch directory within a certain timeframe only the first will consistently get processed.

It generally works better if I save the workflow as an app and attach that to the rule instead of the workflow. Though better this solution still fails to affect the files in question more often than not. Checking the log there are no error regarding this.

Dropping the same files onto the Automator app manually works perfectly.
arauchfuss
 
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Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:36 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Odd that there are no errors. Could you try setting the action to color the files. This is to make sure the files are matching the rule.

I'll also do some tests when I get back to the home office early next week (WWDC is ending now). I'm wondering if there's a problem with launching multiple Automator instances quickly but hopefully we can work this one out.

Thanks for the report.
Mr_Noodle
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Sat Jun 16, 2007 7:23 pm • by arauchfuss
Odd that there are no errors. Could you try setting the action to color the files. This is to make sure the files are matching the rule.

Well there were log entries but they just stated that the files were matches. I added a highlight action and all of the matches were highlighted properly.

I am guessing that Hazel is enumerating through the matches and passing them individually to the workflow as opposed to passing them all at once.
arauchfuss
 
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Wed Jun 20, 2007 3:15 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Ah, I think I misunderstood. Yes, Hazel works on each file one by one so if you were expecting the files to be sent to your workflow in a batch, that wouldn't happen.

One thing you can try is to move the files you want to process into a separate folder and then process the folder.
Mr_Noodle
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Thu Jun 21, 2007 12:55 am • by arauchfuss
The problem is that automator workflows do not see like they can handle being called repeatedly. I will definitely try the folder workaround though, thanks for the advice.
arauchfuss
 
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