Noodlesoft Forums

I'm rendering frames from After Effects into a directory. I'd like Hazel to watch this folder for new PNG files, and when it finds one, copy it to a folder in my Dropbox. They key is that I want to rename as I copy, so the Dropbox folder only ever has one frame, the most recent. This way I can keep tabs on the render without filling up my Dropbox.

I tried creating a rule looking for Date Added is after Date Last Matched, and not being able to see how I could use the Copy action to rename on the fly, I tried the world's simplest embedded shell script:

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cp $1 ~/Dropbox/RenderWatch/MostRecentFrame.png

However, this returns an error every time.

Am I approaching this the wrong way?

Thanks in advance for any help.

-Stu

I believe you need the -f option to "cp" to force it to overwrite the destination.

Otherwise, you have a couple of options:
- Copy the file to a temporary location, rename it, then move that to Dropbox, with the move options set to overwrite.
- Copy the file to Dropbox then have Hazel monitor Dropbox and remove all but the most recent file. This is a bit more complex but it doesn't require a temporary location.

Thanks for the help! I tried -f as well, but still an error (exit code 64). The same cp command works fine in a shell.

In fact not even the most simple version of the cp command works, so I must be doing something wrong. This command reports the same error:

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cp $1 ~/Documents/

I set up a string of Actions like you suggest, and that works though, so I am up and running, thanks! The thing I didn't intuit is that all those actions applied to the results of the previous, i.e. if the first is copy, the second Action acts on the copied file. Now that I understand that, it was simple to set up what I needed.

You just converted a trial user to a paid customer, thanks!

But I'd still love to know why the most basic shell script is failing for me.

Are there spaces in the path? If so, then you need to put double-quotes around $1.

Man that really seemed like that must have been it, as there are spaces in the path. But even with the quotes, no luck.

Try using the full path instead of ~. Also, turn on debug mode as described here: https://www.noodlesoft.com/kb/hazel-debug-mode/

After that, check the logs to see if any errors/output from the script appear there.