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Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C | Glossary | Index | Legal Stuff | License


Chapter 11 - Batch Processing Movies

Making a Batch List | Output Movie Destination | Applying Settings to Batch Movies | Adding Movies to a Batch List | Opening Movies in the Batch | Starting Batch Compression | During Batch Compression | Batch Log File

Batch processing lets you set up a group of movies to compress automatically. You can put up to 2,000 movies in a single batch file by simply dragging and dropping them onto Media Cleaner's program icon on the desktop. These movies will be processed sequentially with the settings you specify, starting at the top and continuing down the list until they are all done.

Making a Batch List

A "Batch List" defines a group of movies that you wish to process together, and the settings with which you want them compressed.

The best way to set up a new batch list is to simply drag all the movies you want onto the Media Cleaner program icon on the desktop. Media Cleaner will ask you if you wish to make a batch list containing the selected movies, and then prompt you for a file name and location for the batch list. Once you have created a batch list, it will show up in the Finder. You can open and close it just like a normal file, and changes are constantly saved to it.

You can also create a new batch list by selecting "New Batch List" from the Batch menu.

NOTE: Occasionally after you first install Media Cleaner, you may not be able to drag and drop files onto Media Cleaner's program icon. To correct this, you must rebuild your desktop. To rebuild your desktop, restart your Macintosh and hold down the command and option keys until a dialog appears.

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Adding Movies to a Batch List

If you already have a batch list open, you can add files to it by dragging them onto the Media Cleaner program icon, or by selecting "Add Movie" from the Batch menu. It is possible to have the same movie in a batch list more than once, and each copy can have a different settings group applied to it. This is extremely helpful if you want to make variations of a movie to "fine tune" it.

NOTE: Media Cleaner does not look for movies inside folders dropped on it. If you have movies within folders that you wish to add to a batch, open the folder, select all (Command-A), and drag all the highlighted files onto Media Cleaner's program icon.

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Removing Movies from a Batch List

To remove files from a batch list, highlight the movie(s) in the Batch window and then select "Remove Files" from the Batch menu or press the "delete" key. You can shift-click or command-click to select multiple movies within the Batch window.

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Selecting an Output Movie Destination

Movies in a batch list may come from several different folders, or even several different volumes, but all the final output movies from a particular batch list will be stored in the same place. To select the output movie destination folder for your batch list, select the "Set Destination" option in the Batch menu. If you haven't set a destination when you start a batch compression, you will be prompted for a destination at that time.

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Applying Settings to Batch Movies

The Batch window allows you to apply settings to each individual movie in the list as if you were compressing them separately. Media Cleaner's batch feature also lets you specify a default setting to be used for all the movies for which you haven't specified unique settings.

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Default Settings

You can select a default setting that will be applied to any movie which is set to "default." When you add a new movie to a batch list, it will automatically be set to "default". You can manually change this, or leave it as "default" if you wish to process it with the setting specified at the top of the Batch window.

To select the setting that will be applied to all movies which are marked "default," simply choose a settings group with the "Default Settings..." button at the top of the Batch window.

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Individual Settings

To change the settings for one or more movies in the group, simply double-click any movie in the batch list. This will open the setting selection window. Choose the desired settings group and press "Select."

You can shift-click or drag, as well as option-click or drag to select multiple movies in the batch list.

You may also use the "Movie Settings..." in the Batch menu to select settings for any highlighted movie in the batch list.

Individual movies may be set to any existing settings group or:

<default> This uses the "Default" setting located at the top of the Batch window.

from movie This uses the setting which has been stored with the movie. This only works if the movie has previously been opened with Media Cleaner and a setting applied to it. If the movie does not have an associated setting, the default setting is used instead.



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Opening Movies in the Batch List

If you wish to view any source movie in the batch list, you may option-double-click on it to open it. This is useful if you need to set cropping rectangles on your movies.



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Starting Batch Compression

Once you have added your movies to a batch list, and selected their settings groups, you are ready to begin compression. To start the compression, either press the "Start" button or choose "Begin Batch Compression" from the Batch menu.



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Suspending and Resuming Batches

Batch compression can be suspended and resumed just like a single movie's compression. See Chapter 10 for more information on using Media Cleaner's Suspend & Resume features.

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During Batch Compression

While compression is in progress, the area in the middle of the Status Bar tells you what Media Cleaner is doing. The Source Movie window shows you the movie currently being compressed. The Output Movie window shows the final output of the currently compressing movie.

In the Batch window, the status of each movie is shown beside the movie's name. The possible states for a movie are:

­ (dash) the movie has been added to the batch list but not yet processed
Compressing the movie is currently being processed
Finished the movie has been successfully processed
Error there was a problem during compression - check the log for details
Suspended the movie's compression has been suspended



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Clearing Movie Status

When you restart compression after it has been interrupted (by an error, suspension, etc.), completed movies will remain in the batch list but will not be recompressed.

If you want to recompress a movie that has already been compressed, select the movie in the batch list, and choose "Clear Movie Status" from the Batch menu. This will make Media Cleaner "forget" that it has already processed the movie.

NOTE: If you resume a batch, Media Cleaner will attempt to compress any movies in the batch list that had errors in the last compression.

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Naming Conflict

In the case of a naming conflict, Media Cleaner will attempt to create a unique output file name for each movie by placing a two-digit number before the suffix. The number will start at 01 and increase in increments of 1 until a unique file name is found.

For example, if you created a batch list with the movie "Presentation" in it three times, Media Cleaner would produce the following three movies: "Presentation.mov", "Presentation01.mov", "Presentation02.mov". This keeps Media Cleaner from writing over existing movies while it is batch processing.

NOTE: Media Cleaner will truncate file names to 32 characters if necessary.

NOTE: If you run a batch multiple times, additional information will be appended onto the end of the batch file. However, the text log file is not automatically updated ­ you must create a new log each time you wish to see the results of the latest batch processing.

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Batch Log File

While Media Cleaner is processing a batch, it will not show any dialogs or errors it might encounter so that it can attempt to compress all the movies in the list.

Information on the results of batch processing, including details on any errors that occurred during compression, are continuously saved to the batch file itself. In order to view this information, you must extract it from the batch list by creating a batch log file, which is a text report. To create a batch log file, open the desired batch file, then choose "Save Log File" from the Batch menu, and select where the batch log will be saved.

This will save the log as a text file. To view it, go to the Finder and double-click on the log to open it with SimpleText.

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