Automator provides a tool for my favorite form of engineering: spending 10 hours to save 10 minutes.
More practically, it's a powerful tool that you, average-mac-user, can use to make mini-programs to perform repetitive tasks for you.
So putting my vacation time to good use, I've created my first
Automator application, a
video import workflow. I'm using a digital camera for video recording. To use the video, I must manually copy it to the Mac, then convert the MPEG-1 video to H.264 QuickTime format with
MPEG StreamClip, and then import it into iMovie 08. Since learning about Automator, I wondered if I could, well, automate this process. I can, after a fashion.
In a nutshell, Automator is an OS X-based scripting system. If you can do it by mouse clicks and keyboard presses, you can probably do it with Automator. If it's a repeated task, then you can make a workflow that does the repeated action: teach a man to fish and he's fed for a lifetime; teach his computer to fish and he can surf the web while his computer prepares dinner!
I'm sure there are scripting programs on Windows. But I've never seen them, wouldn't know where to begin, and have no idea if they are free and GUI-based. Despite all of Automator's weakness -- and they are legion -- this fact remains: it exists and it works. I can do things on my Mac that I can't do on a PC, period.
What I did is string together a bunch of pre-fab steps and record-my-mouse steps to make a custom program that automatically imports my video to iMovie. The main steps are:
- Quick iPhoto (it always launches when camera is connected)
- Copy all MPG video from my digital camera to Movies
- Delete undesired data files from my camera
- Launch MPEG StreamClip
- Open Batch Mode, select the movie files, choose my custom conversion parameters, and start the process
- Wait for the user (me) to click a button saying the the process is done
- Quit MPEG StreamClip & delete the MPG files
- Launch iMovie
- Import Movies... selecting the (new) MOV files, and set it to be a new Event titled "Import"
I created three workflows, indicated by the above breaks, to test the major sections independently. I planned to use an Automator feature to string them together. In doing this, I was learning Automator; I had nothing to start from. So, the first problem is that Automator's documentation is terrible. Nor are there any online tutorials to help. I couldn't even find a decent book to buy.
Overcoming that, I found that unless an application of interest has specific Automator "Actions" -- hooks that Automator uses to do things elegantly -- you'll have to use the "Record Me" feature to record mouse and keyboard commands. iMovie 08, a premiere Apple app, has no Automator actions (sigh). Unsurprisingly, MPEG Streamclip doesn't either. The record-me feature is robust, but this means you can't leverage the variables, built-in directory settings, and general customization features of Automator. So I had to hard-code file locations and "cheat" to get it working. Not as full-featured as I wanted.
Despite these woes, I got the whole process working and it requires only one input from me in the middle. I can fire it up, walk away for an hour, come back click the continue button and leave again. When I return, iMovie is ready for me to start editing.
Automator has quirks for sure. I can only hope for version three, at this point. And I hope a good tutorial or users' book comes out. Regardless, I've never done anything like this before under Windows. If you do repetitive or tedious tasks, I encourage you to try Automator.
