Monitor a folder?

[gavin19]

This isn't/wasn't my problem originally but I'd be keen to solve it and make use of any results.

 

For example.. say I used an application to download movie trailers. These trailers were always in mkv format and unplayable in my Xbox. I'd then have to manually convert these into mp4 or whatever and then stream them over to my 360. Usually I'd leave these files downloading while I was at work and then I'd come home to a load of video files which I'd then need to convert.

 

What if there was a way to monitor a folder for newly added files, eg. the 'Downloads' folder, and then run a command line to convert these files automatically to mp4/avi etc? Like if 'batman.mkv' finished downloading, it would then be deposited in 'Downloads'. Some method would then detect that this was a new addition to the folder and subsequently run 'convertme.exe batman.mkv D:\batman.mp4 /defaults /auto' or similar.

 

I've always had a vague interest in automating these sort of tasks, as invariably my downloads finish in the early hours of the morning or in the middle of the afternoon while I'm AFK.

[DIYROMArcade]

Three thoughts come to mind based on your post.

 

Is the reason you are converting all the downloads so they can be played on the Xbox 360? I had a major problem because I had almost 2 terrabytes worth of anime on my server that wouldn’t play on the 360. I ended up using TVersity to act as a multimedia server that encoded the video on the fly (as you watch it) to play on the xbox without altering the original files. This was the only practical way to watch all this anime without trying to re-encode each one.

 

It sounds like you are looking into some sort of Macro process. It can probably be done but would require a lot of trial an error. Especially the monitoring part. A friend of mine used to write bots for MMORPGs and there were so many checks the program had to perform to do something as simple as monitor health, let alone read a file name, but it can probably be done.

 

The easiest way would probably be to get some sort of VNC software so you could just remote admin your PC and manually convert the videos. It would take a lot less time and know how then a custom macro.

 

Good luck man, sounds like an interesting problem.

Edited February 18, 2009 by DIYROMArcade