Setting Up Watch Folder Actions

Many of the tools in ccConvert, videoQC and Net-X-Code can be run as command line tools, as well as via REST API.  With command line tools, there are ways to set up automated processes, from interpreted languages (such as PHP and PERL), from full programming environments, and from batch files and watch folder utilities. This article describes setting up one such watch folder utility as a template for setting up your own workflows.

Watch 4 Folder

There is a free/low cost watch folder utility called 'Watch 4 Folder' for Windows [supports XP, Vista, 7, 8].  If can be downloaded from:

Watch 4 Folder - LeeLu Soft

This utility allows you to set up one or more watch folders to call batch files or executables. This example will set up a watch folder to convert SCC to AAF files.  Once the Watch 4 Folder is downloaded, run it and select Watch List and then Edit to get the Watch Settings for the first watch folder

Select the folder to watch, and click the 'Execute a program' and 'Add changed object name' check boxes.  You will need to make a small batch file to pass the other (non file name) arguments to the batch file. In this case, the batch file is converttoaaf.bat and consists of the line

ccExtract -c 1 -i %1 -t d:\record\

The ccExtract is the command line program ccConvert calls to do the conversion.  The '-c 1' indicates an output to AAF.  The '-i %1' means take the passed in file and use it as input.  And the '-t' indicates the target directory for the output.  Clicking "Apply" will take you back to the Watch List where you can click "Start" to start monitoring.

 While this app is running, any file dropped into the source folder will be converted to an AAF file in output folder.  Other applications that can be run this way include:

ccExtract

ccEmbed

MrAnalyze

Net-X-Copy

videoQC