MacOS – How to adjust a script that works in the Terminal but fails in Automator

automatormacosscript

I have been piecing together a shell script to use FFmpeg to validate video files in a folder and create a log file.

When run in the terminal from that folder, it works fine. When I incorporate it into Automator to use as a service, it fails to create the log file correctly.

It looks like the syntax I'm using causes an issue in Automator, and it's failing as it invokes FFmpeg. How do I adjust my script in Automator to give me the same result as I got in the Terminal?

Here is the script in Automator:

for f in "$@"
do
    echo "$f"
cd $f
pwd
find -E ./ -regex '.*(.MOV|.MXF|.mp4|.MTS)$' -exec ffmpeg -v error -i {} -map 0:1 -f null - 2>error4.log \;
done

And the output from the log file:

find: ffmpeg: No such file or directory

Best Answer

This is because Automator doesn't use your interactive shell's path. You need to specify the location of ffmpeg.

In Terminal, run:
```
which ffmpeg
```
Replace the ‘ffmpeg’ in your Automator shell script with the output of this command.

Automator and Scripting Approach

The Automator Actions you want are:

Ask for Finder Items, with Type set to Folders.
Run Shell Script, with Shell set to /usr/bin/perl.
New Text File

For the shell script, copy and paste in:

use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Basename;
use File::Find;

find(sub {
    return if (-d $File::Find::name);
    my($filename,undef,undef) = fileparse($_,qr/\.[^.]*/);
    print $filename."\n";
}, shift);

Automator list files

You can use the New TextEdit Document action if you want the resulting file list to appear in TextEdit but not saved to disk.

enter image description here

To learn more about using Automator, see Apple's Mac Basics: Automator.

How to make an Automator service run a shell script and display the output

This AppleScript will launch a Terminal window with the command you specified:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        set filesString to ""
        repeat with file_ in input
            set filesString to filesString & " " & quoted form of (POSIX path of file_)
        end repeat
        do script "for f in" & filesString & "; do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -c:v libx264 -vf yadif -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 21 -preset slow -movflags faststart -c:a copy ${f%.*}_h264_yadif.mov
done"
    end tell
    return input
end run

Create a “Run AppleScript” action in Automator and paste it in there.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Have Automator parse down folders and list all filenames without their extension

Automator and Scripting Approach

How to make an Automator service run a shell script and display the output

Related Question