Hi Esther, Thanks for your clear explanation. The one thing I don't undersand though is, why itunes is involved here. In other words: what happens, so that a converted file ends up in itunes? Are you saying that if I find a third party app to convert a file from one format to the other, that supports either a command line syntax or an automator or apple script interface, the resulting file will always end up in itunes, even though I do not specify so in the Apple script, shell script or automator work flow? Seems interesting. How did Apple put that together?
Paul. On Jan 21, 2013, at 11:48 PM, Esther <mori...@mac.com> wrote: > Dear Paul, > > There is already support for the action of converting a wav file to > 256 kbps m4a (aac files) from Finder under Mountain Lion and Lion, if > you select/highlight your wav files and use VO-Shift-M to bring up the > context menu, then select "Encode Selected Video Files". The "Encode > Media" dialog window will have a "Setting:" pop up menu button that > you should VO-Space on and change from "480p" to "Audio Only". (Under > Lion this is under "Encode Selected Audio Files" under the Services > menu.) If you want to make your own Service for converting to 256 > kbps mp3 files, you can do so with Automator. Automator and > AppleScript can be used to do the kind of operation you describe, > where you select files and then select a menu option option to run an > Automator service or workflow, or run an AppleScript, but these only > work for applications where the developers have supplied the hooks to > make them AppleScriptable, work with Automator, or support terminal > command line usage so that they are shell scriptable. > > What this means is that although it is very easy to create an > Automator service to convert files you select in Finder to 256 kbps > mp3 files with just a couple of Automator action steps, the basic > assumption is that you want the results to appear in iTunes. You can > even construct a folder action that will automatically put converted > files into into the same directory folder or a separate one of your > specification, but the converted mp3 files always get added to your > iTunes library folder. This is fine if you use iTunes to organize > your music (as I do), but I suspect this is not what you want. There > isn't an action to automatically delete the tracks from iTunes. So it > can be very easy to use Automator or AppleScripts within the context > of the default supported actions, and this can work for a lot of > applications on the Mac, but in general you can't use these with a > random third party app. And it doesn't mean that it isn't doable (at > least with AppleScripting) -- it just isn't going to be transparent or > simple to implement. > > I don't have any recent detailed descriptions of Automator actions on > this list, since I only usually take a look at this when questions > come up. The last fairly detailed post I made about using Automator > was on the mac-access list, which is also archived at the Mail Archive > web site. > > HTH. Cheers, > > Esther > > > > > > > On Jan 21, 12:15 am, Paul Erkens <paul.erk...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Dear listers, >> >> Often, I have a file that I want to perform a specific action on. For >> example, this could be a stereo wave file, that I want to convert to a 256 >> kilibit stereo mp3 file. Is there a way you can think of, that I can add a >> new menu item to the vo shift mcontextmenu on a file, and then select from a >> few user defined actions? Of course, the program in question must support >> this way of getting commands, but I'd first like to know iffinderlets us do >> this type of thing. So, I go to a wave file, I'd like to hit vo shift m, and >> then select convert to mp3 256 with amadeus. Is such a mechanism available? >> What about services? I have no idea yet how they work, nor how to use >> automator. Please shed some light and knowledge on this if you have it. I'm >> very curious because it could be a huge time saver. Thanks a lot in advance. >> >> Paul. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
