I want to automagically convert my video files to iTunes friendly files

October 22, 2010 3:36 PM

I want my videos to show up in iTunes. iTunes only seems to play nice with mp4. Is there any program out there that will monitor a folder, convert the video that shows up, and add it to iTunes? I'm on a Windows 7 machine.

If you're wondering why I would want to even deal with iTunes, its the apple remote for the iPad. Its a thing of beauty.

I'm willing to pay if the software is nice enough.

posted by allthewhile to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: Handbrake is a fantastic app that knows how to recode video to multiple formats, including what makes iTunes happy. There's also HandbrakeCLI that does the same thing but from command line. I dont know anything about automating it on windows though.
posted by aeighty at 3:43 PM on October 22, 2010

On the Mac side, there is an AppleScript called Movie2iTunes that automates making a mp4-formatted reference movie to AVIs and other containers that can be played with QuickTime. The reference movie itself is very small, and you don't need to transcode your movie to mp4. This reference "stub" points to the original movie file. I would look for something like this that automates the process under Windows.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:06 PM on October 22, 2010

Best answer: You can use handbrakecli and a bit of code to monitor and convert a video file. There is also a js file which will load the file into iTunes too.

Funnily enough I'm working on developing such an app, but at the rate I'm going it won't be available for a very long time.

If you're handy with writing batch files and using windows scheduled tasks it should be easy for you to do.

Let me know if you want more info as I'm writing this on a mobile phone.
posted by mr_silver at 2:00 AM on October 23, 2010

Best answer: Belvedere will monitor folder(s) and run whatever you want when it finds a match.
posted by wongcorgi at 3:37 AM on October 23, 2010 [1 favorite]