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Trailers to iTunes

Yesterday I posted quite a few things about iPods, video, and the iTunes Music Store. I spent most of the afternoon attempting to find some way to automate the process of downloading movie trailers, encoding them in the iPod video format, and copying them into iTunes (so that they would be synchronized to the iPod).

Unfortunately, I found several problems with this process:

  • There exists an Automator action for downloading images, but not for downloading .mov files. I have an AppleScript that will provide a URL as a string, but my (quick) attempts to turn this AppleScript into an Automator action have failed.
  • The Export to iPod Automator Action does not appear in Automator. I've even tried building the project myself. Same thing: it just doesn't show up in Automator.
  • Neither the script nor the workflow from this Mac OS X Hint work. The workflow complains about not having QuickTime 7.0.3 (I have it) and the script times out.

I'd like to work towards getting this going, but right now I'm stuck. I've bashed my head on the things above and not come out with anything but a bloody forehead.

Has anyone out there attempted such a thing with more success?

2 Responses to "Trailers to iTunes"

  1. Another way to achieve the same goal: an RSS or Atom feed with Apple's trailers as enclosures. After being downloaded, a folder action could convert all of the movies and add them to iTunes.

  2. Question: Did you think Apple would sell 1 million videos in less than three weeks? My Answer: I did not. It just shows how many people have begun using the iTunes Music Store, I suppose. I've yet to buy a...