This is a weird one that came from a request on reddit.

Not really useful (to me) as intended, but I envision it could be re-worked to a FolderAction that would help tag photos. Especially if coupled with a file sorter. But incorporating the tag writing into the sorter would be much more sane.

The commented out do shell script lines were meant as a way to read existing tags and then add the folder name after them. That didn’t work out thanks to xattr -p spitting out hexadecimal instead of a plist array, which is the format used when writing the tags. WTF, Apple…

-- http://strawhousepig.net/
on run
set _drop to {}
set end of _drop to (choose folder)
my do_it(_drop)
end run

end repeat
end tell
on error _err
display dialog _err
end try
end if
end repeat
end do_it

[UPDATE] Added a version that works on OS X 10.4 to the bottom of this post. Does some different logging and is tighter, so I’ll have to go back to the original and update again.

This was done earlier, but I have since had to change it to match changes in the incoming data. Some of which is a big mystery. In particular a new line character that is input as the “line separator” Unicode character. It would end up in the clipboard as line feed, so I just started plugging in white space character id’s until one hit the mark. Lucky me.
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The purpose of this long, arduous venture was to find a way to simply reduce the size of video files recorded with a Canon ELPH 330 HS digicam. This camera, and surely others, records 720p, 30fps video at a bitrate of 24Mbps, which is at least twice as much as should be necessary. Remember this is a consumer level point-&-shoot whose main draws were: 10x optical zoom; pocketable. This high bitrate results in a 6 minute video being over 1GB. Too much.
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This is the companion script for: Video re-encode script

It uses exiftool to copy the video date atom(s) and setfile (is or was included with Apple’s Developer Tools) to change the file system dates. It will more than likely throw exiftool “File not found” errors and I’m not quite sure why. It has never failed to actually work despite this in my experience, however be very careful to not use this on your original source videos.

Hopefully the settings and prompts make sense.

(* http://strawhousepig.net/

set filepath to newfile as string
if prompt_me is true then
if button returned of (display dialog "Choose a SOURCE file to *get* creation and modification dates from.") is "OK" then
set oldfile to choose file with prompt "Select SOURCE file to get dates from: " & filepath
end if
else
set oldfile to choose file with prompt "Select SOURCE file to get dates from: " & filepath
end if
set newfilename to name of (info for of newfile)
if newfilename is not (name of (info for of oldfile)) then
set warn_button to button returned of (display alert "File names do not match. Proceed?" as warning buttons {"Cancel", "Start Over", "Proceed"})
if warn_button is "Cancel" then
return
else
if warn_button is "Start Over" then
set redo to true
exit repeat
end if
end if
end if
tell application "System Events" to set [c_date, m_date] to [creation date of oldfile, modification date of oldfile]
set [p_date_c, p_date_m] to [c_date, m_date] -- Saving "pretty" date for dialog prompt.
set c_date to ((month of c_date as integer) & "/" & day of c_date & "/" & year of c_date & " " & hours of c_date & ":" & minutes of c_date & ":" & seconds of c_date) as string
log c_date
set m_date to ((month of m_date as integer) & "/" & day of m_date & "/" & year of m_date & " " & hours of m_date & ":" & minutes of m_date & ":" & seconds of m_date) as string
log m_date
if button returned of (display dialog "This will set the creation and modification dates of file " & filepath & " to:" & return & return & p_date_c & return & p_date_m & return & return & "Proceed?") is "OK" then
try
-- Have to include full path to exiftool binary because AppleScript uses the Bourne shell which doesn't have /usr/local/bin in its path? *rolls eyes*
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/exiftool " & tzone & "-*date=\"`/usr/local/bin/exiftool -time:CreateDate " & quoted form of POSIX path of oldfile & "`\" -wm w " & quoted form of POSIX path of newfile
on error theErr
-- Will throw a "File not found" error if this takes over a certain amount of time. rm must be running faster than exiftool can finish?
display dialog "The 'exiftool' command said: " & theErr
end try
delay 1
try
-- Ready for this, exiftool adds "_original" to the end of the file it's going to modify tags/atoms of. This is still 'newfile' but with a new name.
-- If we manually add "_original" to 'newfile' rm will throw an error looking for newfile_original_original... Wha?
do shell script "rm " & quoted form of POSIX path of newfile
on error theErr
display dialog "The 'rm' command said: " & theErr
end try
delay 1
try
-- Ready again? The original path to 'newfile' is valid again for this... Wha??
do shell script "setfile -d '" & c_date & "' -m '" & m_date & "' " & quoted form of POSIX path of newfile
on error theErr
display dialog "The 'setfile' command said: " & theErr
end try
end if
exit repeat
end repeat
if redo then do_it(false)
end do_it