Automatically Converting AVI and MKV Videos Into an AppleTV-Compatible Format Using Breakfast

Imagine you have an RSS feed that occasionally delivers BitTorrents of video files in avi or mkv format, and you want to play them on an AppleTV. You can convert the video, but it requires using a few different applications and multiple steps. Here’s how to automate the process so that it takes zero clicks.

You’ll need these free downloads:

1. NetNewsWire, an RSS reader
2. Transmission, a BitTorrent client
3. Breakfast, a folder action script GUI
4. Handbrake CLI, a video converter

First, make NetNewsWire automatically download any files that feed sends you:

Subscribe to a feed in NetNewsWire (maybe from ShowRSS). Click on it in the source list, and choose Info from the Window menu (⌘-I). Under Enclosures, check Use custom setting and Automatically download: Other Enclosures.

Second, set Transmission to download any torrent that comes from NetNewsWire:

In Transmission’s Preferences, in the Transfer panel, check the box for Keep incomplete files in: and set a folder, and check the box for Start transfers when added. Uncheck the Display “adding transfer” options window. Check the Auto add: Watch for torrent files in box and choose wherever you have NetNewsWire saving the enclosures.

Third, use Breakfast to add a folder action script to your Transmission downloads folder:

Open Breakfast. Set the Folder to Watch to wherever Transmission is saving its files, and choose an Encoding Option.

Breakfast will create a folder action script that launches whenever a file of the right type shows up in whatever folder you tell it to. So when Transmission finishes its download, it’ll put the movie in that folder, and then Breakfast’s script will launch. It converts the video into a format AppleTV can understand, then goes online and tags the show appropriately and adds it to iTunes. All you have to do is delete the original files.

HD Movie comparisons

HD Movie comparisons

Side-by-side, you can see the difference between Apple TV, cable, and Blu-Ray videos, even though they’re all billed as “HD”.

How to Purchase TV Shows, Movies, Music, and Music Videos on Apple TV

How to Purchase TV Shows, Movies, Music, and Music Videos on Apple TV

Researching Apple TV. Important to note: It seems like Apple TV will automatically download new episodes of a season pass you’ve purchased, but only if you purchase it from the Apple TV, not from your computer.

Assorted Things that Never Became Posts

I’ve started to write a few posts over the past few weeks and have lost interest in all of them before coming to a version I wanted to publish. When Twitter lets me say it in 140 characters, why write a whole post?

So here are a few seeds that never grew to full posts, in no order whatsoever.

Politics: Sarah Pailin really worries me. I fear she’s like George Bush in not understanding the nuances and constitutional effects of various positions, like that it’s okay to go aggressively after criminals but still offer them trials. John McCain is making me like him less than I used to, especially with the dirty campaign he’s running. Lies I can understand, all politicians lie, but voter suppression is unconscionable.

Toys: my favorite Batman action figure is from the Hush series that came out a few years ago based on Jim Lee’s art. This week I bought the All Star Superman toy based on Frank Quitely’s art, and I love it. It’s not the definitive Superman, but I like having one of Quitely’s drawings come to life on my desk. (The definitive Superman is, I think, the 1984 Hasbro one that looks like Christopher Reeve. I have that, too, but the cape has faded to magenta.) I’d like a definitive Tim Drake Robin in his most recent red and black costume, but none of them come out just right, and depending on how RIP comes out he might not be Robin anymore.

Star Wars: I rewatched all six movies recently. I’ve been wrestling with a post about the prequel trilogy that I can’t seem to turn into prose that’s worth reading. Summary: I think Episodes II and III would be pretty much fine if a better actor had been cast as Anakin. I think Episode I looks like they filmed Lucas’s rough draft before he took out all the obviously unworkable brainstormed ideas like midichlorians. The overall framework of the film is fine, but you need to fix a few things like make Anakin older, make Jar-Jar a real character, and make the story fit into the trilogy instead of just being the one where Obi-Wan meets Anakin and nothing else important happens.

Comics: All Star Superman makes my heart pitter patter and fills me with hope for mankind, similar to the Juno afterglow. That and Casanova are the two best things to come out in the past year.

Books: I finished George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and am eagerly awaiting the next one. I finished ‘salem’s Lot and am reading The Stand. After that I have a ton of things I want to read and have to keep reminding myself to just enjoy the thing I have in my hand right now.

Movies: Pretty excited about Quantum of Solace.

TV: The shows I’m most pining for to return are Pushing Daisies and 30 Rock. Lots of others of course but those are the standouts. I’m not watching Heroes, Smallville, or Terminator anymore. Fringe hasn’t wowed me but I’m willing to give it a few more episodes.

Apple: I’d really like the AppleTV/iTunes to be a viable competitor to broadcast cable, but the money doesn’t add up. I’d like to see them allow rentals of TV on a full season basis for a sharp discount.

Macworld: Opinion: Watch different

Macworld: Opinion: Watch different

What YouTube needs is an editor, or a very smart robot editor. I agree with this notion that there’s lot of good stuff out there waiting to be discovered, but it needs to be discoverable.

A Few Thoughts on iTV

Apple, in a rare pre-announcement of a product, said today that they’re working on a little box that lets you stream video, photos, and music from your networked computers to your TV. This is not a DVR. It doesn’t record TV, because that’s not how Apple sees the future of media working. Broadcast media doesn’t fit into their model.

Think about how you use a TiVo. You go through a menu, pick a show you want to watch, and watch it. Pretty simple.

Now think about how a TiVo works. It has a set schedule. When a show you like comes on, it switches to the right channel, sits there for the appropriate amount of time recording the show, then switches to the next show on its schedule.

The user interface of TiVo makes it seem like shows are discrete files that your TiVo has access to, but you’re really just watching slices of time from earlier in the week. This becomes jarringly apparent when a TV show flashes a weather advisory for a storm from last Tuesday, or when you sit down to watch a program only to discover that the cable went out while it was being recorded, or when a football game ran over time. You’re not actually watching TV shows. You’re watching what TiVo was watching while the show was supposed to be on. TiVo is a very well-designed halfway point between broadcast television and à la cart television. It turns broadcast into à la cart, but it’s still a recording of the broadcast.

Apple’s model is entirely à la cart. It has strongly defended this model against the desires of the suits in the record industry for years now. You buy a song at a certain price, and you own that song. Now, with TV and movies, they’re doing the same thing. The reason that the iTV doesn’t have a TV-in port is that Apple doesn’t care about broadcast TV (and, well, they don’t get any money for broadcast TV, only when you buy shows from them). The Apple model is that you’ll pay them to subscribe to a TV show, and they’ll give you the download whenever a new show is up (think paid podcasts). The iTV is a box that lets you watch it all as if it were normal TV. In other words, it’s a TiVo without the clunky need to record the show on a channel first.

There are some problems with this. First and foremost, there’s no capability to watch live TV. As an assimilated TiVo user, I rarely watch live TV, but having it there is very, very important for coverage of live events (and sports, if I cared), weather reports, disasters, and breaking news. Second, Apple doesn’t offer the season pass option on all of its iTunes shows. And even if it did, the present model requires pre-paying for a season of a show, which means that if I were to buy all my shows from iTunes, I’d be shelling out a very large sum of money all at once in September when all the new seasons debut. I’d prefer a discounted weekly bill to a pre-pay model.

So what is the iTV (or what will it be when it comes out)? It’s the hunk of plastic that actually makes all of Apple’s work in the digital media field useful. It’s great that I can download movies to my computer, but when they’re stuck on my computer, what good do they do me? Being able to watch them on my TV means that they’re actually something I’d watch at all.

I’ve written before of what I think the future of media is going to look like, and with iTV it’s pretty apparent what Apple thinks it will be. You won’t subscribe to broadcast TV and you won’t buy DVDs or CDs. Everything will be on your computer, but you’ll be able to watch it on your TV, on another computer, or on your iPod. Plus, you’ll own it, so if you want to go back and watch a re-run of a TV show, you’ll just pull it up from a menu.