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View Full Version : Replace that cumbersome UI with a set of scripts. (GKnot)


Tza
10th May 2002, 11:37
Replace that cumbersome UI with a set of scripts.

WTF??

If you're like me, you find UIs like GordianKnot to be cumbersome and manual. If you've encoded more than a handful of movies that way you probably have a set pattern to what you usually do, and spend too much time selecting ... ugh input folder, output folder, filename, usual options, press OK, next program...

So, I wrote a few programs and a few scripts that allow you to do everything (NOTE: except looking at the video source and clipping, and also no convenient way to customize the codec settings. It supports clipping but doesn't help you select values) from the command line. Each of these scripts simplifies the various ways to communicate with software packages (command line options which get strange, ini files, job files, UI) into standard command line options. Then, I wrote a master script to run all these scripts; it takes care of such things as naming temp files for each script so you don't have to.

Each of these scripts has reasonable defaults and can often be run with few command line options.

List:

1. Script to run SmartRipper.
2. Script to run DVD2AVI.
3. Script to run VobSub.
4. Script to make AVS files for each D2V file, based on a template.
5. Program to add 2 pass jobs to VirtualDub.
6. Script to run azid, lame (get max gain from azid, then run azid and lame together with or without temp wav file, azid 1.71 and 1.8).
7. Program to add 1 and 2 track muxing jobs to Nandub.

Alright, so it only really supports what I normally do. If you do something often, write a script for it and give it out. It's easy. And if you only do something rarely, then using GKnot won't be that bad.

Now, development is complete but Alpha testing is not. I expect to be ready for the Beta period in 1-2 days. If you'd like to sign up for a beta test and have a few hours to run through things, send me a 'me too' PM.

If you have questions, reply right here. I'll judge the degree to which I make these scripts "really usable" instead of just my pet tools by the amount of interest shown here.

So, interested? What features do you NEED? Is there some other program that gives higher quality results that one I've listed? I'll ask the Beta testers to tell me what's hard to do, what's broken, and what's impossible.