handbrake-automation ⚙️

Tired of manually running handbrake? Well I sure am!

This project consists of two scripts that will handle converting media files from pretty much any common format into .mp4 files

🔍 Dependencies

• Python 3
• tendo

🈂️ Usage

There are two files:

• move_mp4.sh
• convert.sh

Let's assume we have two servers available: one that is power efficient but excruciatingly slow (server A), and one that is very fast, but it's power bill will burn a hole in your wallet (server B).

Server A could schedule a cron job that executes move_mp4.sh every so often. This file will look for any media files, and move them from a source directory into a target directory if they are already .mp4 files. When any other media formats are encountered, a Wake-on-LAN packet is sent to server B.

Server B would then run convert.sh on startup*, which will also look in a source directory for media files.

After convert.sh is finished, it will issue a shutdown command after waiting for two minutes. Feel free to remove the last two lines if this doesn't suit your needs.

"But what if I only use one server?" I hear you ask. Well in that case, just use convert.sh and disregard the other script. (And probably remove the aforementioned shutdown...)

*This could be achieved eg. by using @reboot in a crontab

🎯 Setup

To use these scripts yourself, be sure to edit the following environment variables:

• HANDBRAKE_MOVIES_SOURCE_DIR - Source location of your movies
• HANDBRAKE_MOVIES_TARGET_DIR - Destination of converted movies
• HANDBRAKE_SERIES_SOURCE_DIR - Source location of TV shows
• HANDBRAKE_SERIES_TARGET_DIR - Destination of converted TV shows

On the machine that will be running move_mp4.sh be sure to also edit the following:

• HANDBRAKE_WAKEUP_MAC - The MAC address that should receive a WoL packet if needed

For both scripts, there is also an optional variable, which is used to add a custom suffix to all handled files. This could be used in combination with other scripts or programs that (for example) check if a files ends in .CONVERTED.mp4

Log files are stored in /var/log/debug.log for move_mp4.sh and /var/log/convert/debug.log for convert.sh, be sure to create these files in advance, and set up the proper file permissions.

Last but not least: don't forget to make all scripts executable (chmod +x)

🔰 FAQ

• Help, it's not working 😦
  • Feel free to open an issue and I'll see what I can do!
• I'm missing feature X 😠
  • Again, please open an issue, but no guarantees, as I have other things to do as well 😉
• I'd like to contribute! 😄
  • That's awesome! I'd love to look at any pull requests
• This project's name is silly 😕
  • I know, I know. I couldn't really think of anything creative... 😅