While the technique described in Thumbnail an entire directory works well for Detail thumbnail pages, it’s not ideal for Overview pages. Without custom start and end thumbnailing times the Overview thumbnails will invariably be wasted on unneeded credit sequences — sometimes quite a few in these days of 10 minute long credits.
The solution is to create a Command File that specifies the exact thumbnailing times you want to use for each file it contains. The -m, --cmddir option helps you in this task by creating a starting Command File that contains entries for all video files that are found in a directory. It is used like so:
cd C:\His Girl Friday (1940)
clatn -m .
which reports:
Generating command file entries for C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4
Generating command file entries for C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2
Generating command file entries for C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\pillarboxed
Generating command file entries for C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\stretched
Command File 'C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\CLAutotn-temp.txt' created.
and the generated CLAutotn-temp.txt contains:
#-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "pillarboxed\his_girl_friday_512kb pillarboxed.wmv"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "stretched\his_girl_friday_512kb stretched.wmv"
The -m, --cmddir option creates initial entries that only make Overview pages because in practical terms you rarely want to specify custom settings for Detail pages. The exceptions are the special cases of letterboxed, pillarboxed, and distorted videos — discussed in Remove the black bars from the edges of thumbnails and Fix distorted thumbnails — which typically need to be handled individually anyway.
Notice that one line starts with a # — it will be ignored when processing the Command File. When generating Command Files, this is done for any file in a directory that seems to already have thumbnail pages in it.
Do the same thing in the C:\McLintock (1963) directory:
cd C:\McLintock (1963)
clatn --cmddir .
Generating command file entries for C:\McLintock (1963)\letterboxed
Generating command file entries for C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4
Generating command file entries for C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4 512kb
Generating command file entries for C:\McLintock (1963)\multipart
Generating command file entries for C:\McLintock (1963)\squished
Command File 'C:\McLintock (1963)\CLAutotn-temp.txt' created.
and that CLAutotn-temp.txt will contain:
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "letterboxed\McLintock_512kb letterboxed.wmv"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "mp4\McLintock.mp4"
#-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "mp4 512kb\McLintock_512kb.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "multipart\McLintock part01.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "multipart\McLintock part02.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "multipart\McLintock part03.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "squished\McLintock_512kb squished.wmv"
Let’s take lines from these two files for the videos we want to process and merge them into a single Command File called clautotn.txt. Generated Command Files will always have video filenames with paths relative to the location of the Command File — this is normally exactly what we want (to keep the file paths smaller). For this particular example, however, we’ll change those to absolute paths so we can use the Command File from any directory.
Initially, clautotn.txt will look like this after switching to absolute filepaths:
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4\McLintock.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:0 -e "C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4 512kb\McLintock_512kb.mp4"
and after adding the starting and ending times of the main part of each video, clautotn.txt contains:
-i 0 -s 0:0:59 -e 1:31:07 "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:0:48 -e 1:30:57 "C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg"
-i 0 -s 0:1:59 -e 2:06:39 "C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4\McLintock.mp4"
-i 0 -s 0:1:59 -e 2:06:39 "C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4 512kb\McLintock_512kb.mp4"
Using our Command File can be as simple as doing:
clatn clautotn.txt
where the Overview thumbnails will be written to the original directory of each video. In this case, we want to put all the thumbnails generated by the Command File in the same directory, so we do:
mkdir MyThumbs
clatn -o MyThumbs clautotn.txt
Notice that the directory specified by the -o, --outdir must already exist — it will not be automatically created.
The processing of our clautotn.txt Command File results in the following messages:
Processing command file: clautotn.txt
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4 ...
0:00:11 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:00:59.000 -> 1:31:07.000
Thumbnail Duration 1:30:08.000 (Total 1:31:44.521)
OutputDirectory is "MyThumbs"
Generating 144 104x78 thumbnails on a 12x12 Overview page.
0:00:12 to create Overview thumbnails.
144 thumbnails created. 0.09 seconds / thumbnail.
Detail page thumbnails skipped.
0:00:24 overall time to process his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4.
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg ...
0:01:16 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:00:48.000 -> 1:30:57.000
Thumbnail Duration 1:30:09.000 (Total 1:31:44.048)
OutputDirectory is "MyThumbs"
Auto adjusting aspect ratio from 1.500 to 1.333
Generating 144 104x78 thumbnails on a 12x12 Overview page.
0:01:56 to create Overview thumbnails.
144 thumbnails created. 0.81 seconds / thumbnail.
Detail page thumbnails skipped.
0:03:12 overall time to process his_girl_friday.mpeg.
Processing C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4\McLintock.mp4 ...
0:00:03 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:01:59.000 -> 2:06:39.000
Thumbnail Duration 2:04:40.000 (Total 2:06:47.257)
OutputDirectory is "MyThumbs"
Generating 84 181x78 thumbnails on a 7x12 Overview page.
0:00:21 to create Overview thumbnails.
84 thumbnails created. 0.26 seconds / thumbnail.
Detail page thumbnails skipped.
0:00:25 overall time to process McLintock.mp4.
Processing C:\McLintock (1963)\mp4 512kb\McLintock_512kb.mp4 ...
0:00:02 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:01:59.000 -> 2:06:39.000
Thumbnail Duration 2:04:40.000 (Total 2:06:47.214)
OutputDirectory is "MyThumbs"
Generating 84 181x78 thumbnails on a 7x12 Overview page.
0:00:09 to create Overview thumbnails.
84 thumbnails created. 0.11 seconds / thumbnail.
Detail page thumbnails skipped.
0:00:12 overall time to process McLintock_512kb.mp4.
0:04:14 Total time.
and looking in C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\MyThumbs\, we do indeed see the following files:
his_girl_friday_512kb_overview.jpg
his_girl_friday_overview.jpg
McLintock_overview.jpg
McLintock_512kb_overview.jpg