Thumbnailing all the videos in a directory (including its sub-directories) is easy, just use the -d, --directory option. For example, if your directories were laid out as mentioned in the Sample Files section, then to thumbnail the entire His Girl Friday (1940) directory, do:
cd C:\His Girl Friday (1940)
clatn -d .
This would automatically generate thumbnails for:
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\pillarboxed\his_girl_friday_512kb pillarboxed.wmv
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\stretched\his_girl_friday_512kb stretched.wmv
CLAutoThumbnailer will normally put the generated thumbnail pages in the original directory of each video file. This is almost always what you want for Detail thumbnail pages. It is also why it’s better to put each video file in its own directory (with the exception of Multi-Part Video Files). The --subdir option can instead be used to write thumbnail pages to a specified sub-directory.
The -d, --directory option will skip processing directories that have filenames that match *_overview.jpg, *_pageNNNN_NN_NN_NN.jpg, or *_pageNNNN.jpg. This means you have to delete any such files if you want to reprocess a directory. It also means you can manually skip certain directories by creating a dummy file called skipthisdirectory_overview.jpg in them (or something like this).
If the --subdir option is a non-empty string then the presence of a sub-directory with that name will indicate that the parent directory should be skipped.
Checking for already created thumbnails only affects -d, --directory option processing. If you explicitly list a file in the arguments to CLAutoThumbnailer it will always be thumbnailed, regardless of the presence of previously generated thumbnails (which will be silently overwritten).
In our case, we really don’t want to automatically process the pillarboxed or stretched sub-directories (since those videos will need special handling). Therefore create the following dummy files (they can be empty text files):
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\pillarboxed\skipthisdirectory_overview.jpg
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\stretched\skipthisdirectory_overview.jpg
Running clatn -d . then results in:
Processing directory C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4\his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4 ...
0:00:11 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:00:05.000 -> 1:31:39.521
Thumbnail Duration 1:31:34.521 (Total 1:31:44.521)
Generating 144 104x78 thumbnails on a 12x12 Overview page.
0:00:12 to create Overview thumbnails.
144 thumbnails created. 0.09 seconds / thumbnail.
Generating 552 325x244 thumbnails every 10 seconds on 35 4x4 Detail pages.
0:00:48 to generate Detail page thumbnails.
551 thumbnails created. 0.09 seconds / thumbnail.
0:01:13 overall time to process his_girl_friday_512kb.mp4.
Done processing directory C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4
0:01:13 Total time.
Processing directory C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2
Processing C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2\his_girl_friday.mpeg ...
0:01:14 Total time to create AVFileSet.
Thumbnails Range 0:00:05.000 -> 1:31:39.048
Thumbnail Duration 1:31:34.048 (Total 1:31:44.048)
Auto adjusting aspect ratio from 1.500 to 1.333
Generating 144 104x78 thumbnails on a 12x12 Overview page.
0:02:06 to create Overview thumbnails.
144 thumbnails created. 0.88 seconds / thumbnail.
Generating 552 325x244 thumbnails every 10 seconds on 35 4x4 Detail pages.
0:08:22 to generate Detail page thumbnails.
551 thumbnails created. 0.91 seconds / thumbnail.
0:11:44 overall time to process his_girl_friday.mpeg.
Done processing directory C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2
0:11:44 Total time.
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\pillarboxed already contains thumbnails.
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\stretched already contains thumbnails.
0:12:57 Total time.
During the initial processing of his_girl_friday.mpeg, you’ll see an additional “% Indexing” message (actually this always happens but is usually too quick to see). This is normal for MPEG2 videos.
CLAutoThumbnailer reports the time to thumbnail each file, each directory, and the total time for the entire command. For directories with lots of videos, be warned that this can easily take hours to complete.
Run clatn -d . again to see the effect of directory skipping:
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mp4 already contains thumbnails.
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\mpeg2 already contains thumbnails.
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\pillarboxed already contains thumbnails.
C:\His Girl Friday (1940)\stretched already contains thumbnails.
0:00:00 Total time.
To only generate Detail thumbnail pages for a directory (because you’re going to later create Overview pages with custom time ranges as discussed in Skip thumbnailing the credits in lots of movies) do:
clatn -v- -d .
You can summarize an entire directory of videos by putting all its Overview thumbnails in one directory. You do this by using the -o, --outdir option:
mkdir MyThumbs
clatn -i 0 -o MyThumbs -d .
which will put Overview thumbnails for all videos within the current working directory in the MyThumbs subdirectory. Notice that the directory specified by the -o, --outdir must already exist — it will not be automatically created.
Todo
Fix to take into account presence of overview thumbnail page. It would be nice if we only generate thumbs to MyThumbs if they aren’t already there.
See the --exts option for how to control which extensions the -d, --directory considers video files.
By default, video files smaller than 100MB are skipped during directory processing. The --minsize option controls how big a video file has to be to be thumbnailed. Set it to 0 to disable file size checking during directory processing.