Unlike the -d, --directory option which forces you to apply the same settings for all the files in a directory, a command file lets you process multiple video files using custom settings for each file.
A command file is simply a text file that contains entries that specify the options to use while processing a video file along with the relative path to that file. Lines that start with a # character are treated as comments and ignored. Blank lines are also ignored. A command file must have a .txt extension.
For example, you can specify different thumbnailing time ranges by using the -s, --start and -e, --end options, or different label positions by using the -l, --label option.
Here’s the contents of a sample command file called examplecmd.txt that generates just Overview thumbnail pages with custom start and end times for a list of files:
-i 0 -s 0:0:53 -e 1:48:10 "folder1\video1.avi"
-i 0 -s 0:0:25 -e 1:22:25 "folder2\video2.wmv"
-i 0 -s 0:0:24 -e 1:25:00 "folder2\subfolder1\video1.mp4"
#-i 0 -s 0:2:12 -e 1:24:30 "folder2\subfolder1\video2.mov"
-i 0 -s 0:0:20 -e 1:21:23 "folder2\subfolder2\video3.mkv"
You would use this command file by doing:
clatn examplecmd.txt
You can also specify the following options on the command line and they will apply to the entire command file:
For example, to scale all the thumbnail pages you can do:
clatn -f 1.5 examplecmd.txt
Other than the -f, --scalefactor option, options specified in a command file will override any options specified on the command line. For these options it’s probably simpler to just use the --save option to change CLAutoThumbnailer’s default settings before you process a command file.
To make it easier to create command files, CLAutoThumbnailer supplies the -m, --cmddir option. This will generate a text file called CLAutotn-temp.txt that contains a sample entry for each video file found in the specified directory (and its sub-directories).
Lines for video files in directories that look like they already have had thumbs generated for them will the be prefixed with a # character. This uses the same method that the -d, --directory option uses to decide when to skip directories during processing.
See Skip thumbnailing the credits in lots of movies for a detailed example of how to create and use a Command File.