Automate: Ferrite Chapter Text Export to HTML version

iOS
1

Hi there!

I’m trying to use Workflow/Siri Shortcuts to automate converting my chapter export from Ferrite into the format we need to use for our show notes page.

Here’s a sample of what Ferrite exports:
00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:16: Tools!
00:01:35: 2017 Blog Post
00:01:43: 2018 Blog Post
00:02:17: Evernote
00:03:38: Blog Post (Evernote Tagging)

Here is what I’m trying to create out of this:

  • Introduction 00:00
  • Tools! 01:16
  • 2017 Blog Post 01:35
  • 2018 Blog Post 01:43
  • Evernote 02:17
  • Blog Post (Evernote Tagging) 03:38

    • For this section it is rendering the HTML: each line opens with < li > and ends with < / li > (minus the extra spaces)

    Any ideas on how this could be done? Is something like Editorial needed for this kind of text work?
    Thanks!!!

    2

    It’s absolutely possible to do some quick text processing in Workflow. Here’s one way you could process this text into HTML for your list.

    Hope that helps.

    1 Like
    3

    I have the opposite problem: When I record a podcast I edit it in Audacity on Mac. I know when I’d like to drop chapter markers (with graphics) in.

    I do my chapter marker adding in Ferrite. It would be nice to be able to automate that based off the time stamps.

    (I don’t add anything to our show notes about chapter markers and Overcast shows them anyway - so I don’t have a “massage the text” problem.)

    Thoughts?

    (Yes, I probably could edit the podcast entirely in Ferrite, which might solve my problem, but I need to get used to it first.)

    4

    If you don’t want to move entirety to Ferrite for editing, and you’re editing on the Mac, I’d recommend taking a look at Podcast Chapters for chapter marking in general.

    I can’t recall off the top of my head if it has AppleScript support, I think not, but Keyboard Maestro might be an alternative automation approach in that case. However it does support cue files which is a plain text format. I think you’d be able to use that to get your chapters in, but the file format doesn’t support image setting as far as I’m aware.

    1 Like
    5

    Thanks!

    So I gave this a try and I got this error:

    Numerical argument out of domain
    The index you specified was outside of the possible range (you asked for item 4, and the list has 1 items)

    I tried to dig into the workflow to understand where this error was coming from, but couldn’t figure it out. Any ideas?

    6

    What is your exact input text? It is expecting to use colons as separators when it splits the text as per your example. If there are lines without those in (e.g. blank lines), it will fail on those lines.

    7

    Based on the assumption there is some varation in the formatting to what was supplied here’s another version that will highlight the line(s) that I would expect to be causing errors and skip processing them. See if that has better results for you and let us know if it does flag up any particular format issues.

    Example - Process Ferrite Chapter Export (v2)

    8

    V2 works perfectly - thanks!!!

    The input was formatted exactly like what I gave you and verified by doing a clipboard version that I copied the text and it still fouled up. Not sure why.

    I did test the new version as well on outputs that include URLs in the chapter names and it did a good job of letting me know that those URLs were there and formatting the text properly!

    Here is what Ferrite formats text to when it includes a URL in the chapter notes:
    00:00:00: Introduction
    http://www.fundraisingreportcard.com
    00:01:16: Tools!
    00:01:35: 2017 Blog Post
    00:01:43: 2018 Blog Post
    00:02:17: Evernote
    00:03:38: Blog Post (Evernote Tagging)

    In this example the URL is associated with the chapter directly above it. How difficult would it be to associate that URL with hyper linking just the text after the colon in the line before it? It’ll be a mix of some chapters having a URL and others that don’t. In the actual text outputted it looks like it provides two tabs worth of space between the beginning fo the line and the URL - the forum is stripping that space away here.

    Thanks again for your help! I’m blown away by the Workflow and if it is going to be time consuming to figure out and implement please let me know!

    9

    Pretty straight forward. Just a case of adding a look ahead for a valid URL if we’re on any line other than the last one; doing it on the last one would bring us back to another out of bounds error.

    I’ve also added an extra example incorporating a URL at the start and some additional output options at the end for good measure. It also now ignores blank and single URL lines.

    Overall, it’s a bit more complicated so there may be some extra testing required - but here’s the revised version.

    Example - Process Ferrite Chapter Export (v3)

    Hope that helps.

    10

    Incredible! Thank you so much! Worked perfectly without modification on the first try - even having a URL in the last episode worked without error!

    You have no idea how useful this will be - will be using this across at least 3 different shows I produce. Thank you so much!!!