I am processing video i’ve exported from my security system to create timelapses and i have a nice bash script which uses ffmpeg to pick one frame every 20 seconds and output a jpg, then collect up those jpgs and make a new video which is the timelapse.
That part works well.
I then wrap that script in an automator action so i can drag a folder onto the action and that folder will be processed.
The video files are 12 hours of 4K each file covers 45 minutes, the resulting video lasts just 5 seconds. Processing all the files for 1 day takes about 70-80 minutes.
My question is, if something goes wrong, how do i stop the action? I know there’s a cog in the menu bar that is supposed to stop it, but my experience is that while the ffmpeg command is running, that’s not in an automator sandpit and so is not able to be killed with the action.
I can kill the command in terminal but I’m hoping there’s a better way.
Given we can’t see what you’ve set-up, I’m going to try some assumptions on this one.
ffmpeg is going to be running in a separate process to Automator, so it sounds more like you want to be able to stop that process and not the Automator process. Automator would be the trigger/controller rather than the active action. Automator is just waiting for the spawned process to respond.
I’m guessing that the process is being run in the background, which means that you have no direct interaction with the process. In those circumstances, I think your only viable option would be to terminate the process.
However, if you were to execute the process in an interactive terminal session (e.g. by scripting iTerm2 or an equivalent approach), then you should be able to switch to the process in the interactive session and quit it via the usual “q” instruction for an interactive ffmpeg session.
Hope that helps.