AppleScript and Keynote: Movie Export Droplet

Movie Export Droplet

A valuable aspect of automation is its ability to save time. And while it is not overly difficult to open a Keynote presentation and export it to a movie file, sometimes it’s very useful to just drag a file onto an AppleScript droplet, have it do that for you, and notify you when it’s done!

DO THIS ►For your convenience, you can DOWNLOAD a completed version of the AppleScript droplet.

Here’s the droplet script. Open it in the AppleScript Editor and save it as an AppleScript application. You will then be able to drag Keynote presentation files onto the droplet.

Movie Export Droplet

property destinationFolder : (path to movies folder)

on run

-- TRIGGERED WHEN USER LAUNCHES DROPLET. PROMPT FOR PRESENTATION FILE(S):

set theseItems to ¬

(choose file of type "com.apple.iwork.keynote.key" with prompt ¬

"Pick the Keynote presentation(s) to export to movie:" with multiple selections allowed )

open theseItems

end run

on open theseItems

-- TRIGGERED WHEN USER DRAGS ITEMS ONTO THE DROPLET

display dialog "This droplet will export dragged-on Keynote presentation files as movies to the movies folder." & return & return & "The movies will be encoded to MPEG format using H.264 compression." with icon 1

set the filesToProcess to {}

-- filter the dragged-on items for Keynote presentation files

repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseItems

set thisItem to item i of theseItems

if my checkForIdentifier(thisItem, "com.apple.iwork.keynote.key") is true then

set the end of the filesToProcess to thisItem

end if

end repeat

if filesToProcess is {} then

activate

display alert "INCOMPATIBLE ITEMS" message "None of the items were Keynote presentations."

else

-- process the presentations

my exportPresentationsToMovies(filesToProcess)

end if

end open

on checkForIdentifier(thisItem, thisIdentifier)

try

-- uses Spotlight to check for specified item type

set the queryResult to ¬

(do shell script "mdls -name kMDItemContentType " & ¬

quoted form to of the POSIX path to of thisItem)

if queryResult contains "(null)" then

return false

else

set x to the length of "kMDItemContentType = \""

set the indentifierString to text (x + 1) thru -2 of queryResult

if the indentifierString is thisIdentifier then

return true

end if

on error

return false

end try

end checkForIdentifier

on exportPresentationsToMovies(thesePresentations)

try

repeat with i from 1 to the count of thesePresentations

set thisPresentation to item i of thesePresentations

tell application "Keynote"

activate

if playing is true then tell front document to stop

open thisPresentation

set the documentName to name of the front document

copy my deriveFileNameForNewFileInFolder(documentName, destinationFolder) to ¬

{targetName, targetPOSIXpath}

set destinationFile to (targetPOSIXpath as POSIX file)

with timeout of 1200 seconds -- 20 minutes

export front document to destinationFile ¬

as QuickTime movie with properties {movie format:large}

end timeout

close front document saving no

end tell

display notification documentName with title "Keynote Movie Export"

end repeat

on error tell the front errorMessage

activate

display alert "EXPORT ERROR" message tell the front errorMessage

error number -128

end try

end exportPresentationsToMovies

on deriveFileNameForNewFileInFolder(sourceItemBaseName, targetFolderHFSAlias)

-- UNIX routine that derives a none-conflicting file name

set targetFolderPOSIXpath to (POSIX path to of targetFolderHFSAlias)

set incrementSeparator to "-"

set targetExtension to "m4v"

set extensionSeparator to "."

set targetName to sourceItemBaseName & extensionSeparator & targetExtension

set targetItemPOSIXpath to targetFolderPOSIXpath & targetName

set the fileExistenceStatus to ¬

(do shell script "[ -a " & (quoted form to of targetItemPOSIXpath) & ¬

" ] && echo 'true' || echo 'false'") as boolean

if fileExistenceStatus is true then

set the nameIncrement to 1

repeat

-- create a new target path with the target item name incremented

set the newName to ¬

(the sourceItemBaseName & incrementSeparator & ¬

(nameIncrement as Unicode text) & ¬

extensionSeparator & targetExtension) as Unicode text

set targetItemPOSIXpath to targetFolderPOSIXpath & newName

set the fileExistenceStatus to ¬

100

(do shell script "[ -a " & (quoted form to of targetItemPOSIXpath) & ¬

101

" ] && echo 'true' || echo 'false'") as boolean

102

if fileExistenceStatus is true then

103

set the nameIncrement to the nameIncrement + 1

104

else

105

set the targetPOSIXpath to (targetFolderPOSIXpath & newName)

106

return {newName, targetPOSIXpath}

107

end if

108

end repeat

109

else

110

set the targetPOSIXpath to (targetFolderPOSIXpath & targetName)

111

return {targetName, targetPOSIXpath}

112

end if

113

end deriveFileNameForNewFileInFolder

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