Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any way to trap this thumbnail creation. The iMovie ‘08 scripting is a complete hack – there’s no scripting dictionary whatsoever, so I had to resort to UI scripting (using the universal access stuff). This is why I pop up the dialog (in the new version) that warns you not to touch anything while it’s fiddling with iMovie.

Similarly with the My Flip Video Library, I was prompted to create this script when I launched the app and saw how terrible it was. I immediately deleted the app entirely. This means I have no idea where it stores its library or how iMovie decides it’s something to import.

As for letting you know when the script is done, the automator “app” icon disappears from the dock and all activity ceases. And for me, iMovie does select the new event. I will think about ways to improve this, though.

I’m using a MacBook running the latest Leopard and QT updates. I had trouble converting the AVI files on the Flip camera into something useable. I tried several output options (MPEG-4 and QT), but the resulting clips were blank, white screens with audio. The Perian plug in seemed to do the trick, and exporting the video to .MOV at 640×480 (I don’t recall the other settings off hand), preserved the video quality.

Using your script to import as DV, the clips more pixelated than the ones I imported manually (after converting the AVIs to QT movies in QT Pro with the Perian plug in). I see where you set the import to “DV” in your automator script. Is there an easy mod to the script to import as a higher quality QT movie? I’m referring to this line: set last item of components to “DV”

Three other minor comments/suggestions – First, if you’ve added video clips to your iPhoto library (my digital still can capture video clips), when iMovie is launched, it’ll prompt you to create thumbnails of those clips. This seems to error out the script. My workaround was to simply complete the video thumbnails creation in iMovie and relaunched the script. You may either want to find a way to trap this “create thumbnail” prompt through the script or suggest users do this manually before launching the script.

Second, and this is probably an iMovie behavior, when the script is completed, iMovie automatically opened a camera import window which shows a couple of clips. The “camera” named after the user’s short name, contains what appears to be video clips from the “My Flip Video Library,” (I tried using the software that came with the camera). Having deleted that folder, and rerunning the script, the process seems to work okay without iMovie opening up the camera import window. Again, this may be more of a documentation issue, as it’s more likely an iMovie behavior than your script. Perhaps in your documentation you can suggest that users delete the folders created on the Mac by the Flip software (remembering to first move any needed videos to an appropriate location like back to the camera).

Third, with the warning against moving the mouse and using the keyboard, I sat at my system for a while before taking a peek at the event library, worrying that there might have been some background process running which would get derailed. But, upon clicking on the 2008 collection in the event library, I saw the new events created by the script. It would be great if the script could issue a “done” message or change the view in iMovie to the recently added event so the user can see the video has been successfully imported. For me, the hint was my MacBook’s fan and my Activity Monitor dock icon settled down , suggesting that the heavy lifting was done.

I appreciate your efforts on this script and hope you can incorporate some of these suggestions into your next revision.

Thanks,
KK

Any idea what I’m doing wrong? Thanks… this promises to be a giant help…

I will replace it today with the new version that works better.