I use the video transcoding tools made by Don Melton over on GitHub to compress self filmed videos. Now I would like to automate this task by using a PowerShell script to loop over the contents of a folder as input arguments for the tool and have the output put into a seperate folder. My problem is that the tool is written in a way that it has no option to provide an output location, instead it always places the output files in the directory where it is called in. So when I cd into an "output" directory "next to" the one where my input files are, I then can call
other-transcode ../input/file.mp4
and the output file of the same name as the input file will be placed in the output directory.
Now when I want to use the command in a script, how do I tell PowerShell to run the command as if it was typed manually into a shell that was in the output directory at the moment?
For context, this is my end goal, but I think it is easier to split the complicated question into multiple ones.
Related
I have a powershell script that generates a report, and I have connected it to an io.filesystemwatcher. I am trying to improve the error handling capability. I already have the report generation function (which only takes in a filepath) within a try-catch loop that basically kills word, excel and powerpoint and tries again if it fails. This seems to work well but I want to embed in that another try-catch loop that will restart the computer and generate the report after reboot if it fails a second consecutive time.
I decided to try and modify the registry after reading this article: https://cmatskas.com/configure-a-runonce-task-on-windows/
my plan would be, within the second try-catch loop I will create a textfile called RecoveredPath.txt with the file path being its only contents, and then add something like:
Set-ItemProperty "HKLMU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" -Name '!RecoverReport' -Value "C:\...EmergencyRecovery.bat"
Before rebooting. Within the batch file I have:
set /p RecoveredDir=<RecoveredPath.txt
powershell.exe -File C:\...Report.ps1 %RecoveredDir%
When I try to run the batch script, it doesn't yield any errors but doesn't seem to do anything. I tried adding in an echo statement and it is storing the value of the text file as a variable but doesn't seem to be passing it to powershell correctly. I also tried adding -Path %RecoveredDir% but that yielded an error (the param in report.ps1 is named $Path).
What am I doing incorrectly?
One potential problem is that not enclosing %RecoveredDir% in "..." would break with paths containing spaces and other special chars.
However, the bigger problem is that using mere file name RecoveredPath.txt means that the file is looked for in whatever the current directory happens to be.
In a comment your state that both the batch file and input file RecoveredPath.txt are located in your desktop folder.
However, it is not the batch file's location that matters, it's the process' current directory - and that is most likely not your desktop when your batch file auto-runs on startup.
Given that the batch file and the input file are in the same folder and that you can refer to a batch file's full folder path with %~dp0 (which includes a trailing \), modify your batch file to look as follows:
set /p RecoveredDir=<"%~dp0RecoveredPath.txt"
powershell.exe -File C:\...Report.ps1 "%RecoveredDir%"
Is there a way to use the "Copy" command in Powershell to copy a source file to a destination folder but not lock the actual file being copied?
Reason for asking is the file being copied is also an input file for a separate process and if the process starts while the Powershell script is running then it will fail if the Powershell script has locked the input file it uses.
My team faces the need to encrypt all files in a repository with AES256. For this purpose, we decided we are going to zip all files with such encryption, using the same key for all of them.
The problem we have is that these files sit in a NAS, so from windows boxes they are accessible by \ to them.
The directory structure is something like this:
Original Structure:
Root
-1
|--folder1
|---file1.ext
|---file2.ext
|--folder2
|---filea.ext
|---fileb.ext
|--folder2.a
|---filec.ext
and so on...
Essentially, what we need is to have all the original files contained in a zip file, keeping their original names, which would be something like this:
Desired Outcome:
|-Root
|-1
|--folder1
|---file1.zip
|---file2.zip
|--folder2
|---filea.zip
|---fileb.zip
|--folder2a
|---filec.zip
and so on...
To accomplish this, we tried a batch script that calls 7zip, but it only works if it's run from the root directory, which is something we cannot use as the files are not in a server.
Here is the syntax of the batch script we came up with:
FOR /R %%i IN ("*.wmv") DO "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -mx0 -tzip -pPasswordHere "%%~dpni.zip" "%%i"
But, as wrote previously, it only works when run from the root folder, which is something we cannot do as files sit on a network location.
Mapping the drive or making a symbolic link to it doesn't do the trick either.
I've also checked on 7zip to do this, namely, making use of its "-r" operator, but I couldn't find a way to get the desired outcome (namely, recurse through all folders in the remote tree structure -there are a lot of them...- and keep the original file name).
I'm open to any suggestions as any kind of script, trick or guizmo that gets the job done will be more than welcome. =)
Thanks a million in advance!,
Sebas.
----SOLUTION----
I actually found a sollution here, mapping the drive in a different way (it's so simple it just made me feel stupid(er), but it's altogheter beautiful).
Using the batch script below, the remote share can be mapped like so:
You can map a drive using
net use X: \\server\directory
and then you can change to that directory using
pushd X:
(Post from which the answer was taken from: Batch File Iterating through files on a local network server)
I am currently trying to write a batch program that installs a module named SetConsolePath.psm1 at the correct location. I am a beginner with Batch and I have absolutely no powershell experience.
Through the internet, I have learned how to display PSModulePath with powershell -command "echo $env:PSModulePath.
How can I, via .bat file, move SetConsolePath.psm1 from the desktop to the location displayed by powershell -command "echo $env:PSModulePath?
Thank you in advance, and I apologize for my lack of experience.
Before I answer, I must out that you do not want to copy PowerShell module files directly to the path pointed by PsModulePath. You really want to create a folder inside PSModulePath and copy the files there instead.
The prefix env in a Powershell variable indicates an environment variable. $env:PSModulePath is actually referring to the PSMODULEPATH environment variable. On the command line, and in batch files, environment variables can be displayed by placing the name between percent symbols. (In fact, you could have displayed this value by typing echo %PSMODULEPATH% instead.)
To reference the desktop folder, have a look at this answer, which shows you how to use another environment variable, USERPROFILE.
Therefore, to copy the file from the desktop directory to the path specified in PSModulePath, you would do this:
COPY "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\SetConsolePath.psm1" "%PSMODULEPATH%"
And, as I warned earlier, you really should copy the file to a folder underneath PsModulePath. So what you really want is:
IF NOT EXIST "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder" MKDIR "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder"
COPY "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\SetConsolePath.psm1" "%PSMODULEPATH%\MyNewFolder"
I am doing a batch scripting assignment where I have to call one script from inside another. I need the script to run the second script no matter where my lecturer saves these scripts. How would I do this. Is there some way to find the path of script inside the script and use that to execute the file. Any help would be great. I think I need to use %'s but i'm not sure.
The name of the script is Hello World.bat.
How would I copy Hello World.bat to the C:\ if I don't know which directory the lecturer has placed it in. what command/s would I use so that the copy would work regardless of the scripts location.
I don't see the "DOS" tag, but I'll assume that it is for now. If you want the entire path, you can get it by doing this:
echo %cd%
If you want just the last folder, this works (inside a .bat file):
for %%* in (.) do #echo %%~n*
Note that from the command line, the above command will work with single %'s:
for %* in (.) do #echo %~n*
If the script you are executing is calling other scripts in the SAME folder location, you can prefix the path statement with "%~dp0" or "%~dps0" but do not put a backslash between that and the name of the script you are calling. In other words, if script1.bat is calling script2.bat in the same folder, the statement in script1.bat would refer to "%~dp0script2.bat"
sorry about batch files, am not familiar, but in nix shell, there is the locate command which can return the path of the file , if you know the filename exactly and the name is unique.
like
name=$(locate filname)