How to Automatically Copy Images from Removable Media

So, I’m lazy.  I also like things to work perfectly.  This is why I write tools to do things so that I don’t have to.  After recently moving to Linux for my main desktop, I wanted to be able to do everything I had previously done when it was running Windows, with a reasonable amount of effort.  One thing I needed to be able to do is manage my photos.  I was happy when I found out that Picasa runs just fine in Linux, so most of the battle is won.  One of the things that always bugged me in Windows was transferring photos from removable media, such as an SD card.  In my mind, this should be a simple process:

• Copy the photos to a specific location, with a folder named appropriately
• Skip duplicates
• Do all of this without having to do anything manually

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Converting TiVo MPEG2 Videos to H.264

Something I’ve been working on a lot lately (and haven’t been posting until I had things the way I wanted them) was to convert my tivo mpeg2 files that I’ve been copying over from my S3 Tivo to something a little smaller, like h.264.  I have a script to do this, which I’ll provide, but I’d like to go through the process, which consists of:

1. Getting the dimensions of the video
2. Cropping letterbox and overscan
3. Encoding the video

I had a *lot* of issues with AV Sync as well as dropped frames using HandBrake (that no one seemed to know why) so I went with mencoder.  I also left the audio as-is instead of transcoding into AAC.  It’s not a “proper” h.264 file with AC-3, but it works for my purposes.

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