Adding to iTunes via the command line

I recently had the need to add a whole bunch of files to iTunes. I'm a nutty Unix geek, so rather than spending the 10 seconds required to start iTunes, select File->Add To Library, and then select the files, I spent the 30 minutes required to figure out how to do it from the command line, and then the extra 15 minutes to write it up in this blog. But hey, that's what we geeks do ;-).

Actually, this is not as crazy as it sounds, I wanted to automate the whole process of file conversion using Handbrake and then adding to iTunes. In the past, I used iSquint for this, but alas, iSquint is no more. The new version of Handbrake supports conversions from files, instead of only from DVD's.

This is how I did it:

1. Use HandbrakeCLI to convert the files to MP4 format, using a script along these lines. I found this HandbrakeCLI guide to be very handy. This script is not foolproof - it should check to make sure the file exists before calling HandbrakeCLI, etc., but it shows the concept.
   
   for i in $*
   do
   echo starting $i at `date`
   base=`basename $i .avi`
   /Applications/HandBrakeCLI -i $i -o $base.mp4 --preset="iPhone & iPod Touch"
   echo ending $i at `date`
   
   done
   
   
2. Use AppleScript to add it to iTunes, as in this script.
   
   for i in $*
   do
   if [ -f $i ];
   then
   echo adding file $i
   osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\" to open POSIX file \"$i\""
   fi
   done
   
   The trick here is that you need to specify the full path when calling this script, something like this:
   
   $ add-to-itunes.bash `pwd`/*.mp4
   
   otherwise the AppleScript will fail:
   
   29:63: execution error: iTunes got an error: Can’t make some data into the expected type. (-1700)
   
   
3. And that's it! iTunes automatically starts playing the file, this is an option that you can turn off via preferences.