If you download a lot of video files that need to be converted to something else, it gets to be a tedious task to complete all of the steps. Now with a couple of new Automator actions, your download and convert process can be greatly automated.
Set Up
I am assuming that you already have an application for downloading videos. It is most helpful if the program that you are using to download will automatically copy the completed download to a different folder when it is complete. If you are downloading bit torrents, Azureus has this feature.
Then you will need a video conversion tool. VisualHub from Techspansion is superb for this application - plus its the one we were able to script.
Lastly you will need our two Unofficial Technology actions: Extract Movies and VisualHub Import and Convert.
After you have installed VisualHub, Run the VisualHub Import and Convert installer. This installer updates VisualHub with a script dictionary from Techspansion that makes VisualHub scriptable. Follow the installation directions. Then drop the Extract Movies action into the ~/Library/Automator folder. (The ~ means your home folder).
Creating the Action
After you have completed the installation, we need to create the Automator workflow with the newly installed actions. So, open Automator and in the Library column, select the Finder application. That will limit the actions available to just the Finder actions. The first thing we want to do is to tell the workflow what folder to look in to find the videos. You can select a top level folder, because the Extract Movies action will search all the subfolders. Select the Get Specified Finder Items Action and drag it over to the blank area on the right. Then click on the plus button at the bottom of the action and select the folder containing your videos.

Next select the Extract Video Files Action (Sorry for the name mismatch. We'll fix that in a future version) and drag that right beneath the Get Specified Finder Items. There are no options to set. Finally, in the Library column, scroll down towards the bottom and select the VisualHub application. In the Action column, select and drag the VisualHub Import and Convert action just below the Extract Movies action. When you are through, your action should look like this (click the image for a larger picture):

Using Your New Workflow
You can now save your workflow. For even more efficiency, you can "Save As Plugin..." and save the workflow as a folder action. If you attach the folder action to your video downloads folder, when a file or folder is transferred into that downloads folder your new workflow will automatically extract the existing videos, add them to VisualHub and start the conversion process at the default settings. Additionally, if you have your default settings in VisualHub set automatically add the converted video to iTunes, all you have to do is sync and run.
Some Limitations and Issues
A known issue is that if you use the VisualHub Import and Convert action to add one or more videos to VisualHub while it is in the process of a conversion, VisualHub will start the conversion process on all files from the beginning.
We haven't yet created the workflow that will clean up the videos out of the download folder once they are converted. You will have to manually clean up the files in the download folder to avoid converting and creating duplicates.
Additionally, we need to decide what to do about the Apple Script timeout. We may need to extend it so we can quit VisualHub when it is done.
Comments Welcome
We invite you to comment and suggest improvements. We do not offer support directly for these actions, but will do our best to respond to comments.