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WatchCat

WatchCat is a program that offers batch processing. it keeps track of all the files that are placed in configurable folders (watchfolders), and it can process files that are dragged onto it.

It can convert audio files (also audio in video files) to different formats, normalize them (to ITU-R.1770 / R128, RMS and peak levels) and process them with Stereo Tool. For each input, multiple outputs (for example at different bitrates, with different file formats or different processing/normalization) can be configured. Built-in scripting can be used to attach other actions to it, such as automatically uploading files to a server.

How do I use it?

If you want to use it with watch folders, select one or more watch folders and configure output folders, and optionally processing and normalization levels. Then just place the files in the input folder and they will be processed. You can control what happens to the input files once they have been processed. You can have them moved to somewhere else or have them deleted.

For drag/drop use, go to the Drag & Drop settings instead. You can configure the same things there, except that there are no input folders to select.

What license do I need?

Depending on what type of processing you want to use, you might need a Stereo Tool license.

If you want to use pre/post scripting, if you want to be able to process audio in video files or if you want to have multiple processing chains, you need a WatchCat Professional license.

WatchCat

How to process video files with WatchCat

To process video files, WatchCat needs to demux (split) the video and audio, then process the audio and mux (combine) video and audio again. This is not built into WatchCat, but it's easy to get it to work, with ffmpeg.

  • Install ffmpeg on the pc that's running WatchCat
  • In the input file settings in WatchCat, open "Advanced", then select "Video - Extract audio from video file" under Pre-processing command. This will automatically fill in the following script:
    /path/to/ffmpeg -i "$infile" -f wav -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 2 "$tempfile" -y
    All you need to do here is replace /path/to/ffmpeg by the actual path to the ffmpeg executable, typically something like "C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" (note the quotes!), so:
    "C:\Program Files\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe" -i "$infile" -f wav -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 2 "$tempfile" -y
  • Do the same thing for the outputs, but select "Video- Merge processed audio into original".

Other automated actions

Note that you can run any type of script commands here, including things to automatically upload files to a server for example.