[TriLUG] cp errror "Argument list too long"

[William Sutton]

It's not entirely hopeless...I tried the following and it appears to 
work...

I created 4 .jpg files named 1.jpg through 4.jpg, containing the 
equivalent number.  I then executed the following commands in sequence:

touch num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 1.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 2.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 3.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 4.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 1.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 2.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 3.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 0 num.mpeg 4.jpg num.mpeg
convert -delay 20 num.mpeg num.mpeg

You can see the files at http://trilug.org/~william/convert

basically I think this can be made to work as I indicated below...see 
revised code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#-----
use strict;

my $convert = `which convert`;
chomp($convert);

# change to suit your needs
my $input_dir = "/home/william/convert";
my $output_dir = "/home/william/public_html/convert";
my $frame_delay = 20;

my $output_file = "output.mpeg";
my @input_files = map { chomp($_); $_; } `/bin/ls $input_dir`;

foreach my $file (@input_files)
{
    `mv $input_dir/$file $output_dir`;
    `$convert -delay 0 $output_dir/$output_file $output_dir/$file \
        $output_dir/$output_file`;
    unlink("$output_dir/$file");
}

`$convert -delay $frame_delay $output_dir/$output_file \
    $output_dir/$output_file`;

#-----

to join multiple mpeg files, I think you should be able to do the 
following:

convert -delay 0 *.mpeg out.mpeg

HTH!

William Sutton

On Mon, 25 Jul 2005, Michael Tharp wrote:

> William Sutton wrote:
> 
> >Maybe it's time to switch to Perl :)
> >
> >#-----
> >my @file = map { chomp($_); $_; } `ls -1rt /path/to/files`;
> >
> >foreach my $file (@files)
> >{
> >    next unless -f "/path/to/files/$file";
> >
> >    `cp /path/to/file/$file /tmp/date`;
> >    # your convert code here
> >    # and, if you want, uncomment the next line
> >    # unlink ("/path/to/files/$file");
> >}
> >  
> >
> The problem here is that he's not converting multiple
> files ito multiple files, but rather multiple files into one
> file, so I'm not sure this approach will help any. Perhaps
> convert batches of as many files as will fit in one command
> line, then seam the files together?
> 
> Michael Tharp
>