iTunes 10 + Automator. Where's "Play action?

_*Possible Solution!*_

Forgive me for assuming, but I imagine most of you are upset at the lack of this feature because you want to launch a song/video to play when the Automator workflow continues. While iTunes10 doesn't seems to support this yet, you don't need iTunes in order to accomplish this.

To create an alarm workflow despite iTunes10 try this:

*New Workflow*

*1) Set Computer Volume*
+adjust this to where you want it, I have mine at 100%+

*2) Get Specified Finder Items*
+add the file you want to autoplay here+

*3) Open Finder Items*
+In Quicktime, which should play every file that iTunes would play+

Important: Quicktime will not automatically play a song when opened unless you persuade it to on the command-line. Open the Terminal application and paste this line in to make Quicktime always autoplay when opening a file:

in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX MGPlayMovieOnOpen 1

Now obviously, to disable this feature in the future all you would have to do is change that trailing '1' to a '0' and it would kill the autoplay.

Hope this helps most of you in the meantime while Apple gets their fingers busy adding those Automator actions for the next update!

Take care, and see you bright and early in the morning 😀

Hi Tom,

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

The issue here for most people is probably not that they will have difficulty creating a new workflow without the missing actions, but that workflows that they may have had working for years have suddenly broken.

Fortunately, there is already a working, although somewhat time-consuming, fix, and we're all hoping there will be a forthcoming more permanent fix, as the cause is not only known, but fairly well publicized.

Shawn

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20015540-263.html

Very simple fix and it works, catching up on some tasks right now. I had to download TextWrangler to be able to save after editing, I found that Apple's Property List Editor wouldn't let me save them for some reason. I'm thrilled that it was this simple to fix.

Does anyone know where I can find "Import Files into iTunes.action" so I can modify it please?

Did you read this entire thread?
Especially this response from shawn_d?
-> http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12199818#12199818

Good question. I'm looking for it too. Closest I can find is Import Audio Files and that is clearly not the right one.

Chris CA

I did read the thread and I still can't find "Import Files into iTunes.action". I have found most of the other ones in the shawn_d post but not this one. If you know the directory where it is located please let me know.

Many thanks

You need *Import Audio File.action* in /System/Library/Automator. (Make a copy and use that)

You need Import Audio File.action in /System/Library/Automator. (Make a copy and use that)

I did modify that action, but it appears to want to transcode the audio and add it to the library and my impression is that the action doesn't transcode the files, just adds a reference to them in the iTunes library.

I found the Import files to iTunes action on my machine because it's actually called "Add files to playlist.action" Hope this helps!

I found the Import files to iTunes action on my machine because it's actually called "Add files to playlist.action"

Importing files and adding to a playlist are two completely different things.
There is;
/System/Library/Automator/Add Files to Playlist.action
and
/System/Library/Automator/Import Audio File.action

me too..
will try the applescript workaround described beneath here.

kslawson wrote:
A MacOSXHints post contains the answer to this mystery. It seems that the version comparison routine in some Automator actions uses a string comparison instead of a numeric comparison, and since "10.0" is less than "4.0" when compared as a string, said actions are "incompatible" with iTunes 10.0.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the workaround is fairly simple: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100903004553923

That link was really useful in getting over this problem: now i'm able to "import audio file" again and quite easy to do! Thanks.

Message was edited by: drearydave

It's back! iTunes 10.1 seems to have re-instated all the missing Automator actions (and certainly the Play iTunes Playlist and Start iTunes Playing ones).

Not on mine. I still do not have "Import Files into iTunes" file although strangely the action is listed in Automator.