Have Time Machine automatically skip incomplete files

[devburke]

I think a future version should tell Time Machine not to backup incomplete output video files. I know this can be done manually by telling Time Machine to skip the enclosing folder, but it should be automatic. Incomplete files in this case would be pretty much useless, and due to the nature of the program (converting videos, often large files and whole movies) backing up incomplete outputs can quickly take up a lot of space.

Just an idea.

[TedJ]

I'm not aware of an API that would allow Handbrake to tell Time Machine to skip an incomplete encode, but I may be mistaken. Simplest solution is to encode to a temporary directory on Time Machine's block list, then move the encode upon completion.

Moving to Ponies.

[devburke]

It should be possible, as Transmission does something similar for incomplete downloads.

From http://trac.transmissionbt.com/wiki/Changes under "Transmission 1.00 (2008/01/04)”

Leopard: Time Machine will ignore incomplete downloads

I’m not a programmer, and I don’t know how hard it would be to find out how this was done (although it should definitely help that it’s open source), but it should be possible.

[cornholio]

Transmission achieves this using CSBackupIsItemExcluded; you can see the code here: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/browser ... /Torrent.m
just look for timeMachineExclude.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ ... rence.html

[jbjoret]

You could use a special directory to put your target video files. It is quite easy then to prevent TimeMachine to backup the directory.