Changelog

All notable changes to garmin_varia_transcode.sh are documented here. Format follows Keep a Changelog.

[Unreleased]

Changed

• --move-source renamed to --delete-source (old name kept as alias)
• --continue-on-error renamed to --keep-going (old name kept as alias) ### Added
• --unattended preset (--delete-source + --keep-going) for long unattended runs
• --staging-dir DIR to place intermediate transcoding temp files on a fast local path, with automatic fallback to destination temp files when staging is unavailable or lacks sufficient free space for the current file
• automatic RAM disk creation on macOS when --staging-dir points to a missing /Volumes/<Name> path, configurable with --staging-ramdisk-mb N

• --debug-timing N to stop after N video files and print timing statistics for quick profiling

• cleanup_garmin_varia_media_folder.sh helper for media-folder hygiene (import + transcoded output): removes AppleDouble artifacts (._*), removes zero-size MP4 files, and normalizes single-suffix duplicate timestamp names

Behavior

• Import cleanup returns exit code 1 when duplicate groups are blocked and need manual review

[1.0.0] — 2026-05-04

Initial release.

Added

• Batch HEVC transcoding with hevc_videotoolbox, libx265, or libx264
• Encoding modes: hardware, auto, quality, compat
• Default mode: hardware (hevc_videotoolbox on macOS)
• Recursive directory traversal (default on)
• Directory structure preservation at destination
• Per-file audio detection via ffprobe; AAC 128k output when audio present
• HEVC outputs tagged hvc1 for Apple Photos / QuickTime compatibility
• -map_metadata 0 and -movflags +faststart
• Source file timestamp preservation via touch -r
• --move-source: delete source only after codec + duration validation
• --no-overwrite: skip existing output files
• --no-recursive: restrict to top-level directory
• --dry-run: print actions without writing files
• --verbose: full per-operation logs and ffmpeg/ffprobe output
• --crf: override CRF value for software modes
• --extensions: configurable video extension list
• Auto single-file mode when --source is a file path
• Quiet default output: one progress line per file with elapsed seconds
• Summary line with counts and timing after each run
• Destination-inside-source guard (hard error)
• At-least-one-of --source/--destination requirement
• Fail-fast: encoding chain stops on first ffmpeg error
• Bash 3.2 compatible (macOS system bash)