Thanks. I think you didnt quite get what I was saying but i created a small applescript which solves my problem. Wasnt an issue of the encode workflow trying to act on the same files again or before they were finished. rather, because the process can take 2 hours or more per movie, i end up in a situation where the first batch picks of 3 movies, puts them in a queue and starts with movie one. Subsequently as that process is going on more movies are added to the batch folder and another encode workflow is kicked off on the new movies. This can happen a few times in a short amount of time and i didnt want more than 2 instances of handbrakeCLI running at once.
Hence, i wrote this little applescript to check how many instances of handbrakecli are running and if its 2, then do not run your /appworkflow/application for encoding movies. If its only 1 or none, workflow can run. This script is tied into my Hazel actions which is controlling when/how often the script runs and if file acted on. If you wanted the applescript to be more self contained and tied you could expand it somewhat.
Code:
set myString to do shell script " /bin/ps -ax"
set allWords to (every word of myString)
set wordcount to 0
repeat with i in my allWords
if i contains "HandBrakeCLI" then set wordcount to wordcount + 1
end repeat
if wordcount < 2 then
activate application "Batch_Encode_Movies"
else
error number -128
end if
