Hi All,

I am completely new to Powershell and would love to hear some advice.

I am setting up a network render for After Effects and my mac is the main machine. My system will automatically make an After Effects file and place it into a folder for rendering by a PC, however Powershell fails to recognize a new file in the watch folder on the Mac

I have set up a watch folder using the following code:

### SET FOLDER TO WATCH + FILES TO WATCH + SUBFOLDERS YES/NO
    $watcher = New-Object System.IO.FileSystemWatcher
    $watcher.Path = "\\MARKS-MAC-PRO\Macintosh HD\Users\snaplash\Dropbox\AEP_PROCESSING_DO_NOT_DELETE"
    $watcher.Filter = "*.aep"
    $watcher.IncludeSubdirectories = $false
    $watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = $true  

### DEFINE ACTIONS AFTER A EVENT IS DETECTED
    $action = {$path = $Event.SourceEventArgs.FullPath
$name = [System.IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($path)
###New-Item -ItemType directory -Path C:\Users\PC2\Dropbox\PROCESSING_DO_NOT_DELETE\$name
start powershell.exe "cmd.exe /C 'C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC\Support Files\aerender.exe' -project $path -comp '$name' -s 0 -e 900 -output C:\Users\PC2\Dropbox\PROCESSING_DO_NOT_DELETE\$name\[#####].jpg"
timeout 2
start powershell.exe "cmd.exe /C 'C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC\Support Files\aerender.exe' -project $path -comp '$name'-s 901 -e 1800 -output C:\Users\PC2\Dropbox\PROCESSING_DO_NOT_DELETE\$name\[#####].jpg"
timeout 2
start powershell.exe "cmd.exe /C 'C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC\Support Files\aerender.exe' -project $path -comp '$name'-s 1801 -e 2888 -output C:\Users\PC2\Dropbox\PROCESSING_DO_NOT_DELETE\$name\[#####].jpg"
}


### DECIDE WHICH EVENTS SHOULD BE WATCHED + SET CHECK FREQUENCY  
    $created = Register-ObjectEvent $watcher "Created" -Action $action
     while ($true) {sleep 1}

It see's the folder on the mac, but will not recognize when a file is added. (although this is a Dropbox folder, syncing is turned off)

If I change the location to a local folder on the PC all works well, as does using Dropbox without networking

I can see the location on my PC and all read/write is enabled.

I have also Mapped that as a drive, but still to no avail.

I upgraded to Powershell 3 but cant figure where I an going wrong, any help and advice would be very very welcome!

Thank you All!

Mark

I'm wondering if the Provider for your Dropbox "drive" exposes the necessary API/functionality for this to work.

try typing "get-psdrive | select *" and see if the provider and credential are the same for your other network drives. 

Hi Zargberg,

Thank you for your insight its truly appreciated!

However this problem still happens when I link to a folder on the desktop.

The issue seems to be in the code not being able to recognize changes on the mac.

Do I need to use .net do you think?

I was actually able to get a trimmed down version of your code to function as you intended on my computer, I used this:

### SET FOLDER TO WATCH + FILES TO WATCH + SUBFOLDERS YES/NO
    $watcher = New-Object System.IO.FileSystemWatcher
    $watcher.Path = "\\Server\Users\dnw\test\"
    $watcher.Filter = "*.txt"
    $watcher.IncludeSubdirectories = $false
    $watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = $true  

### DEFINE ACTIONS AFTER A EVENT IS DETECTED
    $action = {$path = $Event.SourceEventArgs.FullPath
$name = [System.IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($path)
start powershell.exe "cmd.exe /C 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe' -project $path -comp '$name'"
}


### DECIDE WHICH EVENTS SHOULD BE WATCHED + SET CHECK FREQUENCY  
    $created = Register-ObjectEvent $watcher "Created" -Action $action
     while ($true) {sleep 1}

It waited until I placed a .txt file in the folder noted, and then fired up notepad++

Once again thank you!

This works when I assigned the watch folder to another PC on the network, but not when I do it from the mac.

After some more delving, when I look at the properties of the shared mac folder, when I click on the network tab I get a warning

The Server XXXX does not accept remote requests.

Would you know how to fix that by chance?

Thank you again!

The MAC does not participate in the Windows events structure (SENS).  It is a Windows only feature.