Batch process Quicktime movies adding Fast-start header

Over Final Cut Pro-L, Mel Matsuoka answered his own question and dropped a useful script for QTCoffee, a set of command-line Mac OS X utilities for manipulating QuickTime readable media:

"...is there an easy way to batch process over 200+ H264 Quicktime movies which don't have the Fast-start header in place?

Answering my own question...I figured out a way to do it using the always kick-ass QTCoffee, and a horrifically ugly Bash shell-script I wrote. Here it is, for anyone to use as they please, and for real coders like Andreas, Bouke and Darrin to laugh...

#/bin/bash
#
# qt_add_faststart. sh
#
# description: uses QTCoffee (http://www.3am. pair.com/ QTCoffee. html)
'modmovie' command
# to add fast-start headers to all .mov files in the current working directory
#

# replace spaces in filenames with underscores

for filename in *.mov; do
filename_clean= $(echo $filename | tr ' ' _) # translate spaces
to "_", assign fixed filename to $filename_clean
[ ! -f $filename_clean ] && mv "$filename" $filename_clean # if
$filename_clean does not currently exist, then rename original
filename to $filename_clean
done

# create outfile name for QTcoffee 'modmovie' command
(originalfilename_ faststart. mov)

for filename in *.mov; do
faststart_fname= $(echo "$filename" | sed -e 's/\.mov/\_faststar t.mov/
g' )
echo "Adding fast-start header to $filename... "
modmovie -o $faststart_fname -self-contained $filename
echo "Backing up original .mov to $filename.original. .."
mv $filename "$filename". original
mv $faststart_fname $filename
echo "Done. Now get a life."
done

The original post and thread is over at the Final Cut Pro-List, in case there are format errors here. You could also check out QT_TOOLS by Dave van Brink.