Burning files for a video to backup DVD - applescript

Question

I'm working on an AppleScript to burn the files for a church sermon to a DVD for backup. A word about our process.
We have a Sony digital camcorder that we use to video the service. I download those files into iMovie, create an iMovie project, and stitch the pieces together. I add an opening title & ending credits and I share it to the Media Browser at two resolutions. After that, I upload the smaller resolution file to our church's website. I then create an iDVD project using the larger resolution file.
I've got templates for the iMovie project with the opening title & the closing credits in it already, and a template for the iDVD project, and another template for printing out DVD labels. I've already written an AppleScript which duplicates these templates for a specific week. That's working fine.
I've got a lot of work done on a second script to create a Burn Folder in my Desktop folder and create folders in it & create aliases / shortcuts to the original files. But, given that it's video we're copying here, I need to make sure that the minimum amount of data required is burned to the disk.
Specifically, the iMovie Events folder for the week's raw video has two folders created by iMovie in it that I don't want to burn to the DVD. One is a cache & the other has thumbnails. These should be recreated if I have to restore the backup for any reason when I open iMovie.
So I only want to copy the files in the event folder that are not these two folders. The folders are called iMovie Movie Cacheand iMovie Thumbnails.
How do I exclude these two files? The code I've got follows.
-- Script to copy the iMovie project, the iDVD project, and the DVD Label
-- files for a particular week's sermon into a burn folder and then burn it.
property iMovieEvents : alias ((path to movies folder as text) & "iMovie Events.localized:")
property iMovieProjects : alias ((path to movies folder as text) & "iMovie Projects.localized:")
property iMovieSermonsPath : alias ((iMovieProjects as text) & "Sermons:")
property sermonDocumentsPath : alias ((path to documents folder as text) & "Sermons:")
global burnFolder
global thisSermonsPath
global thisSermonsDvdLabels
global thisSermonsdvdproj
global thisSermonsiMovieEvents
global thisSermonsiMovieProject
global sermonCode
to copySermonFiles()
-- Start a conversation with the Finder
tell application "Finder"
-- Create a folder in the burn folder for the iMovie Events
set theFolder to my createFolder(burnFolder, "iMovie Events.localized")
-- Give this operation 5 mintues to complete
with timeout of (5 * 60) seconds
-- Copy the Sermon's iMovie Events folder to the Burn Folder.
-- Need to exclude the iMovie Movie Cache & iMovie Thumbnails folders here
make new alias at theFolder to folder thisSermonsiMovieEvents
end timeout
-- Create a folder in the burn folder for the Sermon's iMovie Project.
set theFolder to my createFolder(burnFolder, "iMovie Projects.localized")
with timeout of (5 * 60) seconds
-- Copy the Sermon's iMovie Project file to the Burn Folder
make new alias at theFolder to file thisSermonsiMovieProject
end timeout
-- Create a folder in the burn folder for the Sermon's documents
set theFolder to my createFolder(burnFolder, "Documents")
-- Create a folder in the burn folder's Documents folder for the sermon
set theFolder to my createFolder(theFolder, sermonCode)
-- Copy the Sermon's iDVD Project and DVD Labels files to the Burn Folder
make new alias at theFolder to thisSermonsDvdLabels
make new alias at theFolder to thisSermonsdvdproj
end tell
end copySermonFiles
-- Helper method that creates a new folder named theName in the dst folder.
to createFolder(dst, theName)
-- Create a string that contains the path to the folder we're going to create
set thePath to (dst as text) & theName
-- Start a conversation with the Finder
tell application "Finder"
-- Does the folder exist already?
if not (exists thePath) then
return make new folder at dst with properties {name:theName}
else
return alias thePath
end if
end tell
end createFolder
to createBurnFolder()
-- Create the name of the Burn Folder
set burnFolderName to sermonCode & ".fpbf"
set desktopPath to (path to desktop) as text
-- Compute the path to the Sermon's folder in the Documents:Sermons folder.
set burnFolderPath to desktopPath & burnFolderName
-- Start a conversation with the Finder
tell application "Finder"
-- Does the burn folder exist?
if not (exists burnFolderPath) then
-- Create the burn folder
set burnFolder to make new folder at desktopPath with properties {name:burnFolderName}
else
set burnFolder to folder burnFolderPath
end if
end tell
end createBurnFolder
to getThisSermonsFiles()
-- Ask the user to pick the Sermon's iMovie Project file.
set thisSermonsiMovieProject to choose file with prompt "Please select the Sermon's iMovie Project:" default location iMovieSermonsPath
-- Extract the sermon code from the Sermon's iMovie Project file name.
set fileext to ".rcproject"
set fileName to (name of (info for thisSermonsiMovieProject))
set sermonCode to text 1 thru ((length of fileName) - (length of fileext)) of fileName
-- Build the path to the Sermon's iMovie Events folder
set thisSermonsiMovieEvents to ((iMovieEvents as text) & sermonCode & ":")
-- Build the path to the Sermon's DVD & DVD Labels files.
set thisSermonsPath to (sermonDocumentsPath as text) & sermonCode & ":"
-- Build the path to this Sermon's DVD Labels file.
set thisSermonsDvdLabels to alias (thisSermonsPath & sermonCode & ".cndx")
-- Build the path to this sermon's iDVD Project file.
set thisSermonsdvdproj to alias (thisSermonsPath & sermonCode & ".dvdproj")
end getThisSermonsFiles
on run
-- Get the sermon code from the user
getThisSermonsFiles()
-- Create the Burn folder
createBurnFolder()
-- Copy the files into the burn folder.
copySermonFiles()
end run

Answer 1

The Finder has a "whose" claus which makes filtering a list of Finder items easy. Thus we can use it to exclude things. You can also refer to files or folders as "items" to include both in one phrase. So if you want to get a reference to all files and folders from a folder, excluding some items by their name, then something like this works...
set itemNamesToExclude to {"iMovie Movie Cache", "iMovie Thumbnails"}
tell application "Finder"
set itemsToMove to items of folder thisSermonsiMovieEvents whose name is not in itemNamesToExclude
-- move itemsToMove somewhere
end tell