In order to optimize some renders, I need to be able to hide parts of a set that lie outside of the the cameras field of view.  This is a common issue, so I’m hoping there is some method available to either select what’s visible to the camera, hide what’s outside the camera, or some other similar scriptable method.  Right now the only way I can see to do this is to make everything selectable, select all objects, and deselect what’s in the view by ctrl+shift+click+dragging a box around the visible area.  This is not an automatable process, so doing this to hundreds of shots is rather cumbersome.

Is there some way to accomplish this?

Extra points if the method hides objects obstructed from view (ie. behind an opaque wall, but still within the camera’s FOV)

i dunno how to do that by scripts, maybe you could use some Ray switch or something but again i have no idea, what i would do is do the selecting job once, and split the scene in layers

select once for all the stuff you dont want to be rendered out of the camera view and put them into a layer you can easy manage later, can hide deselect and such, having layers is foundamental with complex scenes.
(probably you should have done this at start of the project! always use layers!!)

hope that helps, sorry

Search for frustum culling and backface culling.

May affect particles and stands.