10.4: Another method of saving iTunes music videos

May 17, '05 09:09:00AM

Contributed by: turnerm5

Tiger only hintWith the release of Tiger, I realized that the previously submitted hints for downloading the music videos from the tmp folder did not work. The files are now saved as .qtch files that do not play in anything.

Using tcpflow, which you will need (entropy.ch has a great Mac OS X binary available), I was able to capture the request for the video off of Apple's servers with the following command.

sudo /usr/local/bin/tcpflow -c -i en1 port 80 | grep -oE \
'\<GET *.*\.mov.*HTTP/1.1 *\>|Host: *.*'
The en1 refers to the Airport I am using for internet access. If you are using ethernet, it should be en0.

Install tcpflow and run the above command before you try to watch the video. Click the link to start watching the video in iTunes, and the GET request will pop up in the Terminal. A bit of excess info will pop up as well, but you are looking for two things: something like /Features/xxx/xxx/dj.sdsd.mov and something like axxx.phobos.apple.com. To download the video, paste the ...sdsd.mov URL into the Download window of Safari, and the download will begin! Thanks to 'victory' for helping me shorten the above command.

[robg adds: In 10.4, I'm still able to use the script in this hint to extract the URL for pasting into the Downloads window, so I'm running this as an alternative solution in case that doesn't work for others...]

Comments (7)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050506131337189