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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: JimMueller on May 05, '05 03:15:31PM

Ah! They have changed the way the Serenity trailer is played. Last time I tried, it opened in iTunes and the .qtch cache file that was saved was unplayable in any application (at my skill level.)



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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: Durandal on May 05, '05 03:40:30PM
Here's an easier way.
  1. Obtain the direct link to the movie. (i.e. http://www.somesite.com/some_movie.mov)
  2. Open your favorite text editor and create a new .html file with the following contents:
    <a href="http://www.somesite.com/some_movie.mov">download</a>
  3. Open the .html file in Safari.
  4. Right-click on the link and choose "Download Linked File"
And you're done. You can also just get the link to the movie and run the following from the command line:
curl -o some_movie.mov http://www.somesite.com/some_movie.mov
This will save the movie to your Home directory, or whatever directory the shell is currently in.

---
Damien Sorresso

[ Reply to This | # ]

Not so fast...
Authored by: lullabud on May 05, '05 03:49:33PM

Downloading the URL http://images.apple.com/movies/lionsgate/high_tension/high_tension-tlr_480.mov gives me a file that's a whopping 264 bytes. This points to the streamed content, so downlading it doesn't make the content available for offline play. Using the original hint downloads the stream and does make it available for offline viewing.



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Not so fast...
Authored by: Whosawhatsis on May 05, '05 06:00:17PM

Last time I tried this, I was able to open the ref movie file in a hex editor and copy the url from the ascii display.

---
I was offered a penny for my thoughts, so I gave my two cents... I got ripped off.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Not so fast...
Authored by: rmiller021 on May 24, '05 10:55:21PM
Here is some rough code to extract the url and download the real movie from the 264 byte file. It is rough, very little error checking and it could have problems i have not thought of. but it does work for the link in the parrent.
Just copy the url to the clip board and run this applescript, it should take care of the rest.

try
	tell application "Finder"
		try
			set MovieURL to the clipboard as text
		on error
			display dialog "Cannot get url from clipboard" buttons {"Cancel"}
		end try
	end tell
	
	
	try
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"/"}
		set temp to ""
		
		--Get base url
		set x to ((count (every text item of MovieURL)) - 1)
		repeat until x = 1
			set temps_temp to item x of (every text item of MovieURL)
			set temp to temps_temp & "/" & temp
			set x to (x - 1)
		end repeat
		set baseurl to "http:/" & temp
		
		--//download and grep movie binary then extract the url for the actuall movie
		set downloaded_fake_url to (do shell script "curl -s " & MovieURL & " | grep -a url")
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"*"}
		set movie_real_url to item 2 of (every text item of downloaded_fake_url)
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {".mov"}
		set movie_real_url to item 1 of (every text item of movie_real_url) & ".mov"
		
		--prompt user  
		set newFile to quoted form of POSIX path of (choose file name with prompt "Save movie as:" default name movie_real_url)
		--set up system call
		set theCommand to "curl -o " & newFile & " '" & baseurl & movie_real_url & "'"
		
		--execute in terminal
		tell application "Terminal"
			activate
			do script theCommand
		end tell
	on error
		display dialog "There seems to be a problem" buttons {"OK"}
	end try
end try

---
I have no clue what i am doing

[ Reply to This | # ]

Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: Cantus on May 05, '05 05:03:57PM

Prior to Tiger, the only effective way I'd found to figure out the exact link to the full movie was by using a packet sniffer like 'tcpflow' (not included) and running it while you load the movie.

Now with QT 7 on Tiger, you don't need to use a packet sniffer, as the Info panel tells you the source URL.



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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: turnerm5 on May 05, '05 05:00:10PM

I got around this. Let me have a minute to post instructions. While I am, get tcpflow from here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/#tcpflow You will need it.



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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: turnerm5 on May 05, '05 05:10:38PM
Alright... I use this for getting music videos off iTunes now that all the files end up as .qtch files. Anyway... Install tcpflow, there is a Mac OS X binary, so it is no hassle. Get iTunes ready to play the video (at the page where it says Small or Large). Run the following code and then immediately start downloading the movie. Then stop the movie by hitting the back button in iTunes. I am using an Airport, so you may have to change the en1 to an en0 if you are directly connected.
sudo /usr/local/bin/tcpflow -i en1 port 80
A few files will have been created in your working directory, now we have to go find the good bits. The file names are based on the originating and destination IP addresses, so find the one going from your computer to Apple's servers. There may be a few files. Open them in TextEdit and find the one that says something like
GET /Features/y2005/m04/d28/xxx/dj.tpgttjgz.mov 
The host is also stated lower in the file. In this case it was
 a928.phobos.apple.com 
So, to get this music video, just go to
http://a928.phobos.apple.com/Features/y2005/m04/d28/xxx/dj.tpgttjgz.mov 
(I blacked out some of the numbers, so it can't be directly linked. Do it yourself) Ask any questions if you have them.

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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: victory on May 05, '05 10:08:43PM

turnerm5, that's a really useful hint. After playing with the method you described, I realized that there's a way to get the domain name and URL path without having tcpflow create a bunch of output files to rummage through.

sudo tcpflow -c -i en0 port 80 | grep -oE '\<GET *.*\.mov.*HTTP/1.1 *\>|Host: *.*'

Which will give the following style of ouput:

tcpflow[4139]: listening on en0
Host: ax.moon.xzxzxz.com.xzxzxz.net
Host: metrics.xzxzxz.com
GET /Features/xzxz/xzxz/xzxz/xzxz/dj.xzxzxz.mov HTTP/1.1
Host: xzxz.xzxz.apple.com

Granted, there's still some ambiguity as to which host name to choose, and one still has to reconstruct the final download URL by C&P-ing, but at least it puts everything in one place.

(Of course, the next logical step would be for someone to wrap all this together with a bit of logic in an Applescript or Perl-LWP app or something...)



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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: turnerm5 on May 06, '05 12:58:19PM

Hey thanks, I was planning to do it all in one line, just never got around to it. Saved me the time!



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Save QuickTime 7 movies to disk
Authored by: skippingrock on May 10, '05 02:57:33PM

maybe it is better if it is kept difficult... that way this way won't be plugged in the next version of iTunes....



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