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Eug · Dec 16, 2009, 10:34 PM

If I go to the QuickTime trailers website and load up a few HD trailers like this one in QuickTime 7, I can just "Save as a self-contained movie". It takes seconds to flatten the movie before saving. In fact, even a 1080p H.264 trailer is saved in seconds on my ancient G4.

However, with the new QuickTime 10 in Snow Leopard, it takes my Core i7 iMac a very, very, very long time to save it, as if it is re-encoding the movie. Is there any way to just save the original stream in QuickTime 10 like in QuickTime 7?

On my iMac Core i7 I'm not sure how to make the links default to opening QuickTime 7. It always reverts to the QuickTime 10 launcher. So, what I have to do is open QuickTime 7, then copy the clip URL, and then paste that URL into QuickTime 7 to manually load the file. Needless to say, that's annoying.

Cold Warrior · Dec 16, 2009, 10:44 PM

in safari click the Window menu > Activity and look for a large file in the list. This is likely the movie itself; hold option and double-click to start a download.

Eug · Dec 16, 2009, 10:58 PM

Thanks, but that doesn't work. The files are not embedded. They're just links, but the links on Apple's page launch QuickTime player. However, the version that gets launched in Snow Leopard is QuickTime 10 which can't save the files properly.

To save the file I have to paste the link into QuickTime 7 (Pro). If I paste it into Safari, it loads, but I can't save it from there either. If I download the link, I get a non-playable 4 KB file.

Art Vandelay · Dec 16, 2009, 11:51 PM

I noticed that today when I saved an HD movie in QT X. It took a long time but when I checked in Activity Monitor, none of the QT processes were consuming more than 10%.

reader50 · Dec 17, 2009, 02:21 AM

Check network activity in Activity Monitor. Maybe QTX is re-downloading the clip.

Eug · Dec 17, 2009, 06:32 AM

Originally Posted by reader50

Check network activity in Activity Monitor. Maybe QTX is re-downloading the clip.

Hmmm... You are correct. That is exactly what it is doing. Strange.

I guess with QT10 you can just save as soon as the download starts, but the stupid part is it may have to start from the beginning, no matter how much has already been loaded.

davidbk1 · Dec 17, 2009, 10:55 AM

You could look in your cache. /var/folders/ followed by some garbage. I know that's where flash stuff gets held while the web page is open. Just drag it elsewhere and rename it.

Eug · Dec 17, 2009, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by davidbk1

You could look in your cache. /var/folders/ followed by some garbage. I know that's where flash stuff gets held while the web page is open. Just drag it elsewhere and rename it.

Anyone know where the QuickTime stuff is held?

These are not web pages in the usual sense. They're URLs loaded in a separate QuickTime window.

Art Vandelay · Dec 17, 2009, 12:06 PM

It's located in /private/var/folders/somethingrandom/somethingrandom/-Tmp-/MediaCache

I wasn't able to successfully open it in QT after renaming it.

Eug · Dec 17, 2009, 12:16 PM

^^^ I guess that's why the files need to be "flattened" before saving. I don't actually know how the streams are constructed, and what flattening really means in this context, but judging by your results it does not seem like they are complete QT files.

Thorzdad · Dec 17, 2009, 12:49 PM

I cut/pasted the .mov link Eug posted into Firefox, played the clip, then right-clicked on the window and did "Save as QuickTime movie..."
It saved the entire clip to my hd. QT-X

Eug · Dec 17, 2009, 01:43 PM

Yeah, but it's still a work around, similar to my using QT7 to do it.

I was just hoping that there was an easier way to make QT10 do it, once the clip was already loaded. However, I'll now just have to remember to save it as soon I start loading it in QT10.

TheoCryst · Dec 17, 2009, 06:31 PM

Actually I just noticed the same thing today after saving the Iron Man 2 trailer. Fortunately I was at work, so re-downloading was painless. Weird.