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Brazuca · May 23, 2002, 07:07 PM

I remember in the past that is was possible to look in the cache directory for files (movies) that are downloaded and played on the browser (through the plugin). I want to do the same in either IE or OW.

IE does save web archives, but this doesn't work for all the sites that I need. OW has no feature like this.

Is there a way I can extract the QT movies?

starfleetX · May 23, 2002, 07:49 PM

You can't get the file out of the cache itself, but it the page is currently loaded in a window in OmniWeb, simply press the Info button (or hit command-i) and you'll get a window like this. From there, you can save any element of the current page.

Alternatively, you could click the options disclosure of the QuickTime movie itself and choose Save As.

[ 05-23-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]

philzilla · May 23, 2002, 07:52 PM

pff... just use wget and grab the whole server

philzilla · May 23, 2002, 07:53 PM

Originally posted by starfleetX:
Alternatively, you could click the options disclosure of the QuickTime movie itself and choose Save As.

only if you have QuickTime Pro...

starfleetX · May 23, 2002, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by philzilla:
only if you have QuickTime Pro...

Just as any good supporter of my favorite fruit company should have!

Andrew 8808 · May 23, 2002, 08:02 PM

Or get the source html for it, and create a page w/ the link and do a right click/control click and Save As. That's what I usually do. *shrug*

Brazuca · May 23, 2002, 08:58 PM

Except for Starfleex's idea, I've tried all others.

I have QT Pro but the reason I'm asking this is because these movies don't allow downloading/savings, so that option is out.
I tried curl (not wget, but I don't thing it would be different) but the movie first checks for the plugin version then it forwards itself to the download site (like Apple's "click here to play" method). This means that downloading it with curl/wget only gets me to that first scene, not the movie, even if I know the direct link to the movie itself.

I did download some of them with IE's web archive option, but not all movies download due to the same problem as curl/wget mentioned above.

I'll try OmniWeb's Info options and try my luck.

BTW, if any of you think I'm doing something wrong, basically I'm trying to put some of the Star Wars documentaries (the R2-D2 "Beneath the Dome" is hilarious) on a CDR to show my brother in law who only has a dial-up account. I'm trying to download the three parts, but only part one works, parts 2 and 3 are different somehow.

Find it here

If you can figure out a way to get the QT movies from there it would solve my problems. If I do it I'll post how.

Edit:
I've tried the Get Info method, but it also doesn't work.

This is the direct URL for the movie taken from the source code for the page

[ 05-23-2002: Message edited by: Brazuca ]

Brazuca · May 24, 2002, 01:46 AM

Here is what I found out:
The movies have an option to not download to the browser cache, so the quicktime plugin/app is downloading it to itself and merely showing it in the browser window. This way a user has no access to the movie file.

But the movie is being downloaded somewhere.

Is there a way to find the exact address where the movie is coming from? The address that I have is a "decoy" movie that points to another (I think its in Akamai's server). tcpdump won't help. How else can I find out?

Rickster · May 24, 2002, 02:13 AM

Ah... I tried to save a copy of "Beneath the Dome" a couple months ago and failed. They seem to be using new "rights management" features of QuickTime 5 -- I was able to get all many-megabytes of the movie downloaded, but all QuickTime Player would show me was a single frame linking me back the the website. Suckage.

SteevAK · May 24, 2002, 02:54 AM

Originally posted by Rickster:
Ah... I tried to save a copy of "Beneath the Dome" a couple months ago and failed. They seem to be using new "rights management" features of QuickTime 5 -- I was able to get all many-megabytes of the movie downloaded, but all QuickTime Player would show me was a single frame linking me back the the website. Suckage.

Darn, so it wasn't me. I had the same problem with a couple of trailers I wanted to save. I was pissed because I have QT Pro (legit too!)!

McBear · May 24, 2002, 03:52 AM

This has always worked for me using IE, don't know about OW but if the quicktime plugin's the same it should work OK:

1. With the movie open in your browser lauch Sherlock
2. Do a search for files created today, sort by size
3. You should see a file called "QTPlugin" or something like that, it's a temp file that sits in an invisible Temp folder on the root of your drive. You should be able to recognise it easliy because it will be the same size as your movie.
4. From Sherlock copy the file to your desktop (option-drag)
5. Rename the file on your desktop to something.mov
6. Open the file from within Quicktime player, if you double click the movie the player will usually give you a converting message and an error.

(if it's an mpeg you'll want to name it something.mpg)

The movie should play fine and be forever saved on your harddrive

(this was for OS9 btw; don't know about X, I've never tried it but something along the same lines might work)

McBear

[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: McBear ]

Brazuca · May 24, 2002, 04:02 AM

Originally posted by Rickster:
Ah... I tried to save a copy of "Beneath the Dome" a couple months ago and failed. They seem to be using new "rights management" features of QuickTime 5 -- I was able to get all many-megabytes of the movie downloaded, but all QuickTime Player would show me was a single frame linking me back the the website. Suckage.

Apple explains what they do here if any of you are interested.
The article looks like OS 9, but I think the strategy is the same.

I tried McBear's method with OW and it works!!! I was able to do a search for "QTPlugin" (invisible file) and it was found in the root level of my HD in the "Temporary Items" folder.

Now another problem: I can't drag the files from the Sherlock window and I can't see them with the terminal (ls -A).
How can I makes them "normal" files so I can use them? (ResEdit would be nice here...)

[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: Brazuca ]

McBear · May 24, 2002, 04:27 AM

I can't try anything here cos I'm stuck at work in 9

I didn't realise you couldn't option-drag in X sherlock, can you run classic sherlock and try it from there?

In 9 the file itself wasn't invisible, just in an invisible folder; if this is the same in X would it make a difference when using the terminal?

AKcrab · May 24, 2002, 04:28 AM

Originally posted by Brazuca:

Now another problem: I can't drag the files from the Sherlock window and I can't see them with the terminal (ls -A).

Can't see them with ls -a? Sure you're in the right directory?
If you *can* manage to find the file, use the cp command to copy the file to a directory, and as long as you leave off the . in the filename, it should become visible. (I think)

kovacs · May 24, 2002, 07:05 AM

I have tried downloading some movies from pixar.com , Quicktime wouldn't save them and right clicking -> save link target as didn't work.

This is what I did:

I've downloaded the movie in iCab -> I searched for .mov files on my hard disk ( while iCab was still running )-> duplicated the .mov file that was located in a icab folder -> moved the duplicate to another folder....

Maybe there is an easier way to do this....

Brazuca · May 24, 2002, 01:39 PM

Originally posted by AKcrab:


Can't see them with ls -a? Sure you're in the right directory?
If you *can* manage to find the file, use the cp command to copy the file to a directory, and as long as you leave off the . in the filename, it should become visible. (I think)

ls -a won't show the files (only the "." and ".." entries), but Sherlock finds them. The files are invisible and inside the invisible "Temporary Items" folder.
Looks like Apple has a way to keep these files away from people, but this being a *NIX OS, there simply has to be a way.

Notice that the Terminal doesn't see the files that Sherlock does.

[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: Brazuca ]

AKcrab · May 24, 2002, 06:20 PM

There is a symbolic link messing us up.. The plugin saves the file to a different directory!

/private/tmp/501/Temporary Items/

Then it's as simple as using the cp command to copy the file out of the invisible directory, and into your user folder.

cp QTPluginTemp9042592 /Users/username/test.mov

Give it a shot.

diskobolos · May 24, 2002, 07:38 PM

Forget all that terminal stuff... Mozilla should let you easily grab it via page info:

edit: ok so I registered at starwars.com and tried it on your movie and it didn't work. Opened the link in quicktime player, tried copying and pasting, tried monica, save as,etc... guess it's back to the terminal.

Though that mozilla thing does work for most movies.

[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: diskobolos ]

Brazuca · May 24, 2002, 08:19 PM

Originally posted by AKcrab:
There is a symbolic link messing us up.. The plugin saves the file to a different directory!

/private/tmp/501/Temporary Items/

Then it's as simple as using the cp command to copy the file out of the invisible directory, and into your user folder.

cp QTPluginTemp9042592 /Users/username/test.mov

Give it a shot.

Yes!!! That did it! Sneaky Apple!!!

Diskobolos:
The reason why I couldn't get the movie straight from the browser is because Apple has a feature (explained in the article I provided above) that has the browser download a "dummy" movie which in turn points to the real movie. The Quicktime app itself downloads the real movie and places in the /private/tmp/501/Temporary Items/ folder.

When you go the the Apple site and try to watch a movie, you see that "Click to Play" banner. Well, that is what the browser downloads, not the real movie.

Heady · May 24, 2002, 09:53 PM

Originally posted by Brazuca:

When you go the the Apple site and try to watch a movie, you see that "Click to Play" banner. Well, that is what the browser downloads, not the real movie.

You can look at the page's HTML source and search for ".mov". The first URL usually is the "Click to Play" movie, but the second one is what you're looking for. This has worked for me in the past.

Hope this helps,

-Heady

diskobolos · May 24, 2002, 11:50 PM

Originally posted by Brazuca:
[QBThe reason why I couldn't get the movie straight from the browser is because Apple has a feature (explained in the article I provided above) that has the browser download a "dummy" movie which in turn points to the real movie. The Quicktime app itself downloads the real movie and places in the /private/tmp/501/Temporary Items/ folder.[/QB]

If only in the interest of exploring all possible options, another way to do the same thing, without using the terminal

, is to go to finder, hit cmd ~ and paste in "/private/tmp/501/Temporary Items/" and you can simply drag the QTPluginTemp file to the place you want. Add a .mov extension and it turns into a movie.

Heck if you're doing alot of stuff like that drag the Temporary Items titlebar proxy icon to your toolbar and you'll have one click access to your downloaded movie.

Synotic · May 25, 2002, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by Heady:


You can look at the page's HTML source and search for ".mov". The first URL usually is the "Click to Play" movie, but the second one is what you're looking for. This has worked for me in the past.

Hope this helps,

-Heady

While this is true, it doesn't apply. Click to Play movies are usually 5 → 100K depending on the quality. And of course just pointers. You can usually grab the true movie from the source, and sometimes extract it from the reference file using BBEdit, the reference file and click to play file, though both in the 5 → 100K range are different. Now.. while all of this is true... If you grab the true URL from the source, and download it, it's like 30 to 50 or so megabytes, so it obviously does not fall under the click to play or reference movies category. It just seems to be a type of protection, that as of late, I've only seen Star Wars do.

Anyways... thanks for all the tips on doing this because I also wanted to download some of the Star Wars videos. Since I was inspired by this, I've decided to make a quick AppleScript Studio app (don't worry, I make much better AS-S apps than most

)

The app itself isn't that hard so I plan on releasing it tonight.. a preview of its interface.. just in case anyone wants to tell me it sucks

Brazuca · May 25, 2002, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by Synotic:
While this is true, it doesn't apply. Click to Play movies are usually 5 100K depending on the quality. And of course just pointers. You can usually grab the true movie from the source, and sometimes extract it from the reference file using BBEdit, the reference file and click to play file, though both in the 5 100K range are different. Now.. while all of this is true... If you grab the true URL from the source, and download it, it's like 30 to 50 or so megabytes, so it obviously does not fall under the click to play or reference movies category. It just seems to be a type of protection, that as of late, I've only seen Star Wars do.

Yes. You seem to be correct. I've checked the source file and all the urls are the same. The "banner movie" is what gets downloaded to cache, but that is just a "dummy" and points to the real movie, which is downloaded by the QT apps. This is why you can't see the real movie in the browsers. Take a look at the document I pointed out above for Apple's complete explanation on how this works.

I did use the finder ("Go To Folder" or Cmd-tilde) and was able to easily grab the file. It's actually pretty easy once you know what to look for (thanks to AKCrab!!!).

Now...if only I understood what this applescript app is doing (the UI sucks btw,

)

dtriska · May 25, 2002, 02:50 AM

I didn't read the whole thread, but are you looking for these:
http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome2_m480.mov http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome3_m480.mov

Synotic · May 25, 2002, 01:10 PM

Originally posted by dtriska:
I didn't read the whole thread, but are you looking for these:
http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome2_m480.mov http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome3_m480.mov

Those are the ones, but not really apparently, even though they are proper sizewise.. try to download them and view them.. no luck..

Now as for the app, it doesn't really do anything more than you can already do, it just lists that Temporary Items folder and only displays the QTPlugin ones, then you can select and preview one and decide to save it anywhere with any name as a .mpg or .mov.. I didn't know what other formats there were.

Brazuca · May 26, 2002, 06:08 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Synotic:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by dtriska:
I didn't read the whole thread, but are you looking for these:
<a href="http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome2_m480.mov" target="_blank">http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome2_m480.mov</a> <a href="http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome3_m480.mov" target="_blank">http://starwars.apple.com/special/r2-d2_dome3_m480.mov</a><hr /></blockquote>Those are the ones, but not really apparently, even though they are proper sizewise.. try to download them and view them.. no luck..

Now as for the app, it doesn't really do anything more than you can already do, it just lists that Temporary Items folder and only displays the QTPlugin ones, then you can select and preview one and decide to save it anywhere with any name as a .mpg or .mov.. I didn't know what other formats there were.<hr /></blockquote>Ok...sounds good.
would be cool if you had an option to download the file (just as a browser would) and save the movie. This would just skip the step of downloading from a browser and make the app self sufficient.