h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Me again

Is there any way I can download a quicktime movie that is in a website, so I can watch it from my desktop? I have a modern mac and 2Mb ADSL connection but am still having problems watching quicktime movies online.

My quicktime is the latest free version.

Probably.

You can command-click or right-click the link to the movie, then choose to save the file (or "download linked file" depending on the browser you are using).

Or, if the movie is already *completely* loaded in a browser window, click the little menu widget in the lower-right corner (to the right of the fast-forward button, it looks like a triangle pointed downwards), and choose "save as source..." or "save as quicktime movie..."

But those won't work if the movie is streamed, then you're essentially stuck watching it online.

If you have the free Quicktime you may not get the control click/right click option that d'Elaphant suggests. Some of the menu choices are disabled unless you pay for QT (and therein lies Apple's QT cash cow because if you pay to upgrade to pro (ie Quicktime 7.01 Pro) and then they release QT 7.04 and you download and install that you have to pay to upgrade again).

turvy

Oooh right, I forgot I had quicktime pro. But if those options are disabled, you can usually still right-click/command-click the link to do the same thing, unless the web site has done something javascripty to the link to try to prevent that.

The upgrades to Pro really aren't that bad. I had to pay again when we went from 6.whatever to 7.0, but not for the 7.01, 7.02 etc. updates. It's only the major updates that require re-purchase.

And the little secret about "Pro" is that if you save the Quicktime Player before you upgrade, you can use the old "pro" player with the new Quicktime version, and it has most if not all the new features.

OK, I'm trying QT Pro now but still can't get it to download. Here's the video I'm trying (won't load in Safari, try Firefox):

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?ID=164%20


Can anyone else get it to work?

I have been looking around for a similar thing and have found this: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/
I haven't tried it out yet so I'm not sure what it's like.

I can't find anything saying whether or not it is compatible with Mac, but since you can get Firefox for Mac I don't see why not.

I've got that addon too, but it doesn't work with the quicktime movie above - it just downloads a streaming file, which is what QT downloads too. I'm wondering if this is something to do with the way it is embedded in the webpage?

I would suppose so, but my knowledge of such things is very limited.

There's two things going on. The first is that they are using something called a "reference movie", it's not the movie itself it just contains a link to movie (if you saved the file, you can often change the filename from ".mov" to ".txt" and open it in a a text editor to get the link).

But the second thing is the killer - the movie is streamed. That means it doesn't download to your computer, it just kind of plays as it passes by. So you can't use any normal means of saving the file, you have to use something that is designed to capture streams. I know of stuff that will do that for audio (Audio Hijack, Wiretap Pro), but I've never looked into capturing video.

Why not just write to the person who put up the video and ask if you can have a copy?

Yes, I thought about emailing them and asking at least to get it to stream properly. Were you able to view it (or anyone else)? When I play it the video goes all green, and stops and starts (very annoying). It'd be good to know if that is a problem with the stream, or my connection.