How to Save QuickTime Movies Without QuickTime Pro

  Matt Cone       April 27, 2007      Tutorials Mac TV

QuickTime is a great application, but if you don’t upgrade to QuickTime Pro, you won’t be able to save QuickTime movies you find on the Internet. Or will you? If you aren’t willing to shell out thirty dollars for Quicktime Pro and you want to download video clips to your computer, here’s a quick and dirty way of doing so. Just note that this will only work with videos and not streaming or protected content.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Launch your web browser (we’re using Firefox) and find a video you want to download. In this tutorial, we’ll download the “stuffed” commercial from the Get a Mac campaign website.

   

2. From the View menu, select Page Source.

   

3. The page source – or HTML code of the webpage – will be shown. From the Edit menu, select Find. In the find box that appears on the bottom left of the window, type “.mov”.

   

4. Copy the line that ends with “.mov”. You should have copied a complete URL (which has the http:// at the beginning and .mov at the end).

   

5. Paste the URL into a new Firefox window. Then, hit the Return button to launch the new page.

6. Allow the movie to completely load. (In other words, allow the grey bar to the left of the play button to become fully grey.)

7. From the file menu, select Save Page As.

   

8. In the window that appears, select the destination to which you want to save the movie. Make sure the format is “QuickTime Movie.” Click save.

   

9. Now the movie’s saved on your Mac, and you can watch it with QuickTime or another video player, such as VLC.