Saving embedded Quicktime movies on OS X

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This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on September 30, 2003). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Thanks to this comment on Mac OS X Hints, I found an incredibly easy way to save Quicktime movies that have been embedded into a page (like, say, the recently released trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King).

Well, easy if you’re comfortable with using the Mac OS X terminal, at least.

Simply create a shell script (I named mine getmov) with the following commands:

#!/bin/sh
ditto -rsrcFork /tmp/501/Temporary Items/QT* ~/Movies/$1.mov</code>

Then drop that shell script into your /usr/bin directory, rehash, and you’re set. Now anytime you’re at a page that has an embedded Quicktime movie that you’d like to save, just leave the window open, and call that shell script, setting the destination filename at the same time. For instance, to save the trailer for RotK, I simply typed getmov returnoftheking, and suddenly ‘returnoftheking.mov’ was sitting in my Movies directory.