For people interested in saving streams for personal viewing, this step
by step guide may be useful courtesy of my rapidly no 1 website,
macosxhints.com:
Save 'unsavable' QuickTime movies (revisited)
Wed, Jan 21 '04 at 09:50AM from: bschmwsii
Back in 2001, macosxhints published a really neat solution for saving
QuickTime (QT) movies from web pages (please see: Save 'unsavable'
QuickTime movies for the details). However, the advent of Panther and
one of its new menu features ("Go to Folder...") has made saving QT
files even simpler and requires no UNIX knowledge.
General:
As noted in the original hint, the first thing to do is to make sure
that "Save movies in disk cache" has been activated. This is
accomplished by opening System Preferences, then clicking on the
QuickTime icon. Next, check "Save movies in disk cache," then close
System Preferences. You will only need to do this once. From now on, it
will continue to cache the QT files.
[robg adds: Go to Folder isn't new with Panther, so this revised
non-UNIX method should work just fine in previous OS X releases.]
Step 1:
Using any web browser (I tested this using Safari), play a QuickTime
movie from a website that typically does not allow you to save the
movie. This will place a cached copy of the QT movie in the folder
/tmp/501/TemporaryItems/.
Step 2:
Switch to the Finder. Under the Go menu, you will see "Go to
Folder...". A dialog box opens that asks you to enter the path name to
the folder you want to go to. Type in /tmp/501/TemporaryItems/. The
Finder will present you with a window showing all of the files that are
temporarily stored in this folder. Typically, you can't see this folder
without using UNIX commands via Terminal.
Step 3:
Look thru the files until you find one that starts with the name
"QTPluginTemp". It will have bunch of other random numbers and letters
in the name -- just ignore those. For the sake of this example, let's
call this file: "QTPluginTemp3763600". So now:
1. Move (or copy) the file to any folder you like. I have one
called "Downloads" that I use.
2. Click on the file and press the "Enter" key so you can rename
it.
3. Rename the file to MyMovie.mov (you can use replace MyMovie with
any text that you like, but the .mov part is critical!)
4. Click Enter again to make the new name stick
5. A warning box will pop up asking "Are you sure you want to add
the extension ".mov" to the end of the name?" Then it goes on to
explain all of the scary things that could happen if you do this. Take
a chance! Click "Add."
Notice that Panther not only renamed the file to MyMovie.mov, it also
automatically changed the icon and made the default application to be
QuickTime Player! So all you have to do now is get the popcorn, double
click the file and watch the movie! No muss, no fuss and no UNIX code!
If you download QT movies a lot, then another time saver would be to
make an alias to the "TemporaryItems" folder so that you don't have to
do Step 2 every time. For the really fancy among you, you could write
an AppleScript, and attach it to the "TemporaryItems" folder using
FolderActions, that would look for new files that start with
"QTPluginTemp" and automatically move them to a special folder for
later processing of Step 3. Heck, if you are really adventurous, you
could write an AppleScript, that performs Step 3, then Step 2 and you
would never have to touch the file at all! But this exercise is left to
the reader. Don't you just hate that?!
On 28/01/2004, at 5:04 AM, WAMUG Mailing List wrote:
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Richard Kay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: iLecture Streamed Audio and QuickTime Question
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:43:20 +0800
Murdoch University is using iLecture to provide streamed audio for
selected units this year. This is helpful to external students like me
who can't get to lectures because of work commitments.
As the explanatory material on the iLecture site at Murdoch states,
students '...have the option to use either QuickTime or Windows Player.
If you are using a Macintosh computer, try QuickTime. If you are using
a Windows machine, try Windows Player. Select the appropriate bandwidth
from the drop down menu next to the media player your computer
supports. The play window will appear. You can start the lecture by
clicking on the start button. If you want to listen to a later part of
the lecture or go back to an earlier part, you can use the slider. You
will need to allow iLecture a little time to stream the part you need'.
I've tried the demo site at Murdoch and can play the test lecture live.
It would, however, be useful if I could save each lecture to my hard
drive for review purposes (and to minimise wastage of bandwidth).
Anyone got any ideas as to whether it is possible to save these
lectures to disk under QuickTime? I'll delete them at the end of
semester for copyright reasons.
I've clicked on 'Save movies in disk cache' in the QuickTime Plug-In
Preferences pane ... but can't figure out where to look for the Safari
disk cache in OS x (Unix).
And what would the file I'll be looking for be called? Presumably the
title of each lecture? Or some random alpha-numeric label applied by
the system?
Any help would be appreciated.
Cordially,
Richard Kay.
----
Fremantle
Western Australia
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"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year
of conversation." - Plato
