How to Save Quicktime Files or Movies from within your Web Browser

Contributor Icon Contributed by David Kirk     
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows  

Many web pages prevent you from saving quicktime movies to your harddrive. Here’s some hints to get you started.


Many webpages now exist for viewing quicktime movies. You loving viewing and watching the movies; however, you can’t find out how to download it directly to your harddrive.

Based on the skill level of the web designer, it is possible to prevent users from directly downloading the movies files. Luckily, however, most web designers do not go to such trouble. With a few simple hints, you have a good chance of directly downloading it.

Methods:

1. Right click and save target as…

If there is a direct link on the web page to the movie file, then it is very easy to download.

    – Right click on the direct link to the movie file (*.mov)
    – Select Save Target As
    – Name it and Save it

2. Find the link hidden in the source…

Most web designers do not give a direct link; however, you can still find the link in the source code.

    – Navigate to the page on which the movie is playing
    – Click View menu
    – Click Source
    – Notepad is open; click Edit menu
    – Select Find
    – In the textbox put: .mov
    [list]Make sure you include the period

– Typically the end the url will be highlighted… The URL will like this for example:

– Highlight and copy the URL part of this…
http://www.blahblahblah.org/1/graphics/movies/hah_faptastic1.mov

– Paste this URL into your browser address bar and click GO
– When the film has completely loaded, click the File menu in your browser
– Select Save As…
– Name and save your movie file

Chillyb has some further suggestions here.

 

18 Comments -


  1. r. said on October 11, 2008

    Hey thanks allot! That was really useful! :)

  2. G-Pow said on October 21, 2008

    My Safari browser will not save the file!! help!?

  3. Neeraj said on January 2, 2009

    ty a lot man!! :D

  4. mac said on January 11, 2009

    hi:

    I tried to download this file but I failed http://www.silvaultramindsystem.com/project/media/audio/lessons/lesson-02-01.mp3. No source code can be accessed. Could u help?

  5. PERSON said on April 18, 2009

    BEST HELP I’VE EVER GOTTEN

  6. EP1754 said on May 5, 2009

    Thanks It was driving me crazy

  7. Bobby said on June 11, 2009

    in Safari (on mac) I couldn’t do anything from the actual page the movie was on: url, QT controls and everything wouldn’t give any options.

    Did it finally by going back a page and right clicking the link to the file. There was an option to download from there or stream to iTunes

  8. anglias said on July 2, 2009

    thanks, this article is very useful

  9. Name said on August 30, 2009

    thanks a lot! searching for it in the source is a good idea if ive heard one, dont know why I didnt think of it.

  10. Piupiu said on December 23, 2009

    im using firefox..
    in the second method
    i didnt have to let the film load completely before saving it

  11. Anonymous said on January 1, 2010

    i’m using firefox on leopard and when i took the apple quicktime hd gallery i clicked a link and there were 3 diffrent formats i clicked the 1080p link and quicktime opened up and after the playback bar thingy got fully dark i used file-save as and tried to save and no matter what i did it always showed the error message ‘not enough movie data’ can someone tell me how to save this video

  12. Anonymous said on February 10, 2010

    thank you, you rock!

  13. Felipe Sanchez said on May 20, 2010

    ….very useful. Thanks

  14. Kanny Ken said on June 5, 2010

    Moxilla Firefox recently added a Quicktime add-on which I downloaded. After that any video file i opened in my browser was done by Quicktime including MP4 files even though I set my windows preferences to open MP4 with Windows media player. As a result I could not download such files in my browser, only view them without saving. I was of course, offred the $30 upgrade option. The fix was simple; I disabled the add-on and am back to normal bering offred the “view” or “save” options. It seems a bit naughty of Mozilla to impose “de facto” restrictions without being open about it!

  15. Xevlovesyou said on June 15, 2010

    THANK YOU! What an annoying problem! Simple solution. Think of them as pictures really and get around them that way. ha. Thanks!!!!!

  16. Xevlovesyou said on June 15, 2010

    AHA! Thats most likely whats happening with me! Thank you!

  17. Keysfrank said on October 23, 2010

    a great tip for us all thanks a bunch!!!!!!!!!!!!

  18. Rachael said on January 29, 2012

    thank you! this is wonderful

 

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment -