"Stealing" QT Movies

[Hirich]

I've found some interesting movies that I want to keep off the web. The files are in an old QuickTime format (they play on QT5. which I have in Pro form), but they have managed to disable the "Save Source File" option. I can grab the files from the cache (at 3.5MB, they are the full files, not streamed), but I can't find any way to open or resave them as QT movies.

The file extension is "qtch", which I assume is Quick Time Cache. I've tried manually opening, changing the extension, even iMovie but without success. Does anyone have any ideas? For the record, I'm on Mac OS Panther, but I can access XP if there's a workaround.

[FourWheelDrift]

Have you had a look at Streambox VCR? <- click link

[zumbruk]

FourWheelDrift said:

Have you had a look at Streambox VCR? <- click link

This software is no longer available, this page is stored for archival puposes only.

On 1st of January, 2006, a new copyright legislation came into force in Finland that made it illegal to distribute tools that allow circumvention of technical copy protections. The legislation was approved by Finnish parliament and was based on European Union Copyright Directive, a law that each EU member state has to implement to their national legislations.

As AfterDawn Ltd is a company located in Finland, we have to obey the new copyright legislation and therefor, the software you were searching for, is no longer available. For more details on options we tried to find, how the law changed our site and more, please read this article.

[FourWheelDrift]

That was just the first link I had on Google just to point to, you can still get it via the P2P networks and also probably from other sites as well

[Hirich]

Thanks, I will take a look. I did manage a workaround that involved:
- Looking at the html code for the page
- Finding the reference to the source file
- Pasting that into Quick Time Player (which creates a temp file, at least in OS9)
- Finding, then recovering said file, then adding a .mpg filename
Which gave me files I can read at least, if not edit.

[tog]

If you've got the address of the source file from the HTML can you not just download it directly? Paste the address into Safari and it should open it as a QT movie in Safari which you can then save. Or use the Safari's Activity (Option-Command-A) window on the original page and double-click the source file there - it should open in a new window from where you can then save it. But if it's not linked directly then this won't work.

[Hirich]

Nice idea, tog, and I did try it. However, the mpeg itself is save-disabled.
- Saving the page as a web archive with embedded fails, as it refuses to include the source mpreg
- Working with QT7, it is near impossible to access the Quick time cache file. Even if you do, it is still save disabled.
It appears to be a deliberate block in QT 7, and the Mac people on the web are struggling.
So that old QT5 system, which creates an accessible cache file, has got me off the hook, at least as far as I need to go.