How To Capture/Save Streaming Quicktime Video?
 

Hello,

Is it possible to save/capture streaming Quicktime Video content?

Thank you,

Michael

Got Quicktime Pro? It can.

also snapz pro will do the deed....

Can you explain how QuickTime Pro will save streaming content?

I have never known it could do this? How?

I have Quicktime Pro. I am unable to find a way to capture specifically capture streaming quicktime content with QT Pro.

I know how to use the activity window in Safari to load and save a quicktime movie within Safari, but this does not work with streaming content.

All suggestions appreciated!

Michael

Sorry, I may have confused an embedded file with a streamed movie.

Where's the stream?

It doesn't have to let you save, but if it does, there is a down arrow on the right. Click it and select save as Quicktime movie.

Hello Again,

The quicktime streams are broadcast segments from the Nova Series on PBS.

The URL is: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/watch/

The PBS website is fantastic! I just don't understand why I cannot save these streams. Maybe someone else can check it out if they have the time, and share their experience.


Michael

If you play one of them and control click on the video, you'll see that Save as Quicktime is there, but grayed out. PBS has not enabled the save feature.

Try iGetMovies
http://homepage.mac.com/djodjodesign/
It will pull the movie(s) from your browser cache once the movie is completely downloaded.

If it's a streamed movie, it will not download to the cache. By nature, a stream is played from a buffer in memory. To capture a streamed movie, it would have to be saved as it's received. If it's a normal movie and you have QT Pro, you can save the cached movie from a pull down menu.

Yes, that is what my earlier question was getting at. A stream is fundamentally different from a "Fast Start" web-downloaded Quicktime video that actually lands on your disk. It's possible to recover, for example, iTunes music videos since they are actually downloaded even though Apple disables all save controls, but it isn't possible to save a stream without other tools.

It is likely that PBS will not allow you to save the movies due to copyright restrictions. I used to be able to play BBC broadcasts in the regular RealPlayer where I could rewind, but they now force all BBC URLs into their special player page that has controls that are very constrained due to copyright restrictions, according to their site. Their site actually says that copyright restrictions prevent them from even allowing you to rewind. I'll bet that's part of what's going on with the PBS shows.

Hello Everyone,

I am the person who originally posted the question.

Thank you all for your generous help and expert assistance!

I now understand what is going on with the PBS site, and I have learned why streamed content is unavailable for cacheing and saving.

I really appreciate this wonderful, skilled community of Mac users.

I can't think of a better resource for OS X help and expertise available on the internet.

Thank you very much!

Michael Nerad

This is true... however when I suggested iGetMovies it was because the movies at PBS did not appear to streams(and they are not). I just tried iGetMovies and it successfully pulled two movies from my cache. The first was the captions for the PBS clip and the second was the actual PBS clip. Trying to open the second clip in quicktime took me to the PBS website
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/science...strictions.gif
I will say that the saved clip can be viewed fairly easily... just not with quicktime.

What the second clip was, was a stream link, not an actual clip. One protection most sites use with streaming content is to restrict access to a specific web address. This prevents other sites from playing the stream without authorization.

I had the results with iGetmovies. I assume that PBS has protected the access to these movies. It's too bad. I wanted to save some of these clips and use share them with my students, we do not have internet access in my school.

I will need to search for other methods to share this material with the kids.

Michael

It is an actual clip, not a stream and it can be viewed just fine... but not with QuickTime player. Since PBS does not want people to save the clip and share it, I don't think I should say how it's done, but it is a downloaded clip.

Perhaps you can email the webmaster at the PBS site and find out who owns the material and if you can share them with your class.

Did you also try:

go to your /tmp folder right after viewing the stream.

look for the largest or most recent file. It will have a real screwey name , rename it with a .mov extension

Also snapz pro will capture anything put on the screen.

This would only be the case with a downloaded movie; IE Movie Previews. It would not work this way with a Stream! A stream, by definition is downloaded to a buffer in RAM. There is no cached file! An example of my point is the music video from Pitty Sing. This will download a .2MB 'qtl' file. This is nothing more than a link to the stream. It will not place an image of the video anywhere on your computer.

There is no technique to create a QT movie that will play through the QT plugin, but not the player. They both use the same code. That PBS "clip" is nothing more than a link to the stream with flash code to verify that it's originating on the PBS site.

I don't mean to be rude, but if would try using iGetMovies after viewing the clips at PBS you would know that they are not streaming content. You can also tell by the way the progress bar loads. For streaming content you can skip ahead to any point in the stream and just wait for it to rebuffer. In non-streaming clips (like the PBS clips) you have to wait for the clip to dowload before you can view a given part.

The PBS clips are copy protected in some manner. Opening the saved clip in QuickTime player takes you to their website instead of allowing you view it, but you can open and view the clip just fine in other media players(well at least the one I have tried).

As for the music video you linked to, you are quite right that it is a stream and I agree (though I may be wrong) that you can not save similar video to disk without using a screen capture application(SnapzPro) or device(VCR).

How to save PBS NOVA video
 

Gents,

I have successfully saved excellent PBS programs on several occasions. This is the procedure I have used:

1. First you need to discover the address of the beginning Quicktime video. To do that - use Safari's function Window->activity. Look for .MOV file. Note it's address begining with the http:

2. The address will usually look like this:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/media2/mars.mov

This address will give you just a begining file. "mars.mov" is nothing but the first of 7 (yes, seven) quicktime files embedded into one another. One provides nice backdrop, another one gives hyperlinks to part of the story being played, third one is for captions, rest are just pointer pointing to next pointer pointing to next pointer and so on till the last file hosted on Akmai servers (for large volume delivery).

3. So how do we get there. Well we will need to go through the series of those quicktime files (each one ending with .mov) and look for pointer to the next .mov file INSIDE of the present QuickTime file.

4. This is the procedure: Start text editor and make a small text file and name it HYPERLINK.HTM. THe content of that file should be as this:

<html>
<a href="www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mars/media2/mars.mov

Did anybody already figure out how to save Steves Keynote ?

None of the export/save functions of QT7pro will result in files bigger than a couple of kbyte.

Extracting the URLs from the page

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/j...05_all_ref.mov

brings you to the point where you can pick the streaming quality and the two URLs inside that file

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/j...05_all_ref.mov (itself)
and
http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/j.../qt7choose.mov

don't lead any further.

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/j.../qt7choose.mov contains some strings, but no discernable URLs.

Any brilliant ideas ?
Such a historical speech deserves to be saved locally ;) .

Snaps Pro X 2 works wonders -- when it works. I'm a little peeved today because I can't get the 2nd of a 2-user license installed, even though we paid for it and got the license codes from Ambrosia -- instead Snapz says the license code has 'expired'.

So, if you're doing serious work on a deadline, learn from my mistake: test Snapz Pro before you decide you can count on it. I'm stuck waiting up to two days for them to email me a new license code. Then I'm going to have to test both machines it's installed on again to make sure it stays working on the original machine we installed the first license on.

If you can find an alternative, I'd love to know of one, esp. if I can get my hands on it and get back to work tonight.

I used to be able to save QT files with QT Pro
 

I used to be able to save QT files with QT Pro using Windows Vista, by right clicking on the screen, and a dialog box would appear, and ask if I want to "Save as a Quicktime Movie". After adding a QT plug in inadvertently, I now longer have this option. Please help....

I am using screen capture apps almost all the time, So anything you see on the screen you can capture and save. And you can save the way you like or the way is most suitable for you later viewing needs. Like for iPod and so on. Most often you need to convert your downloaded movie into some other codec in any way. So why mess with difficult workarounds.
I use iShowU with great results.

But to show it in public (school) you need permission from the owner or internet.

Unfortunately, I don't use OSX anymore (I'm on a normal windows PC at work now), but I have had considerable success in the past with saving an actual streamed video by using a windows app by the name of WM Recorder. It uses a network sniffer to intercept the streamed content and then saves the stream bit by bit as it comes down, and you end up with a fully local copy of the content after it's been pulled in.

I imagine that as long as a windows virtual machine doesn't pitch a massive fit at the network sniffer drivers, you could probably run the app and capture a stream inside a virtual machine, and then save it somewhere on your OSX partition for burning to DVD and then use it somewhere else offline.

WM Recorder is awesome, but you need a Windows license to run it on a Mac. Plus you need bootcamp or a virtual machine like Virtual Box.

I've tried to run WM Recorder using Wine on a Mac, but not no avail. However I managed to run Replay Media Catcher using Wine on a Mac.

Either you got lost on the Internet or you're a spammer. You've got six posts, three of which link software which is Windows-only (twice to the software listed above). Do you realize this is a forum for helping Mac users?