Save Quicktime Movies from Apple Trailers

I do not like Quicktime that much. I hate to use additional clients next to VLC to be able to view certain movies on websites. I also do not like the fact that you can’t save movies easily if you do not use Quicktime Pro. I discovered a method that makes it possible to save movies from the Apple Trailer website to your local drive and watch them in your favorite movie player afterwards. I use VLC for this purpose but Quicktime Alternative for instance should be fine as well.

I’m going to explain the method using an example. I’m really looking forward to seeing the movie 300 which will come out in march. A new trailer for that movie was released a few days ago and I want to download it to my computer to be able to watch it again without re-downloading it. The first step would be to visit the apple movie trailers website.

Click on the link to the movie 300. The main page of the movie shows up where you can select the resolution of the trailer that you want to view. Right-click and select view page source. Find either 480, 720 or 1080. Skip the first and copy the second url that you find.

480 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_480p.mov
720 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_720p.mov
1080 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_1080p.mov

Add the letter h before the resolution, it would like this

480 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h480p.mov
720 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h720p.mov
1080 - http://images.apple.com/movies/wb/300/300-tlr1_h1080p.mov

This is the direct link to the movie. You could use a download manager to download it or save the page once the movie has been completely loaded.