Thursday, October 05, 2006

Exporting Protected .mov files with Quicktime

As you have probably seen, there are several video clips on this blog of the Apple Ad Spoofs provided courtesy of youTube and the great fuys at www.truenuff.com.

I managed to get the real .mov files by going into the source code for their page and downloading them using wget. I got a copy of Quicktime Pro 7 and realised that I could have these clips on my mobile if i could just export them as I had done plenty of times before for other files.
What happened was a bit of a pain, the export and save as options were greyed out and unselectable. I did a bit of googling and found out about protected .mov files and here is how to make them "unprotected"

  1. Download "dumpster" from apple
  2. Install it and run from your applications or utilities folder (doesnt matter where you put it) it looks like it doesnt do anything but if you check your dock there is a new icon there
  3. make a copy of your .mov file (Justin Casey)
  4. Drag the .mov file to the dumpster icon in the dock and a debug window will appear
  5. Scroll right to the bottom and there will be a key called NSAV
  6. Expand this and there will be two entries on one row $0000 and $0001
  7. Change the $0001 to $0000 and hit Apple + S or save the file in the menu.
  8. Open up your new unprotected .mov file and your export/save options are now enabled!
this does open up the quasi-legal/moral issue of what to do (or not to do) with these files.
I only unprotected it so I could view it on my phone and show other people, not to distribute it or profit from it in anyway, I think this is Fair Use but if anyone has a problem with it I will of course comply with any reasonable requests.


Keep up the good work Truenuff.com!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice Find! I've been using Visual Hub to force decoding out of these videos now it's so simple a million thank you's and excellent work.