This tutorial was meant to teach you how to download HD Trailers from Apple.

Update: Apple has implemented roadblocks to prevent direct downloading. Please jump to this section for workarounds.

Where to find the trailers:
You should be able find most of Apple HD Movie Trailers on this page: Apple – Movie Trailers – Just HD. However, old trailers tend to get knocked off this list, at which point your best bet would be your favorite search engine or this blog.

What to do once you decide on the trailer and resolution you want:
Once you find the movie trailer you want, click on the poster, followed by the High Definition link. Some movie trailers have custom pages which make it difficult to find the real download link to the trailer. The easiest way to determine if you’re on the correct page or not is by looking at the URL. If the URL ends in /hd/, you’re on the correct page. If not, try appending /hd/ after the last / (removing the file if exist at the end of the URL).

For example, Ratatouille is one of the recent movie trailers that does have a custom page. Clicking on the poster takes you to this page. Notice how there’s no High Definition link and clicking on the resolutions directly bring up the movie trailer. If you append /hd/ to this URL, you’ll end up on this page, which is what most Apple HD trailer pages would look like. It appears that if a trailer has an HD version, this page will exist, even if a custom page has been made.

Once you decide on the resolution you want, right click the corresponding button and copy the link. This is the reference file link.

How to find and construct the download URL:
Once you have the reference file link of the trailer and resolution you want, you’ll need to modify it a bit.

You’ll want to insert an ‘h‘ between the ‘_’ and resolution. For example, the file in the reference file link above was “ratatouille-tlr2_1080p.mov”. After you insert the ‘h’, it’ll become “ratatouille-tlr2_h1080p.mov”.

After you’ve fixed the domain and inserted the ‘h’, it’ll form this new link.

How to download the actual trailer:
The final step is easy. You’ve already got the direct link to the actual HD trailer. You can now open it in your browser and File > Save it or you can use a file download tool like wget or curl.

Direct Download Workarounds

Apple has made it so that only Quicktime is allowed to download their trailers. Any web browser will be automatically redirected to the Apple – Movie Trailers’ homepage. However, the only check they do is your User Agent string, which can be easily spoofed.

WGET / CURL
You can use download utilities such as wget or curl (comes on Mac/Linux) and specify the user agent string directly:
wget -U QuickTime http://trailers.apple.com/movies/fox/avatar/avatar2009aug0820a-tsr_h1080p.mov
curl -A QuickTime -O http://trailers.apple.com/movies/fox/avatar/avatar2009aug0820a-tsr_h1080p.mov

Web Browsers
Many web browsers also support changing the user agent string. If you’re interested in doing so, this page provides a good tutorial on how to change your user agent string on Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer: Switching User Agents

Also on Firefox, there is a nifty add-on you can installed called User Agent Switcher, which will allow you to quickly switch between the default and Quicktime user agent strings.

After installing the add-on, go to Tools > Default User Agent > Edit User Agents…

Create a new User Agent by clicking on New > New User Agent… Clear out all the fields and copy and paste QuickTime into the Description and User Agent fields.

Switch to the newly created QuickTime User Agent by selecting it from the Tools > Default User Agent menu. Now you should be able to click/save Apple HD trailers from our site as you normally did before. Remember to switch back to the Default User Agent after you’re done saving trailers.

GetRight
This is a download manager that allows you to specify what user agent string it should use. For more details, please follow their instructions.