Download from Apple

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

Update 2013/05/25: Apple has removed the download links section. Please see this blog post for the new instructions on how to acquire the download links.

Update 2010/03/06: 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 and certain browsers are allowed to download their trailers. Any other 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.

Safari / Chrome
If you’re using Safari or Chrome web browser, you should be able to just right click and save the file directly from your browser. If you’re using a different browser and really want to save the trailer, installing Safari or Chrome may be the easiest workaround for you.

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.

106 thoughts on “Download from Apple”

  8. RE: celes

    You can search this blog and see if the links are actually still up. I believe all the Dark Knight trailers should still be working. I don’t recall if Blade 2 ever had an HD trailer.

  11. If you have Quicktime Alternative its alot easier…

    plus it works for Aol and yahoo HD clips

    just right click on the 720p button and save as,
    then open it and the Quicktime Alternative with download it
    for you.

  14. I don’t really know what a Cineplus2K server is, but if it can play quicktime videos, then it sounds it should work.

    If not, you can always convert it into something it can.

  21. hi there, i can’t seem to edit the source page. how do you do it? i think your tutorial’s very helpful, if only i can get past the first step. heehee.

    thanks again.

  22. RE: noen

    Edit or View?

    To view, just right click any blank area on the page and click “View Source”.

    You don’t need to edit the source page. Just copy the url you need and paste it into your favorite text editor (i.e. notepad) and modify the url in there.

  26. I took a look at the Apple Events and it looks like they’re using RTSP (real time streaming protocol) which is not as easy to save. There are tools/utilities to save it, but I haven’t found a reliable one that works every time.

  27. yep, i’ve tried with mplayer and openRTSP with no luck.

    BTW VLC is able to play the stream, so it should be able to record it too.
    My only concern is if it may skip some frames during download.

  30. Please accept this message as a token of my gratitude and appreciation. For years I’ve been dealing with Apple’s treacherous ways to avoid the download of Quicktime trailers and lately it was a permanent frustration until the search giant **gooogle** led me to your page and the solution, spoofing the user agent string… I am forever indebted with you and if there’s any question you have about the universe i could humbly give you my 2 cents worth… bye!

    • If you tell me the command you used and the error you’re seeing, maybe I can help you. As noted above, you can also try the User Agent trick or using a download utility like GetRight.

  34. There is a program named MOV DL TOOl which can help downloading from apple.com(Apple HD Gallery & Apple Trailers). It’s just less than 1MB.
    It works in 90% of trailer links.

  39. Thanks for the info, that was very helpful. I’m using the good old FlashGet v1.73. It appears that it also has the option to use user-defined User-Agent. Setting it to “QuickTime” as described in this guide works perfectly :). Now I no longer need to start up Firefox (with “Embedded Objects” add-on) just for DL-ing Apple trailers, I’ll use Chrome + FlashGet for this task from now on :).

    Thanks again and Happy Holidays!

  42. The easiest way to download from Apple Trailers is to just tap CMD + S on your Mac when QuickTime has loaded the trailer. Save the file where you want to. Could not be easier 🙂

  46. If I’m using Safari in Windows Vista, should I do to dowload Apple trailers? I’ve tried the links on hd-trailers.net for Apple Trailer and is useless.

  47. For My Google Chrome.

    I add these parameter to shortcut properties.

    C:\Users\Nick\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –user-agent=”QuickTime/7.6.3 (qtver=7.6.3;cpu=IA32;os=Mac 10.6.2); AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko); Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US); Chrome/9.0.597.107; Safari/534.13″

    Excellent !! Works for direct download apple trailers.
    And It would be no side effects with other website.

  49. Thanks for your advice. Installed ‘User Agent Switcher’, set User Agent to “QuickTime/7.6.2 (qtver=7.6.2;os=Windows NT 5.1Service Pack 3)”, App Name to QuickTime, App Version to 7.6.2 and it worked like a charm (after I remembered to add the ‘h’ before the resolution – it’s been a while since I first came across your site. It’s definitely better than having to crack QuickTime to the Pro version – it’s just a horrible player. I opened it up to see if I could find it’s user agent string and it crashed upon opening! Thanks again for your advice and for sharing it with the world!

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