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.
This web page (Download from Apple HD-Trailers.net Blog) won’t render correctly on my android – you may want to try and repair that 🙂 Barbara Bradley
or you may need to get a better phone….
Use the stream catcher of aTube Catcher, it works fine for me
curl -A “QuickTime/7.6.2” -O
works best
I find that you can drop the version # and just use QuickTime and it’ll still work. 🙂
You can also use ATGet, you can find it on my site at http://wiki.gotux.net/code/perl/atget
There is another workaround that I know of, which doesn’t involve changing the user agent, and is therefore much easier and efficient.
First, I open Safari and find the trailer’s link from Apple’s site, and copy it.
Next, I take the copied link and plug it into Chrome.
Finally, I “Save Page As…” (be aware that the download menu will usually take a little while to appear, so just pause the video in Chrome and be patient while waiting).
I hope this has helped. Enjoy!
AWESOME!!! Thanks so much for posting this cause for some reason I couldn’t get the other methods to work.
To change the user agent in IE9, Hit F12, Select the Tools Menu\Change User Agent String
To Add Quick a QuickTime Agent String:
Select Custom… and enter Quicktime in both the Friendly Name and User Agent String fields, then click add.
To change User Agents:
F12 on the web page prior to download.
Hello everyone, thanks for the advice on this blog. 🙂
As of this moment, I could not get the download from Apple for the newest Man of Steel trailer to work. By this, I am referring to the method via the add-in User Agent Switcher and then downloading via the deep link on
http://www.hd-trailers.net/movie/man-of-steel/
Best Regards
Thanks again for the work on this site 🙂
It looks like Apple has pulled down the teaser, so that’s why you’re having problems downloading it. Yahoo has also released the trailer, so you can download that instead. In the meantime, we’re looking for people who can share the Apple teaser with us.
seriously? We have to go through so much trouble to download a TRAILER? An actual ADVERTISEMENT? What has the world come to…
Apple doesn’t make it easy. 🙂
dude, this is awesome. got it working after a few tries. i used DownloadThemAll!
i have just one question: do you know any freeware that i can use to convert .mov to mp4s. ’cause i’m not sure that my 360 can play .mov (i’m pretty sure mp4 will play) thanks a bunch.
The .mov files are encoded in H.264 and AAC, which are the same codecs used for .mp4 files. I’m pretty sure the Xbox 360 can play them.
If not, give YAMB a try.
right, my 360 played it. thanks again, dude.
This is in my opinion the easiest way to download:
Open Quicktime Player.
File – Open Location
Fill in the correct link: e.g. http://trailers.apple.com/movies/independent/parker/parker-tlr1_h1080p.mov
File – Export
Haha… I already stopped using the Apple website for watching trailers a long, long time ago. I only wanted to download the trailer in best quality for one movie right now. Well… screw you, Apple. Youtube’s quality can’t be THAT bad that I am willing to put up with this crap.
it is THAT bad.
Easy method for Firefox: Open Downloads and drag and drop the link into the window. Hey presto, the file starts to download.
An extremely simple method –
1. Copy link of the apple trailer
2. Paste link into browser url bar and add “?dl=1” after.
For instance, the resulting link should resemble this:
http://trailers.apple.com/movies/ifc_films/berberiansoundstudio/berberiansoundstudio-tlr_h1080p.mov?dl=1
Browser will start downloading the QT movie. Only tested this in Chrome, should work across all browsers.
We’ve actually noticed that in Chrome and Safari (even without the ?dl=1), the download would just work. Maybe it’s because both are based off WebKit.
However, it’ll fail to download in Firefox, IE, and other browsers / download utilities.
Hello,
Perhaps you can help me (again ^^).
I am desperately trying to download the 22min featurette of The Reader (link: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/thereader) but even though I tried different methods and I always end up with a file of 86 bytes in size. I can’t download it with jDownloader either and I can’t file the file anywhere else.
So if you have the solution to my problem it would be very kind of you :).
Install this Greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/169119
Make sure you set a correct user agent and then go to the trailer page.
You can use http://savedeo.com which allows you to download the videos directly. No additional plugins or software is required.
Sweet! Thanks for sharing!
Using IDM to download from Apple
1- http://www14.0zz0.com/2014/02/03/17/870658867.jpg
2- http://www14.0zz0.com/2014/02/03/17/426046582.jpg
3 – http://www14.0zz0.com/2014/02/03/17/268797283.jpg
working for me every time .