macosxhints.com describes a handy way to save downloaded QuickTime 7 movies without a Pro key. It works by exploiting in combination two trivial bugs in QuickTime Player:

Bug #1: Cut remains enabled in the contextual menu even without a Pro key

The Cut feature, the one that lets you cut a portion of the movie to the clipboard, is disabled in the main menu when you don’t have a Pro key, but it remains enabled in the contextual menu. Press Command-X to cut and you’ll see the you need to upgrade to QuickTime Pro dialog, but control-click to choose Cut from the contextual menu and everything works fine: no dialog, and the current selection gets cut from the movie onto the clipboard. This sets the stage for the second bug.

Bug #2: Closing a modified movie displays a Save As dialog even without a Pro key

The Save command is disabled in the File menu if you don’t have a Pro key, so Command-S won’t work. But when you’re closing a modified movie, you’ll still see the Save As dialog.

And there’s the connection: since the first bug let you modify the movie—you cut a frame—the second bug displays the Save As… dialog when you attempt to close the window. This combination lets you successfully save the movie.

Humorous, and perhaps embarrassing for some Apple engineer, at least until Apple gets around to fixing it. But that tip was posted on macosxhints.com two years ago and the bugs still haven’t been fixed.

Thursday, April 24th, 2008, 11:07 am    Trackback.