Save iTunes Music Store videos to your desktop

Because, really, who wants to have to buffer them each time and watch them in windowed mode?

[Update: It was pointed out to me by someone on the Spymac forums that this seems to no longer work in iTunes 4.9. I verified and it appears that the person is correct. I would have replied in the forum, but the evil whorehoppers at Spymac wouldn’t let me register. Anyway, I went back to the original MacOSXHints.com article and found the problem: The temporary video files are now stored under ~/Library/Caches/QuickTime/downloads/xx/xx/, but it seems that the file is not a QuickTime movie anymore. Changing the shell script on the old AppleScript to lsof -wa -c iTunes +D ~/Library/ | grep -i qtch | head -1 | awk '{ print $9 }' does copy the file correctly, but it is not playable in QuickTime. With the advent of music videos being sold on the iTunes Music Store, I’m pretty much giving up on getting this one working. Sorry folks, but it’s just not worth my time anymore.]

It was a quiet Sunday night at home with my girlfriend, drinking Chardonnay and listening to the new Gorillaz album on iTunes. I went to show her the music video for Feel Good Inc., and realised that since she was sitting on the other side of the room, it would be A Good Thing™ to be able to view the promo in full screen mode. I became obsessed. So I did a search on MacOSXHints.com for “iTunes music video” and found this article. The article itself, however, wasn’t too descriptive, so here’s the step-by-step of how I did it:

1. Download this AppleScript, then rename it to “music_video.scpt”
2. Find the music video in the iTunes Music Store you want to save.
3. On the page where you select whether or not you want to watch the “small” or “large” version, context-click on the “large” link, and choose “Copy iTunes Music Store URL”.
4. With that URL in the Clipboard, double-click the AppleScript you saved earlier.
5. The Script Editor should come up. Click “Run”.
6. After the video finishes loading in Safari (or whatever browser you use), context-click on “Save as QuickTime Movie…” (I believe that’s a QuickTime Pro feature, but who hasn’t snagged themselves a QT Pro serial?)
7. Name the file whatever you want and save it wherever you like, and that’s it!

Oh, and the new Gorillaz album, Demon Days, kicks ass. You should get yourself a copy. I mean it.