Can you still make QuickTime to store temporary recordings on another drive

quicktime

I need to get QuickTime Player to store its temporary files on another disk. I found an answer here, which I tried, but QuickTime Player quits with an error when I try to make a Screen Recording. I used:

$ cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX
$ mv Data Data.bak
$ ln -s /Volumes/'Keeper 4'/QuicktimeScratch QTData
$ ln -s QTData Data

Does this no longer work, or did I screw something up? Keeper 4 is an external HD. I tried it with and without an existing QuicktimeScratch directory.

Best Answer

It seems that Apple doesn't want you to do this for whatever reason, so they prevent the symbolic link hack from working at the level of the Data/ subdirectory. After fooling around with this, I found a workable solution one level up:

$ cd ~/Library/Containers/
$ mv com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/ com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.backup/
$ ln -s /Volumes/<NAME_OF_VOLUME>/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/ .

No need for a double link trick this time around.

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Screen-Capture – Quicktime Screen Recordings Storage Location

As of OSX Sierra, it's here:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information

In there, there is a container/package/directory called Unsaved QuickTime Player Document.qtpxcomposition that contains a Screen Recording.mov file with the actual video. You can copy-paste that mov file wherever to save it permanently.

You can also double-click the Unsaved QuickTime Player Document file directly. That file opens in QuickTime, and allows you to save in a proper place. Note that sometimes QuickTime will fail to save a Screen Recording with the error "The operation could not be completed" (using File > Export As might work, though), so copy-pasting is probably less prone to error.

My battery ran out when I was recording and found my file there.

Unable to play copied AVCHD

The index.bdm file was probably named that way on the original card, but appeared as INDEX.BDM when mounted on the Mac. FAT32 is not case-sensitive, and OS X's file system code (specifically the NSFileManager class) programmatically presents FAT32 contents in uppercase. OS X can open AVCHD content, even with a filename in lowercase, from case-insensitive media, like FAT32 or HFS+ in its default, case-insensitive mode.

However, when you copied the AVCHD content to a case-sensitive filesystem, the true nature of that lowercase filename becomes visible (it doesn't get renamed as lowercase, it simply gets revealed as lowercase to begin with!). OS X / QuickTime get confused by the lowercase name, and you get the dreaded "CANNOT OPEN".

The fix is to ensure that all the AVCHD-standard files and folders are in uppercase. As you see, the folder tree above the INDEX.BDM files loses its special status, but the INDEX.BDM file can be double-clicked to open the AVCHD browser. Just as importantly, editors like FCP X and FCP 7's Log and Transfer window will properly see the media even on the case-sensitive filesystem.

I encountered the same thing copying AVCHD to a Linux-based NAS with a case-sensitive filesystem. In my case, my Panasonic cameras will write an INDEX.BDM file when I erase all clips or format the card in-camera, but if I erase just one or a few clips, the file gets written as index.bdm. Since Apple's code breaks with mixed-case AVCHD filenames, I'm writing a utility to walk my folder trees and make sure everything is uppercase, grumble grumble...

Best Answer

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Screen-Capture – Quicktime Screen Recordings Storage Location

Unable to play copied AVCHD

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