Is my unsaved Quicktime player movie recording still on the hard drive somewhere?
I was able to recover a recording after QuickTime Player crashed because I disconnected the projector which was in full-screen. I found my recording up until the point of crash in this location: /Users/AB/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information/Unsaved QuickTime Player Document.qtpxcomposition
More info here: https://www.macstories.net/news/recovering-a-lost-quicktime-recording/, which in summary said to:
- Right-click the qtpx file we found
- Select "Show Package Contents"
- Find the movie or audio we were looking for and copy it to where we want
It appears that you can't recover the file, at least at the level of the Finder. However you may be able to by using recovery software (See below as to where the file is temporarily located).
When a QuickTime recording is started using File : New Movie Recording, the temporary file sits in the folder:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX.savedState/
Once the recording is closed, without saving, the file window_(some unique number).data is automatically deleted. You can see this if you go to the location above, start a recording, and then close without saving.
thank you Robert Hume
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information/
it's important don't close or reopen Quicktime jut go to that folder and you will see your file
thanks a lot this was so helpful