Quicktime X "Save To" location with Mountain Lion

"Instead of recording to the folder that you select (Movies or another folder), it records to a document auto-save folder (also not accessible unless you know where to look). Even once you stop the recording, the file doesn't move to the location you pick. It stays in this weird limbo in the auto-save folder. The resulting video appears in a window in QuickTime but in no user-accessible part of the Finder.

Based on what I see, my guess would be that the new "recording" routines seeks to speed up the recording "finalization" process. Previously the recording was saved as an open-ended transport stream in a "temporary" location that is invisible as far as the average user is concerned. When the recording ended, the file was then re-written to a program stream file at the user designated location. However, under Mountain Lion, it appears the "temporary" file is immendiately opened in the QT X player in its current form as soon as the recording finishes. The user can then decide to discard the "temporary" file without further processing, save the data in its current compression format to a normal program stream MOV file container at any convenient user selected location, or the user can opt to re-compress the current data as H.264/AAC to target a specific device/size better suited for its final use. In other words, the new workflow may save the writing of the recorded data to a second file that may or may not be kept by the user or having to copy the "kept" program stream file to a separate third location if so needed by the user. Unfortunately, while this process is more efficient in terms of time and file space used in the workflow, it appears to confuse some users. Once the temporary file data is saved as a program stream file either in its original compression format or as an exported H.264/AAC file, the temporary file space can then be immediately returned to the heap for use by other applications/processes as may be neeeded. In short, the file does not show up as a "user-accessible" file in the Finder until the user actually decides to "keep" the recording.

Strangely, instead of being called Movie Recording, the window title changes to Untitled (though with no dark dot in the middle of the red close button like all other Untitled documents). There's an icon in the title bar of the window you can drag like any other titlebar icon. Drag it to the desktop, for example, or the dock. Go to "show original item," and it will take you to the obscure Auto-Save folder. However, if you save it (I'll get to how to do that), that alias is then toast: it says the file cannot be found."

Basically, the File Save and File Export options have been combined into a single menu option under Mountain Lion. And, unfortunately, the programmers decided to do so using the "Export" nomenclature which, once again, seems to be very confusing for some users. As previously noted, the "temporary" file is opened in the QT X player for you to save as a "standalone" MOV file (i.e., calls the QT X equivalent of the old QT 7 Pro "Save As..." function) or export as a targeted H.264/AAC file by either accessing the "Export" File Menu option or by simply pressing/selecting the QT X Player "Close" option. And, as also previously noted, the "alias" icon becomes "orphaned" as soon as you save/export the data in the QT X player because the temporary file space allocation has been released back to the computer for re-use as needed by other apps or processes. These heap re-allocation actions are all very normal and probably occur hundreds of times during any given work session without your knowledge so there is nothing "strange" going on here.

Looking for a fix, aside from just using QT 7; which I have. I don't want to export a file already recorded, thats truly unnecessary.

Not sure what you are looking for here. If you don't want to recompress the recorded file, then don't. Instead use the default "Movie" Format "pop-up" to save the data currently in the QT X player to a "standalone" MOV file containing the data in its current compression format. If it is the word "Export" that bothers you, then use the "Close" option or press the "Red Circled 'X'" in the left-hand corner of the QT X player containing the "temporary" recorded data to envoke a window with the same options but using a "Save" buttion rather than an "Export" button.

Since this question has gone 2 years without a direct solution, and it still appears at the top of similar search results, here's my method (QTPX 10.2):

The temporary folder where the QTPX cached files are now stored is:

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

1. Create an alias to this folder somewhere convenient, like your ~/Movies folder. (Use the Go menu to "Go to Folder..." if you don't already see your Library folder. From there you can browse.)

2. When you record, QTPX creates a package file called "Unsaved QuickTime Player Document" with a number suffix if there are multiple open recordings. Stop recording and when the preview window finishes loading, drag these files to any other location (ie to Desktop).

3. It is now safe to quit QTPX and Don't Save. (It can't since you moved it.)

4. The file(s) you moved is a package, right-click (each one) to Show Package Contents.

5. Inside will be an index file you can ignore, and a media file that you can drag out (ie to Desktop). If you made a screen recording it will be called "Screen Recording.mov". Work with this file as normal. (You have now saved yourself the time and disk space of exporting a copy.)

6. Delete the now empty "Unsaved QuickTime Player Document", if you left the index file inside, its new file size will update to be around 20 bytes.

Hey there...I know this is old, but this is exactly what I'm trying to do...But possibly for a different reason?

I am tired of QuickTime writing multi GB uncompressed video files to my main SSD when I am capturing from my camera or doing screen captures...It's already destroyed the write performance, it's gone down significantly because of this nonsense.

So what I want QuickTime to do is to store temp / cache files to an external drive that I have.

So, logically, I found where QTPX was writing it's "temp" / cache files to, which is in that "Autosave Information" folder

I then deleted that folder, made a "QuickTime" folder on my external storage, then made an alias to *that* folder and put it inside of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/ and then called it "Autosave Information"

Unfortunately this didn't work...It gives a generic error in QuickTime when I go to record.

I checked in Console and it's sandboxd related...I am not sure how application sandboxing is supposed to work with aliases but apparently (at least for me) it doesn't work at all

4/27/16 10:15:17.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: QuickTime Player(1773) deny(1) file-write-create /Volumes/LaCie/QuickTime/Unsaved QuickTime Player Document.qtpxcomposition

So, it looks like the Aliasing is working, the app sees the proper place to put it's temp file, but the Sandboxing won't let it write to that location because that's the way it's signed

I'm on the latest El Capitan w/ QuickTime Player 10.4 (855)

If anyone can shed some light on this, I would appreciate it.

There must be some way to get QuickTime to change it's caching / temp location and get it OFF my main OS SSD volume!

I guess I could try making a hard link instead of an alias but I really don't think that would make a difference to the Sandboxing of the app...It would still most likely deny any writes.