M3U8 Explained: How to Open and Convert M3U8 to MP4?

If you are a digital streaming enthusiast who prefers to watch online streaming offline frequently, you must have heard of M3U8. The M3U8 files are often seen in online video streaming, especially live streaming video. When you try to download these M3U8 files for offline viewing, you might get troubled in the processes of both download and offline playback. What is M3U8 file? How to open and play M3U8 file? How to download video from M3U8 and convert M3U8 to MP4 file for unlimited offline playback? If you have such questions, this post would meet your needs. We will provide you with satisfactory answers here.

• What is M3U8 File?
• How to Open M3U8 File?
• How to Convert M3U8 to MP4 Easily?
• Troubleshoot Common M3U8 Issues
• Conclusion
• FAQs

What is M3U8 File?

The very first thing you need to make clear is: what is M3U8 file? Different from traditional video formats like MP4 and MKV, the M3U8 file format is actually a playlist file format that stores the location of video and audio files, and is associated with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). While traditional video formats help store video and audio files offline, M3U8 files are often used for online streaming.

An M3U8 file is essentially an M3U playlist with the text used inside being encoded in UTF-8. An M3U8 playlist could be a media playlist, which indicates the detailed location of a series of media segment resources for playback. It was developed by Apple for streaming contents online through browsers and apps on iOS devices, macOS and tvOS devices. The adaptive bitrate streaming feature of M3U8 allows flexible video playback qualities based on bandwidth for smooth online video streaming. Currently a lot of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, etc. adopt the M3U8 file. It should be noted that M3U8 files are generally DRM protected, which helps protect the copyright of media files from unauthorized downloading and using.

How to Open M3U8 File?

Since the M3U8 file is not actually a media file but a playlist file, it is different to open and view M3U8 files. As mentioned above, M3U8 file is a text file encoded in UTF-8, you could open M3U8 file with a reliable text editor such as Notepad, which helps you view the text contents of the M3U8 file.

However, the problem is that the text editor won’t play the media files stored in the M3U8 file, since it is not a media player. To play M3U8 file, like that of playing MP4 file on your computer, you need a media player. The lucky thing is that though not all media players could directly open and play M3U8 files, there are still some M3U8 players such as VLC media player, KMPlayer, Windows Media Player, Apple iTunes, RealNetworks RealPlayer, XMMS, etc.

The below guide would show you how to open and play M3U8 file by taking VLC media player for example:

1.         Download and install VLC media player on your computer.

2.         Kick off VLC media player and then open the “Media > Open File…” option.

3.         On the “Select one or more files to open” window, change the “FileType” to “Playlist Files” option and then browse and locate the M3U8 file from your computer.

4.         Click the “Open” button to load selected M3U8 file into the VLC media player for playback.

By following the above steps, you could easily open and play M3U8 file on your computer. VLC media player is available for multiple operating systems. It is the best solution to open and play M3U8 files.

How to Convert M3U8 to MP4 Easily?

There are cases in which you might need to convert M3U8 to MP4 for various reasons. You cannot actually make use of regular video converters to directly convert M3U8 to MP4 file since M3U8 file is only a plain text file. You need to make use of special M3U8 to MP4 converter tools such as FFmpeg, GUI tools, or M3U8 downloaders. As mentioned above, M3U8 files are actually streaming contents online, the best way to convert M3U8 to MP4 is to directly download M3U8 file and save it as an MP4 file.

CleverGet All-in-One is the best M3U8 downloader to help you directly download M3U8 file from various streaming services to MP4 files. It consists of multiple video downloader modules to help you download content from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and various other streaming services that adopt HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol. It includes an M3U8 Downloader, which continues adding more M3U8 streaming services to download and save M3U8 file to MP4 file directly.

The below guide would show you how to directly download M3U8 streaming media to MP4 file with CleverGet, without the need of generating the M3U8 file:

1.         Download, install and kick off CleverGet on your computer.

2.         Set the download directory on CleverGet to save the final MP4 file.

3.         Open the target video that adopts M3U8 streaming within CleverGet. Log in if needed.

4.         Let CleverGet parse the target video.

5.         Choose download options, output format (MP4), subtitles and audio tracks.

6.         Click the “Download” option to start downloading the target video.

Wait for the download to complete. Once the video downloads complete, you will get MP4 files. With CleverGet, you could directly download and save online videos to MP4 or MKV files. There is no need for you to generate the M3U8 playlist file.

Troubleshoot Common M3U8 Issues

When you are making use of the M3U8 files, you may encounter some M3U8 playback or download issues, such as below:

1. M3U8 file playback failures

This could happen due to corrupted TS segments, missing #EXT-X-VERSION code, etc. In such case, you’d better try to generate the M3U8 playlist again.

2. M3U8 file download challenges

Since M3U8 streaming files are actually DRM protected. Therefore, if you want to download M3U8 files directly, you need to get specific M3U8 file downloaders like video downloader for Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.

3. “404 Not Found” error

The incorrect or inaccessible URLs for the media segment within the M3U8 file will result in 404 Not Found error. In such a case, you could validate the URL paths, ensure all segment URLs are correct and accessible, make clear that media files are in compatible formats, etc.

FAQs

1. Can you download video from M3U8 file?

Currently there is no tool to directly download video from M3U8 file. But if your streaming service adopts M3U8 streaming protocol, you could make use of some 3^rd-party video downloaders to download video directly from M3U8 streaming services.

2. What’s the difference between M3U8 and M3U?

The key difference between M3U and M3U8 is the character encoding. M3U files use a default non-Unicode encoding (like ASCII), while M3U8 files are specifically encoded using UTF-8.

3. Can I play M3U8 files offline?

No, playing M3U8 files requires network connection, since the segment files are only video and audio file locations stored in the M3U8 file, which require internet connection for streaming.

Conclusion

M3U8 file contains the playlist of all video and audio files in plain text. Media players could read the locations of the audio and video files in the M3U8 playlist to open and play back M3U8 file, only when your computer is connected to the internet. This post has shared how to open, play, convert and download M3U8 file with different tools. If you are not familiar with M3U8, this post should have provided a brief understanding.