m3u8 stream to mp4 using ffmpeg

m3u8-to-mp4.md

1. Copy m3u8 link

2. Run command

echo "Enter m3u8 link:";read link;echo "Enter output filename:";read filename;ffmpeg -i "$link" -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -vcodec copy -c copy -crf 50 $filename.mp4

Example final command

ffmpeg -i "http://host/folder/file.m3u8" -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -vcodec copy -c copy -crf 50 file.mp4

If you run this exact command on newer FFMPEG versions you'll probably get an error about something not being on the whitelist: protocol https not on whitelist

Modify the command to use this instead

$ ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,https,tcp,tls -i master.m3u8 -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -vcodec copy -c copy -crf 50 video.mp4 

Tested with FFMPEG versions 5.0 and newer

Thanks! How to speed up the download (like, download concurrently?)

Use N_m3u8DL-RE with -mt argument.

Tried using VLC and it was being tempermental on me, this worked so much better thank you

can you please share more details how we can convert using VLC Kit?

Works great also i noticed if you copy a 1280x720 youtube video url from download helper and use this method it downloads the 1920x1080 video instead it downloads a higher qualtiy video then the original. It works perfectly thank you.

This works perfectly, thanks for sharing!

nice work

You can use this approach to emulate the same headers that your browser sends, thereby bypassing 403 Forbidden errors:

Using Firefox, open Developer Tools using Ctrl + Shift + I, or click on the 3-line hamburger menu in the top-right (1.) > More Tools (2.) > Web Developer Tools (3.).

Go to the Network tab (4.), reload the page, find the appropriate .m3u8 entry, typically named stream.m3u8 or something similar (5.), right-click, Copy Value (6.) > Copy as cURL (7.).

Then paste the resulting cURL command into here: https://windyakin.github.io/curl2ffmpeg. Download and install the free, open source FFMpeg tool if you don't already have it, paste the resulting ffmpeg command into your commandline (you may have to add a .exe suffix, eg: ffmpeg becomes ffmpeg.exe if you are using Windows) and enjoy the video!