m3u8downloader: A Python repository from josephcappadona

Disclaimer: I did not create this library, I have only made minor modifications. Original project homepage can be found here: https://pypi.org/project/m3u8downloader/.

m3u8downloader

m3u8downloader is a tool to download video at a m3u8 link. HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) is becoming popular. m3u8 playlist is used by HLS to serve video fragments of different quality to different clients. This tool supports HLS master playlist and media playlist. If master playlist is given, it selects the highest resolution automatically. HLS fragment encryption is supported. Resume from partial download is supported, just rerun the same command to continue.

ffmpeg is used to convert the downloaded fragments into final mp4 video file.

Installation

To install m3u8downloader, simply:

$ sudo apt install -y ffmpeg
$ pip install --user m3u8downloader

Quick Start

Example command line usage:

downloadm3u8 -o ~/Downloads/foo.mp4 https://example.com/path/to/foo.m3u8

If ~/.local/bin is not in $PATH, you can use full path:

~/.local/bin/downloadm3u8 -o ~/Downloads/foo.mp4 https://example.com/path/to/foo.m3u8

Here is built-in command line help:

usage: m3u8downloader [-h] [--version] [--debug] --output OUTPUT
                      [--tempdir TEMPDIR] [--concurrency N]
                      URL

download video at m3u8 url

positional arguments:
  URL                   the m3u8 url

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  --debug               enable debug log
  --output OUTPUT, -o OUTPUT
                        output video filename, e.g. ~/Downloads/foo.mp4
  --tempdir TEMPDIR     temp dir, used to store .ts files before combing them
                        into mp4
  --concurrency N, -c N
                        number of fragments to download at a time

Documentation

This command line tool doesn't have extra documents.

Limitations

This tool only parses minimum m3u8 extensions for selecting media playlist from master playlist, downloading key and fragments from media playlist. If a m3u8 file doesn't download correctly, it's probably some new extension was added to the HLS spec which this tool isn't aware of.

ChangeLog