How to Download M3u8 Files What Is an M3U File? Tim Fisher Has 30+ Years' Professional Technology Experience
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how to download m3u8 files What Is an M3U File? Tim Fisher has 30+ years' professional technology experience. He focuses on support and Microsoft topics but is an expert in all areas of tech. He's also the VP and General Manager of Lifewire. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. Tweet Share Email. File Types Apps Windows MS Office Linux Google Drive Backup & Utilities Design Cryptocurrency. What to Know. An M3U file is an Audio Playlist file. Open one with VLC, Winamp, iTunes, and other media players. Convert to other playlist formats like M3U8 or XSPF with VLC. This article describes what M3U files are, how to use one to queue up music in a compatible player, and how to convert one to a different playlist format that works with your media player. What Is an M3U File? An M3U file is an Audio Playlist file that stands for MP3 URL , and as such, isn't an actual audio file in and of itself. An M3U file just points to audio (and sometimes video) files so that a media player can queue them for playback. These text-based files can contain URLs and/or absolute or relative pathnames to the media files and/or folders. M3U files that are UTF-8 encoded are instead saved in the M3U8 file format. How to Open an M3U File. VLC is my favorite free media player because of its support for a huge variety of audio and video formats. Plus, it supports not only the M3U format but also similar playlist file types you may run into, like M3U8, PLS, XSPF, WVX, CONF, ASX, IFO, CUE, and others. Though Winamp was one of the first programs to support them, other media players can open M3U files too, like Windows Media Player, iTunes, and Audacious. Keep in mind that the M3U file itself is not a media file. So while the files that the M3U points to may open just fine in a different media player than those I've linked to above, it's possible that the program can't understand the playlist file, and therefore won't know what to do with it when you try to open it. M3U files can, of course, be opened with any text editor since the files are text-based (see what I mean below). See our Best Free Text Editors list for our favorites. How to Build an M3U File. M3U files are usually not built from scratch. In media players like VLC, for example, you can use the Media > Save Playlist to File option to save the list of currently open songs to an M3U file. However, if you do want to build your own M3U file, it's important that you use the proper syntax. Here is an example of an M3U file: All M3U files will have similarities, but also differences, to this example. The number following the "#EXTINF" sections is the length of the audio in seconds (you might see a -1 here if the audio is being streamed online and has no set length). Following the time is the title that should display in the media player, with the location of the file below that. The example above is using absolute pathnames to the files (the whole path is included), but they can also use a relative name (e.g. just Sample.mp3 ), a URL ( https://www.lifewire.com/Sample.mp3 ), or an entire folder ( C:\Files\My Music\ ). The benefit of using relative paths over absolute paths is that you can move the media files and the M3U file to another computer and still use the playlist without having to make changes to it. This works so long as the media files and M3U file remain relative to one another just as they were on the originating computer. You can sometimes point to another M3U file from within one M3U file, but the media player you're using may not support it. How to Convert an M3U File. As you can see in the previous section, an M3U file is just a text file. This means you cannot change or convert the file to a playable MP3, MP4, or any other media format. All you can do with an M3U file is convert it to another playlist format. You can convert M3U to M3U8, XSPF, or HTML using VLC by opening the M3U file in the program and then using the Media > Save Playlist to File. menu option to pick which format to save it in. You can also convert an M3U file to text if you just want to open the file in a text editor to see the files it's referencing. Open the M3U file in a text editor from the list above, and then save it to TXT, HTML, or another text-based format. Another option is to rename the extension to .TXT and then open it with a text editor. This technically isn't an M3U file conversion, but if you want to gather together all the audio files that an M3U file is referencing, and copy them to a single folder, you can use the program M3UExportTool. Once you have them together, a free file converter can be used on the files to convert them to the format you want them to be in, like MP3 to WAV, MP4 to AVI, etc. How to Play M3U8 Files and How to Convert M3U8 to MP4. We can often see that many people are asking “What exactly are M3U8 files? Why my computer failed to open M3U8 files?” Or “How can I convert M3U8 to MP4 ?” in forums and question-answering stations. So, this article will give you technical details of M3U8 files and tell you how to convert M3U8 to MP4 with a common M3U8 converter. Firstly, let’s free download an M3U8 to MP4 Converter for easily downloading as well as converting M3U8 videos: What are M3U8 Files? Are they Related to M3U? Recommended M3U8 Players - How to Play M3U8 Playlist. How to Convert M3U8 to MP4 with M3U8 Converter? What are M3U8 Files? Are they Related to M3U? The M3U8 file is an "Extensible Playlist" file format, which uses UTF-8-encoded characters. These files are used by various media applications and online radio stations for describing where media files are located. They are plain text files that do not contain any actual audio data. A file with the M3U8 file extension is the Unicode version of M3U file format. Recommended M3U8 Downloader. HD Video Converter Factory Pro is a powerful program that allows us to download M3U8 video effortlessly. Besides, it allows us to convert downloaded video to 500+ formats and devices such as iPhone X, iPad, Android phone, TV, etc. with great quality and fast speed. Try it out now! Recommended M3U8 Player - How to Play M3U8 Playlist. M3U8 files are supported by a wide variety of media players, and you can also open the M3U8 file with a text editor since the contents of the M3U8 file are stored as text. These recommended M3U8 players may help you play M3U8 playlist on main operating system: Windows: Nullsoft Winamp, Roxio Creator NXT Pro 6, Apple iTunes, RealNetworks RealPlayer Cloud, Microsoft Windows Media Player, VideoLAN VLC media player. Mac: Apple iTunes, RealNetworks RealPlayer Cloud, VideoLAN VLC media player, CocoModX, Songbird. Linux: XMMS, VideoLAN VLC media player. These M3U8 files can be opened in the normal way of playing media files, and double-click to play M3U8 files when these files are associated with these players. How to Convert M3U8 to MP4 with M3U8 Converter? If you want to convert M3U8 to MP4, or any other media format, I have to remind you that M3U8 files are just playlist files and that they do not contain any actual audio & video data. This means that unlike MP4 or MP3 files, M3U8 file contains only text that cannot be actually played in any media player. They are just the path of media files. If you are looking for a video converter that can directly convert M3U8 file to MP4 or MP3, I don’t think there is such M3U8 converter on the market, let alone the so-called M3U8 converter online tool. But after you got the actual M3U8 video URL, some media players can act as M3U8 file converter to convert M3U8 to MP4 or other formats. Here we take VLC media player as an example to tell you how to convert M3U8 to MP4: Now follow the following steps in VLC media player. Step 1: In order to convert .m3u8 to .mp4. Firstly, open VLC media player and select “Open Network Stream” under the Media tab. Step 2: Paste M3U8 video URL into the network URL box, and then select “Convert” in the lower right. Step 3: A new window will pop up after clicking Convert. Select MP4 as output video format and then set the output folder path. Tips: VLC allows you to edit selected profile by clicking “Edit selected profile” icon including container format, video codec, audio codec and subtitles. Step 4: After all settings are done, you can click “Start” to convert M3U8 file to MP4. The output MP4 video will be found in the destination file. A video tutorial is provided to help users convert M3U8 to MP4 better. Moreover, to help users export M3U8 files, we recommend using the M3U and M3U8 Export Tool. It is a Windows program that takes a Winamp playlist, finds the music files, and copies them to a single location such as a folder, USB stick, portable device, or network location.