Play m3u8 as a whole, not a playlist that waits on each video

[sglbl]

Describe the bug
I downloaded a video as m3u8 format, it opens each chunk as a separate 12 second video instead of 2:15:00 movie. (which works with vlc, but I don't want to use vlc)

To Reproduce
When I open m3u8 file or when I open with Open -> Playlist I have this problem.

Expected behavior
To open as a whole.

Screenshots
It opens each chunk separately.

Your Environment

• SMPlayer:

  • Version: 25.6.0 (revision 10369)
  • Using Qt 5.15.13 (compiled with Qt 5.15.13)
  • Using mpv:
    mpv 0.37.0 Copyright © 2000-2023 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects
    libplacebo version: v6.338.2
    FFmpeg version: 6.1.1-3ubuntu5
    FFmpeg library versions:
    libavutil 58.29.100
    libavcodec 60.31.102
    libavformat 60.16.100
    libswscale 7.5.100
    libavfilter 9.12.100
    libswresample 4.12.100

• Zorin OS:

  • Version: 18 Pro
  • Using X11 & Zorin Appearance

[smplayer-dev]

Use Open -> URL and paste the file path and see if that works.

[sglbl]

Thanks, unfortunately it didn't work, it still opens chunk by chunk. (when it changes from chunk1 to chunk2, there is a delay)
Note that video was downloaded via UCBrowser

[smplayer-dev]

If opening the m3u8 via Open -> URL gives the same result, then this is also a limitation of mpv.

ChatGPT proposes this solution:

On Linux, you can make mpv treat the m3u8 as a real HLS stream by serving it over HTTP.

1. Open a terminal in the directory containing the .m3u8 file and its segments:

cd /path/to/video

2. Start a simple local web server:

python3 -m http.server

3. Open this URL in SMPlayer / mpv:

http://localhost:8000/video.m3u8

mpv will then play it as a single continuous video, instead of opening each segment separately.

---

As an alternative, you can also remux the stream into a single file:

ffmpeg -i video.m3u8 -c copy output.mkv

This avoids the issue entirely.

[sglbl]

I tried with python http server but this time there was an error about unsafe playlist problem, I fixed the error it by adding a parameter to mpv, but I still had the chunks.

I tried with ffmpeg, it works fine only with -allowed_extensions ALL parameter, but for the future cases I prefer to fix the issue for m3u8 on SMPlayer.

Logs were saying something about files don't have extensions so I added .ts to each file with:

# Step 1: rename segments
(base) sglbl@ddspc:~/Videos/movies/movie1$ cd video.m3u8_contents
for f in *; do mv "$f" "$f.ts"; done

# Step 2: update playlist
(base) sglbl@ddspc:~/Videos/movies/movie1$ sed -i 's|\(video.m3u8_contents/[0-9]\+\)|\1.ts|g' video.m3u8

(base) sglbl@ddspc:~/Videos/movies/movie1$ grep -E '^#EXTINF|_contents' video.m3u8 | head -n 20
#EXTINF:12.035233,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/0.ts
#EXTINF:9.009000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/1.ts
#EXTINF:9.009000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/2.ts
#EXTINF:11.970289,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/3.ts
#EXTINF:9.009000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/4.ts
#EXTINF:9.009000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/5.ts
#EXTINF:12.012000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/6.ts
#EXTINF:9.009000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/7.ts
#EXTINF:8.967289,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/8.ts
#EXTINF:12.012000,
/home/sglbl/Videos/movies/movie1/video.m3u8_contents/9.ts

But this also didn't solve the issue.

Then, adding --demuxer-lavf-o=allowed_extensions=ALL parameter to mpv solved the issue on mpv player (even though after ten seconds it gave this text warning, it doesn't break or lag). But when I added this to smplayer it was the same problem again.