Below are some handy guides for using VLC media player. Playing Video and Audio How to. Use Subtitles Playing movies with subtitles; Use a Capture Card This explains how to watch TV or get video from your capture card. Download VLC Media Player for Mac to play nearly any audio or video file without additional codecs. VLC Media Player has had 4 updates within the past 6 months.
“Do you have any idea on downloading HLS videos? I need to download some music concert living streams but have no idea to do this. What should I use? How can I download online video live streaming? Please help me with this.”
Online video streaming actually means HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS), an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol. HLS resembles MPEG-DASH in that it works by breaking the overall stream into a sequence of small HTTP-based file downloads, each downloading one short chunk of an overall potentially unbounded transport stream. A list of available streams, encoded at different bit rates, is sent to the client using an extended M3U playlist. You could get an M3U8 URL of each HLS video. Actually, to download online video streams is actually to download M3U8 video.
Vlc Media Player
Well, in this guide, we would like to show you some effective solutions to help you download M3U8 videos with VLC media player and other tools. Of course, you could also get the best online video downloader option here.
Part 1: How to Download M3U8 with VLC
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Actually, besides the most well-known media playback feature, VLC media player also has multiple hidden features, like editing, converting, etc. Downloading M3U8 videos within VLC media player has been a wonderful feature.
VLC media player comes with an internal video downloader and converter that could download M3U8 videos and convert M3U8 videos to MP4 or other video file formats for you. How does VLC download M3U8 video? Just check the below guide:
Vlc Free Download For Windows 10
- Download and install the latest version of VLC media player.
- Open VLC media player.
- Click on “MEDIA” option on the menu bar.
- Click on “Open Network Stream” option on the drop-down menu.
- On the 'Open Media' interface, open the 'Network' tab.
- Paste the M3U8 file address you get from the Http Live Stream page into the blank bar.
- Then, click the inverted triangle button next to the 'Play' button at the bottom right corner.
- Choose the 'Convert' option on the drop-down menu.
- On the newly pop-up 'Convert' interface, in the 'Settings' part, choose MP4 profile as output format in the 'Profile' drop-down panel. If you need, you could click the wrench icon to adjust the video and audio parameters of output MP4 file.
- Then, click the 'Browse' button in the 'Destination file' section to set an download directoy.
- After setting output directory, click the 'Start' button to download downloading M3U8 video and converting M3U8 video to MP4 files within VLC media player.
Then you will see the whole download process. When the downloading completes, you will get M3U8 videos downloaded and converted to MP4 file, saved in the folder you have set above.
Now, you have successfully downloaded M3U8 videos within VLC media player. Just play it back on your computer with your local computer media player software.
Part 2: Download M3U8 Online
Besides VLC media player, there are also other tools to help you download M3U8 videos. For example, you could choose to download M3U8 videos online with online M3U8 video downloader tools. AnyConv.com is an exactly such online M3U8 video downloader tool for you to download M3U8 videos online. What you need are only Internet connection and M3U8 file. It could even help you directly convert M3U8 file to MP4 online.
Want to download M3U8 online with this online M3U8 downloader? Check the below steps:
- Make sure you have generated a M3U8 file on your local drive.
- Open your browser and go to the website: https://anyconv.com/m3u8-to-mp4-converter/
- Click the “CHOOSE FILE” option to browse and upload M3U8 file from your local drive. M3U8 file size can be up to 50 Mb.
- After uploading, click 'Convert' button to start downloading M3U8 video and converting M3U8 video to MP4 file.
- When the conversion process is complete, you can download the MP4 file.
In this way, you could easily download and convert M3U8 file to MP4 files. When the downloading and converting completes, you could then freely play back the downloaded M3U8 video files on your computer.
When you need to play a video on your Mac, what do you do? Which app do you open? If you’re new to macOS, you might just double-click on the media file and it’s likely that QuickTime Player will start up — good enough for the most common tasks.
Soon though you’re bound to feel QuickTime’s limitations. It might be that you’ve transferred a file from your camera that’s not supported, or you want to watch a foreign movie with external subtitles. All this is difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish with QuickTime Player. You need to upgrade.
More top-notch media players for you
Instead of having one VLC player alternative, get an entire collection. Setapp is a Mac apps subscription that gives you a large choice.
What Makes VLC Player For Mac Good
From the first moments of looking for a better media player, VLC for Mac is going to show up in search results again and again. The app is free, has good ratings, and seems to be universally loved. There’s even a version for your iPhone (and nearly every other operating system in existence). What’s not to like?
The official story of VLC player goes back to 1996, when a few students of École Centrale Paris in France developed the app as their academic project. Back then, they called it VideoLAN Client (VLC for short). As VLC player got more and more recognition and became popular worldwide, the original developers released the code under the open-source license, so that anyone could fix bugs and contribute new features.
By now, VLC player is available on Windows, macOS, iOS, Apple TV, Linux, Android, Chrome OS, and Xbox One. The only question left is how to find a VLC for Mac download.
How to get a VLC download for Mac
Unfortunately, due to some licensing issues, VLC player for Mac isn’t available on the App Store (although the iOS version is). With a simple Google search you’ll find that lots of third-party websites offer you VLC for Mac downloads — but beware! Such download files are often infected with various kinds of malware looking to find an easy way into your computer.
The only option that’s 100% safe is to find a VLC download for Mac on its official website:
- Go to videolan.org/vlc
- Click Download VLC
- Double-click the .dmg file in your Downloads folder
- Move the VLC icon into Applications
With regards to technical requirements, VLC player is supported by any 64-bit Intel-based Mac that runs macOS 10.7.5 or later (the latest one is 10.15). This covers 99% of Macs in use nowadays. And even if you need to make VLC player work with ancient Macs, older VLC versions are available for download from the official website as well.
To play a video on VLC for Mac:
- Open VLC
- Either drag the video you like onto the app’s window or go to File ➙ Open File… ➙ select the video ➙ Open
One of the most beloved VLC media player features is adding and fine-tuning external subtitles. When you’ve downloaded the .srt subtitle file you want to use:
- In the menu bar of the VLC player, click Subtitles
- Add Subtitle File… ➙ select the file ➙ Open
- In the same Subtitles menu you can change the text size, thickness, color as well as the background color
With so much to offer, why would anyone choose any other app for their videos than VLC player? True, while QuickTime Player struggles with nearly every video encounter, VLC for Mac handles all the basics pretty well. But there’s so much more to discover in the land of video-playing features: multiple subtitles, audio extractions, ad-free web playback, AirPlay streaming, etc. Let’s see which VLC alternative for Mac offers it all.
Stream anything anytime with Elmedia Player
If VLC media player for Mac is a shell you can open content in, Elmedia Player is a full-on entertainment center. Get any videos you want anytime, thanks to its streaming functionality. The app is able to download YouTube directly to your Mac or play videos instantly using its web-browser extension, which allows to bypass all the ads.
Moreover, any downloaded videos can then be easily played on your AirPlay-enabled devices — watch a movie on a big screen with Apple TV, for example, without the need for USB drives or awkward cables. And while VLC media player might get stuck playing HD videos on a big screen, Elmedia will sail through them seamlessly with the help of hardware-accelerated decoding.
Play, stream, and download video
Get Elmedia Player, a perfect replacement for VLC, which has a streaming feature and a browser extension for direct downloads.
Elmedia Player, simply put, has everything you’ll ever need not to get bored. Even when videos become too much, you can extract audio files and save them as MP3 for easy on-the-go listening.
Gain full video control with Movist Pro
As good as Elmedia Player is, the ultimate VLC alternative for Mac could be a mighty 4K movie player called Movist Pro.
Movist Pro not only effortlessly decodes any video you come across (with an option to select decoders manually if needed) but also lets you configure the perfect video-watching scenario, including the quality and the size of each file.
If you want to watch a high-dynamic-range (HDR) video, but your screen doesn’t support it, the colors will show up dull and faded. Movist Pro features a built-in HDR tone-mapping technology that automatically adjusts colors to what they are supposed to be.
While nearly every VLC alternative for Mac lacks powerful subtitle management that VLC is known for, Movist Pro takes it a step further with support for multiple subtitles at once — invaluable when you’re trying to learn a new language or watching a movie with a bunch of international friends.
Finally, using the Movist Pro Safari extension, you can watch any video right from your browser window, with any of the above personal settings already specified.
How to start with Movist Pro? One step only: simply drag and drop your video onto the app and enjoy.
The best VLC alternative for Mac
So while some might argue that VLC media player for Mac is still good, the truth is — lots has changed since 1996. New entrants like Elmedia Player with its built-in downloader and ad-free streaming, or Movist Pro with multiple-subtitle support and HDR improvement are winning the market. The one you choose should quite frankly depend on the features you’re going to use the most.
Best of all, you don’t need to go all in and buy Elmedia Player or Movist Pro to see how they work. Both apps are available to you on a free seven-day trial from Setapp — a platform with over 150 Mac apps, where each one is the best for a particular task, whether it’s budgeting, retouching, or just getting things done. What might you be watching tonight?
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