What is m3u8
Intuitive Understanding of M3U8
First, let’s gain an intuitive understanding of M3U8 before providing a specific definition. Suppose you obtain a link like this: https://sf1-cdn-tos.huoshanstatic.com/obj/media-fe/xgplayer_doc_video/hls/xgplayer-demo.m3u8. When you open this link in a browser, the browser will automatically download a file named xgplayer-demo.m3u8. If you open this file with Notepad, you will notice that besides some header information (which indicates “I am an M3U8 file” and specifies the protocol version), the file mainly consists of strings with the .ts suffix. These .ts strings represent video segments, and each .ts file can be played independently. You can append these .ts strings to the base path—for example, forming https://sf1-cdn-tos.huoshanstatic.com/obj/media-fe/xgplayer_doc_video/hls/segment-5.ts. You can directly download this .ts file using a browser and then open it with most mainstream media players.
So, what exactly is M3U8? In simple terms, files of the .m3u8 type that contain multiple video segments (like the one described above) are M3U8 format files. Of course, you don’t need to go through the tedious process mentioned above. You just need to paste the M3U8 download link into M3U8Player, and you can watch the video directly. The website will automatically handle the video downloading and playback processes.
Background and Development of M3U8
The birth of M3U8 is closely related to the HLS protocol. In 2009, Apple launched the HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) protocol to solve video playback compatibility issues on iOS devices. This HLS protocol defines how to segment videos, how to transmit them via HTTP networks, and how players receive and play the video stream continuously. To record information such as the addresses and durations of these video segments, the M3U8 file format was created.
The development of M3U8 was not a “from scratch” process; instead, it was built on the foundation of M3U. M3U is also a multimedia playlist file format, but it only supports ASCII encoding (limiting it to English characters) and does not support streaming media segment transmission. Therefore, Apple upgraded M3U to M3U8, which uses UTF-8 encoding (supporting characters like Chinese and Japanese), enables video segment transmission, allows dynamic quality switching based on network conditions, supports encryption protection, and includes media information such as segment durations. For this reason, M3U8 should not be confused with M3U.
Currently, mainstream video platforms such as YouTube and Netflix generate M3U8 playlists during video playback. M3U8 is also widely used in both live streaming and video-on-demand scenarios. According to Akamai’s Q1 2024 Streaming Report, the HLS protocol accounts for 79.3% of global video traffic. The adoption rate of M3U8 is likely to continue growing in the future—with the popularization of 5G, the M3U8 format will be more widely used due to its inherent advantages.
Summary
This article mainly introduces M3U8. It first uses a practical example to help readers intuitively understand what an M3U8 file looks like, then explains the background behind M3U8’s creation.