How do I dump all entries in a playlist with MPlayer?

Question

I can play all the elements in a playlist using

mplayer -playlist file.m3u

but when I dump the stream using

mplayer -dumpfile file.ts -dumpstream -playlist file.m3u

file.ts will only contain the first entry in the M3U playlist. How can I tell mplayer to dump everything?

Answer 1

An m3u or m3u8 file is just a list of links (one per line) mixed with comments. I used the following small Python program to download all parts of the playlist one-by-one:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import subprocess
import os

def dump(playlist):
    urls = []

    with open(playlist, 'r') as fh:
        for line in fh:
            if line[0] == '#':
                continue

            urls.append(line.strip())

    count = 1
    for url in urls:
        dumpfile = 'part%04d.ts' % count
        count += 1

        if os.path.exists(dumpfile):
            print('Skipping %s...' % dumpfile)

        cmd = [
            'mplayer',
            '-dumpfile', dumpfile,
            '-dumpstream',
            url
        ]

        print('%s -> %s' % (url, dumpfile))
        rc = subprocess.call(cmd)
        if rc != 0:
            raise Exception('dump failed')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys

    playlist = sys.argv[1]
    dump(playlist)

If the parts are MPEG .ts files ("transport stream"), see this question how to join them: Use ffmpeg copy codec to combine *.ts files into a single mp4

For other types of files, you will probably need tools. (see here for mp3)