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Novus Examples
m3u8205 B

HLS VOD — Media Playlist (0)

One rendition of the playable HLS ladder, listing its own CMAF init segment and media segments. Referenced by the master playlist in this group. Generated by ffmpeg's own HLS muxer, so the segment durations, the EXT-X-MAP and the ENDLIST are exactly what a real packager emits rather than what a human thinks one emits.

Preview — first 12 linesm3u8
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:7
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:1
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXT-X-MAP:URI="init_0.m4s"
#EXTINF:1.000000,
seg-0-000.m4s
#EXTINF:1.000000,
seg-0-001.m4s
#EXT-X-ENDLIST

Specifications

Protocol
HLS
Packaging
CMAF / fMP4
Segment Duration
1s
Ladder
320x180 at 300 kbps, 480x270 at 700 kbps, 640x360 at 1400 kbps
Generated By
ffmpeg hls muxer
Served Inline
yes — /files/stream/
Cors
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

What is a .m3u8 file?

M3U8 (.m3u8) is a UTF-8 M3U playlist, most importantly the backbone of HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). An HLS media playlist lists timed media segments with #EXTINF tags and directives like #EXT-X-TARGETDURATION, and a master playlist points to alternate bitrate renditions.

How to use this file

Use an example .m3u8 file to test HLS parsers and players, segment and directive extraction, and adaptive-streaming tooling, or as a plain UTF-8 M3U playlist.

How to use this file for testing

“HLS VOD — Media Playlist (0)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Streaming manifests, Video codecs, Video QA. HLS playlists and DASH MPDs covering multi-bitrate ladders, byte-range addressing, and segment templates. Served inline with permissive CORS under /files/stream/, so a player can load them from any origin without re-hosting.

Documented properties for this file: M3U8 · 205 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.

Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.

Media fixtures are short and synthetic by design. Prefer waveform or transcript ground truth in the same group when measuring ASR, trim, upscale, or sync tools; do not assume broadcast-quality masters.

Code examples

# manifests resolve their own segments, so pass the URL, not a local copy
ffprobe -v error -show_entries stream=codec_name,width,height stream-0.m3u8
ffplay stream-0.m3u8

Generated by generation/video_streaming_wave.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.