Add --tmp-dir to default setting of URL Protocol m3u8dl option to display temporary video while downloading because we can playback small ts slices fragments with Potplayer which has feature: Continuous playback mode eradicates silence between short files

[trimechee]

Hi, i think Mr @xifangczy sould add by default the commad line --tmp-dir to default setting of URL Protocol m3u8dl option which indicates the folder where temporary files are stored in order to find and playback temporary video while downloading !

because ,

I discovered days ago that Potplayer has a vital feature named: Continuous playback mode: this function eradicates the silence between each playback of several short files, those will be preloaded and played as a single file.....

This is a crucial capital vital life saver function for me and surely for millions of people, because many download managers like file centipede, neat downlad manager.....:

https://www.neatdownloadmanager.com/index.php/en/

https://github.com/filecxx/FileCentipede

which can download embedded streaming hls videos but in a non-sequential way i.e. when we do not obtain a single temporary video file while donwloading but there are many small fragments videos slices .ts in the download folder which will then be gathered into a single file when the download is finished and my goal is to playback the temporary hls streaming video while downloading because streaming videos lag jerks in my heavy web browser on my eee pc windows 7 os 32 bits and my internet connection is weak and most streaming videos are in full HD and no longer offer standard SD quality and I don't like waiting for the download to finish and wait the unification of small video fragments to be able to playback the downloaded video, because this process can take a long time for a full HD video with my weak connection.....

i tried with Cat catch extension by activating the URL Protocol m3u8dl option (read the documentation) and also by activating invoke protocol option , and i downloaded N_m3u8DL-RE and ffmpeg (mp4decrypt is sadly not compatible with windows 7) and urlprotocol and i put them in the same folder:

https://github.com/nilaoda/N_m3u8DL-RE
https://github.com/xifangczy/URLProtocol
https://github.com/xifangczy/cat-catch

we should click on URLProtocol tool which is an upgraded version of CLI, newly developed by the original author, and supports cross-platform. However, the m3u8dl:// protocol is not currently supported. You need to use the https://github.com/xifangczy/URLProtocol tool.

Download URLProtocol and N_m3u8DL-RE and put them together, open the URLProtocol tool, fill in the protocol name m3u8dl, click the Select Target Program button, select N_m3u8DL-RE.exe and click Add. The registration of RE is completed.

If you have registered the protocol with N_m3u8DL-CLI before, please use the CLI's --unregisterUrlProtocol parameter to uninstall it.

Then change the URL Protocol m3u8dl -> Parameter Settings in Cat Scratch to the parameters of N_m3u8DL-RE.

Example:

"${url}" --save-dir "%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\m3u8dl" --save-name "${title}_${now}" ${referer|exists:'-H "Referer:*"'} --del-after-done --no-log

For more parameters, see the N_m3u8DL-RE github page.

The usage is the same as N_m3u8DL-CLI. After sniffing the m3u8 resource, just click the download icon to call N_m3u8DL-RE to download the m3u8 file.

https://cat-catch.bmmmd.com/docs/m3u8dl#n_m3u8dl-re

and most importantly, we have to add ourselves the commad line --tmp-dir which indicates the folder where temporary files are stored in order to find and playback temporary video while downloading; so I added these parameters myself in N_m3u8DL-RE settings in Cat catch:

--tmp-dir "E:" --save-dir "E:"

the directory E indicates the location of my SD memory card in order to preserve our HDD or cheap SSD!

and i have looked for a recent ffmpeg compatible with my windows7 os 32 bits and fortunately I found a ffmpeg special stable version updated and compatible with windows 7 and windows 11 with additional libraries/dependencies! :

https://github.com/AnimMouse/ffmpeg-stable-autobuild

https://www.animmouse.com/projects/ffmpeg-stable-autobuild/

as said before,

i also had to download and put URLProtocol in the N_m3u8DL-RE folder:

https://github.com/xifangczy/URLProtocol

then rename N_m3u8DL-RE.exe to m3u8dl.exe and in URLProtocol, write the name of the m3u8dl protocol and specify the path of N_m3u8DL-RE .....

and i was able to successfully download embeddd streaming hls video using this great external parser N_m3u8DL-RE but there are small fragments videos slices in the download folder N_m3u8DL-RE while downloading the hls video so, yesterday I found this secret trick and I activate the continuous playback mode in potplayer, then I click on the open a folder option of potplyer and I select the download folder of the temporary video where there are many small fragments videos slices .ts and I was able to play these small consecutive slices .ts without interruption!

what makes windows os superior to linux currently is the presence of potplayer which, to my knowledge is the only media player in the world that has this vital feature: continuous playback mode to remove the interruptions and silence between the playback of the small successive videos .ts for a smooth playback and to be able to playback temporary hls video while downloading i mean play successive small video fragments slices without silence interruption and potplayer only exists in windows 10/11 os! and me who dreamed of installing a light linux distro one day, let's hope there are other media players in linux that can do that!

here are some sites to do tests on hls streaming videos:

https://v6.voiranime.com/?filter=subbed
https://french-anime.com/animes-vostfr/
https://empire-anime.com/plateforme?nav=series

my discovery allows people of our planet to enjoy full HD videos without having to wait for the download to finish and thus avoid upgrading to an expensive internet plan!

the remaining challenge, Cat catch can't download out of the box jwplayer/media in videojs object , and can't close tab wen download finish, however Live stream downloader extension can download jwplayer/videojs object and close tab when dwnload finish , we hope all these suggestions will be added plesse, thanks so much :)