I am trying to download video from a .m3u8 livestream video format.

How can I download m3u8 videos using software on my personal computer such as ffmpeg, youtube-dl, VLC, etc?

M3U is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U


Get FFmpeg, then you can download your video with this command:

ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto -i "http://s6.vidshare.tv/hls/pdommq4tlsm4f4kmledsh5d5fcn27i35msjxqw62lfflut5bgaqhb5kirb5q/index-v1-a1.m3u8" -c copy video.mp4

But it may be easier to use youtube-dl. If it supports the website that contains the video you can type e.g.:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/...

This works not just for YouTube but also many other video sites.