Use ffmpeg copy codec to combine *.ts files into a single mp4

I've got a bunch of ts segments described by a single index.m3u8 file:

index.m3u8 segment1_0_av.ts segment2_0_av.ts segment3_0_av.ts segment4_0_av.ts segment5_0_av.ts 

I know they are all encoded the same way. ffprobe gives me the following:

Input #0, mpegts, from 'segment1_0_av.ts': Duration: 00:00:10.00, start: 0.100511, bitrate: 1251 kb/s Program 1 Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: h264 (Main) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p, 960x540 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 12.50 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, 25 tbc Stream #0:1[0x101]: Audio: aac ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 105 kb/s Stream #0:2[0x102]: Unknown: none ([21][0][0][0] / 0x0015) 

I'd like to combine them into a single mp4 container. But when I try commands like:

ffmpeg -f concat -i filelist.txt -c copy output.mp4 

where the generate the filelist.txt from the index.m3u8 file, it complains about not being able to read various files. But converting the ts files themselves seem to work fine. I think I'm not using ffmpeg properly.

How do I use ffmpeg to combine the ts files described by index.m3u8 into a single mp4 container using the copy codec?

8 Answers

I'm not sure why ffmpeg is giving you an error. However ts is one of the few formats that can simply be concatenated. Then, once you have a single ts, transmux to mp4.

Under windows:

copy /b segment1_0_av.ts+segment2_0_av.ts+segment3_0_av.ts all.ts ffmpeg -i all.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy all.mp4 

Under GNU/Linux, using bash:

cat segment1_0_av.ts segment2_0_av.ts segment3_0_av.ts > all.ts ffmpeg -i all.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy all.mp4 

Using copy or cat to combine the files like szatmary's current top answer might leave you with a file that plays far past the limit and can't seek along with playback issues.

Instead, to combine these files properly use ffmpeg as instructed in . (Install ffmpeg here if you don't already have it .)

If you're too lazy to read my first link, you basically have to create a .txt file listing all the files you want to combine like so (which my first link gives instructions on how to do easily) in the folder where you're doing the concatenation:

file '/path/to/file1' file '/path/to/file2' file '/path/to/file3' 

Here's a copy paste from my first link on one way to create a text file if you have Windows on commandline for instance but obviously you can make the file manually or however you want:

(for %i in (*.ts) do @echo file '%i') > mylist.txt 

Double check that your .txt file looks good and is formatted correctly!

After this, on commandline run:

ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy all.ts 

where 'mylist.txt' is the .txt file you just made.

Check if the resultant file plays video correctly. From here, you can transmux to mp4 as usual if you like:

ffmpeg -i all.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy all.mp4 

Putting all together

Using Juan Aquino's answer (and correcting the first command to be compatible with Bash and using the natural ordering of files), plus 7vujy0f0hy's answer, a simple working script for a Linux Bash shell is:

#!/bin/bash for i in `\ls *.ts | sort -V`; do echo "file '$i'"; done >> mylist.txt ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc video.mp4 

The correct way to concat multiple video files from m3u8 playlist is

ffmpeg -i "index.m3u8" -codec copy output.mp4

• the m3u8 playlist can be on web or locally in directory
  • it contains list of file paths relative to the playlist
• -codec copy to avoid encoding
• container type matters:
  • *.mp4 is fine but it seems little slow to mux when playlist is fetched from web
  • *.mkv or *.ts worked best for me

2017 answer

But when I try commands like ..., it complains about not being able to read various files.

When I execute ffmpeg -i some.ts -c copy some.mp4 on a certain video, I get this error message:

Malformed AAC bitstream detected: use the audio bitstream filter 'aac_adtstoasc' to fix it ('-bsf:a aac_adtstoasc' option with ffmpeg) av_interleaved_write_frame(): Operation not permitted 

Not surprisingly, executing ffmpeg -i some.ts -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc some.mp4 fixes it.

You can use pipe these ts files in to ffmpeg and output the mp4 file.

cat *.ts | ffmpeg -i pipe: -c:a copy -c:v copy output.mp4

or If you ts file name not have order,

grep .*.ts index.m3u8 | xargs cat | ffmpeg -i pipe: -c:a copy -c:v copy output.mp4

You can do the concatenating simple like so (with bash):

for f in ./{0..<number>}.ts; do cat $f >> out.ts; done 

Replace <number> with the highest number (obviously). The variants with ffmpeg didn’t work properly. The output video file would stutter weirdly.

I use the for loop to ensure the correct order of the files. Maybe you don’t need it. Maybe it’s even possible to pipe the output to ffmpeg and convert it to mp4 on the fly.

All the popular answers to this question that mislead readers to concatenate the TS files before running ffmpeg are incorrect. To ensure the audio and video do not fall out of sync during the assembly of the mp4 stream, the poorly documented but important "-f concat" feature of ffmpeg should be used.

 delimiterBeforeFileNumber="-" ls |egrep '[.]ts$' \ |sort "-t$delimiterBeforeFileNumber" -k2,2n \ |sed -r "s/(.*)/file '\1'/" >ts.files.txt ffmpeg -f concat -i ts.files.txt -c copy tsw.014.ts.mp4 

The two preparatory lines of code just create a file containing a list of TS files in this line format:

 file 'seg-37-a.ts'