Why does ffmpeg ignore protocol_whitelist flag when converting https m3u8 stream?

Question

I am attempting to download and convert an m3u8 stream to mp4 using ffmpeg. The command I first tried was

ffmpeg -i MIE.m3u8 -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -safe 0 -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto MIE.mp4

(see below for contents of MIE.m3u8)

This failed immediately with error

[https @ 0x7fb419607d40] Protocol 'https' not on whitelist 'file,crypto'!
MIE.m3u8: Invalid argument

(Note that the memory address changes each time.)

I discovered the -protocol_whitelist flag and appended -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto to my command

ffmpeg -i MIE.m3u8 -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -safe 0 -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto MIE.mp4

but this still resulted in the same error.

Why does ffmpeg appear to ignore the protocol_whitelist flag and parameters?

---

MIE.m3u8 (which I managed to fetch from the website I am trying to scrape video from) looks like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=508000,RESOLUTION=640x360,CODECS="avc1.77.30, mp4a.40.2"
https://nhk-vh.akamaihd.net/i/das/D0005140/D0005140255_00000_V_000.f4v/index_0_av.m3u8?null=0&id=AgBdrl8GX2UAVyUXA1tF7MYlFTbSF88WtA7oAMDksTsiVdAKPuuREVfi8iXMsOWFp6eQU2sk6dnE9g%3d%3d
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=47000,CODECS="mp4a.40.2"
https://nhk-vh.akamaihd.net/i/das/D0005140/D0005140255_00000_V_000.f4v/index_0_a.m3u8?null=0&id=AgBdrl8GX2UAVyUXA1tF7MYlFTbSF88WtA7oAMDksTsiVdAKPuuREVfi8iXMsOWFp6eQU2sk6dnE9g%3d%3d

Answer 1

protocol_whitelist is a parameter only on the input file (in your case, MIE.m3u8), so it must be specified before the input in your command.

Specify -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls prior to -i and it'll work as you expect:

ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto -i MIE.m3u8 -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc MIE.mp4

You can a similar case on a Debian Bugs discussion board, and read up more on the syntax of ffmpeg commands.