Online HLS player
Paste an .m3u8 link to play the stream and see its renditions, bitrates, codecs, tracks and errors.
Paste an .m3u8 link and press Play, or try the sample stream.
Plays in your browser. The link isn’t sent to Kinescope.
Now playing
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Type
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Duration
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Buffer ahead
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Segment length
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| Quality | Resolution | Bitrate | Codecs | Frame rate |
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| Load a stream to see its renditions. | ||||
Audio
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Subtitles
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Load a stream to see its master playlist.- Events and errors appear here.
Need HLS for your own videos?
Upload a video and Kinescope returns it as HLS with an adaptive ladder, delivered from its own CDN. Signed links and DRM protect it when you need them.
- 100 minutes and 200 GB of traffic a month free
- No card required
- Paid plans from €10 a month, delivery from €0.03/GB
What the player shows
Renditions
Every quality the master playlist lists, with resolution, bitrate, codecs and frame rate. Lock one to check how it looks, or leave Auto on to watch adaptive bitrate switch.
Live or on demand
The player reads the media playlist and shows whether the stream is live or VOD, its duration or live window, and the target segment length.
Buffer
Buffer ahead shows how many seconds are downloaded past the playhead. If it stays near zero, segments arrive slower than they play.
Audio and subtitles
Alternative audio tracks and subtitle tracks from the playlist, with their names and languages.
Playlist text
The raw master playlist, so you can check tags such as #EXT‑X‑STREAM‑INF, CODECS and RESOLUTION without opening the file elsewhere.
Errors and CORS
The log lists every switch and error. The most common one is CORS: the server has to send Access‑Control‑Allow‑Origin for a browser on another site to read the stream.
FAQ
Can’t find the answer you need? Check out our HLS explained.
Paste the link to the .m3u8 playlist into the field and press Play. The stream plays in your browser, and the player shows its renditions, tracks and playlist text. The link has to be public: a file on your computer or a playlist behind a login won’t load.
Most often because of CORS: the server must send an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, or the browser blocks other sites from reading the stream. Other causes are an expired signed link, a playlist that needs cookies or a token, a codec the browser can’t decode, or DRM-encrypted segments that need a licence. The log tab shows which error happened.
Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on desktop, and Chrome on Android, through Media Source Extensions. On iPhone the stream plays with the browser’s built-in HLS, which doesn’t expose rendition details.
No. The playlist and segments load directly in your browser; the link isn’t sent to Kinescope.
Not in this tool. Encrypted segments need a licence from the stream’s DRM server, which only its own player requests. Kinescope streams use signed links and, when turned on, DRM, so they play in the Kinescope player.
Upload the video to Kinescope: it transcodes the file into an adaptive ladder, writes the HLS playlists and delivers them from its own CDN. To put the player on a page, use the embed code generator.