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M3U Proxy Integration

The M3U Proxy handles stream restreaming, transcoding, and hardware acceleration for M3U Editor.

Why Use External M3U Proxy?​

Running m3u-proxy as a separate container provides:

  • ✅ Hardware acceleration support for transcoding
  • ✅ Better performance with independent scaling
  • ✅ Redis-based pooling for efficient stream management
  • ✅ Independent updates and configuration
  • ✅ Resource isolation from main application

Quick Start​

Download Configuration​

# Download docker-compose and example env
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sparkison/m3u-editor/main/docker-compose.proxy.yml
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sparkison/m3u-editor/main/.env.proxy.example

# Setup environment
cp .env.proxy.example .env

Generate Secure Tokens​

# Generate M3U Proxy token
echo "M3U_PROXY_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> .env

# Generate database password
echo "PG_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" >> .env

# Set your application URL
echo "APP_URL=http://localhost" >> .env

Deploy​

# Start all services
docker-compose -f docker-compose.proxy.yml up -d

# Wait for services to start (about 30 seconds)
docker-compose -f docker-compose.proxy.yml ps

# Verify m3u-proxy is healthy
docker exec -it m3u-editor php artisan m3u-proxy:status

Configuration​

M3U Editor Environment​

# Disable embedded proxy
M3U_PROXY_ENABLED=false

# Connect to external proxy
M3U_PROXY_HOST=m3u-proxy
M3U_PROXY_PORT=38085
M3U_PROXY_TOKEN=your-secure-token-here

M3U Proxy Environment​

# API Authentication (must match M3U_PROXY_TOKEN)
API_TOKEN=your-secure-token-here
PORT=38085

# Redis Configuration
REDIS_ENABLED=true
REDIS_HOST=redis
REDIS_PORT=6379
REDIS_DB=6
ENABLE_REDIS_POOLING=true

# Logging
LOG_LEVEL=INFO

# Optional: Adjust pool settings
REDIS_POOL_MAX_CONNECTIONS=50
STREAM_TIMEOUT=300
CLEANUP_INTERVAL=60

Hardware Acceleration​

Enable GPU Access​

Add GPU device mapping to your docker-compose.yml:

m3u-proxy:
  devices:
    - /dev/dri:/dev/dri  # Intel/AMD GPU
    # - /dev/nvidia0:/dev/nvidia0  # NVIDIA GPU

Verify GPU Access​

# Check if GPU is accessible
docker exec -it m3u-proxy ls -la /dev/dri

Supported Hardware​

  • Intel Quick Sync (QSV)
  • AMD VCE/AMF
  • NVIDIA NVENC (requires nvidia-docker)

Redis Pooling​

Redis pooling efficiently manages active streams.

Benefits​

  • Reuses existing connections for the same stream
  • Reduces load on IPTV providers
  • Improves stream startup time
  • Prevents duplicate streams

Configuration​

# Enable pooling
ENABLE_REDIS_POOLING=true

# Max connections per stream
REDIS_POOL_MAX_CONNECTIONS=50

# Stream timeout (seconds)
STREAM_TIMEOUT=300

# Cleanup interval (seconds)
CLEANUP_INTERVAL=60

Monitoring​

Check Proxy Status​

# Via artisan command
docker exec -it m3u-editor php artisan m3u-proxy:status

# Via API
curl -H "X-API-Token: your-token" http://localhost:38085/health

View Statistics​

# Get current stats
curl -H "X-API-Token: your-token" http://localhost:38085/stats

Logs​

# View real-time logs
docker logs m3u-proxy -f

# Last 100 lines
docker logs m3u-proxy --tail 100

Troubleshooting​

Proxy Not Connecting​

Check token configuration:

# Tokens must match
docker exec -it m3u-editor env | grep M3U_PROXY_TOKEN
docker exec -it m3u-proxy env | grep API_TOKEN

Verify network connectivity:

# Ping from m3u-editor
docker exec -it m3u-editor ping m3u-proxy

# Check proxy health
docker exec -it m3u-proxy curl http://localhost:38085/health?api_token=your-token

Streams Not Playing​

Check proxy logs:

docker logs m3u-proxy --tail 50

Verify stream URL:

# Test direct access
curl -H "X-API-Token: your-token" "http://localhost:38085/stream/channel-url-here"

Check Redis connection:

# Ping Redis
docker exec -it m3u-proxy redis-cli -h redis ping

High CPU/Memory Usage​

Limit resources in docker-compose.yml:

m3u-proxy:
  deploy:
    resources:
      limits:
        cpus: '2.0'
        memory: 2G
      reservations:
        cpus: '0.5'
        memory: 512M

Performance Tuning​

For High Concurrent Streams​

# Increase max connections
REDIS_POOL_MAX_CONNECTIONS=100

# Adjust timeout
STREAM_TIMEOUT=600

# More frequent cleanup
CLEANUP_INTERVAL=30

For Low-Resource Systems​

# Reduce max connections
REDIS_POOL_MAX_CONNECTIONS=25

# Shorter timeout
STREAM_TIMEOUT=180

# Less frequent cleanup
CLEANUP_INTERVAL=120

Migration Guide​

From Embedded to External​

  1. Stop current deployment:

    docker-compose down

  2. Update configuration:

    # Edit .env
    M3U_PROXY_ENABLED=false
    M3U_PROXY_HOST=m3u-proxy

  3. Deploy with external proxy:

    docker-compose -f docker-compose.proxy.yml up -d

  4. Verify migration:

    docker exec -it m3u-editor php artisan m3u-proxy:status

Next Steps​