I can't download a section, but I can download the whole video

I am trying to download a section from a video using this command line:

"yt-dlp.exe"
"https://somesite.com/playlist.m3u8"
--referer "https://somesite.com/"
--ffmpeg-location "F:\ffmpeg\bin"
--user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36"
--force-keyframes-at-cuts
--download-sections "*00:04:04-00:06:01"
-o "movie %(timestamp)s %(webpage_title|title|id)s [%(section_start)s-%(section_end)s].%(ext)s"

It outputs nothing but errors:

[generic] Extracting URL: https://somesite.com/playlist.m3u8
[generic] index: Downloading webpage
[generic] index: Downloading m3u8 information
[generic] index: Checking m3u8 live status
[info] index: Downloading 1 format(s): 0
[info] index: Downloading 1 time ranges: 244.0-361.0
[download] Destination: movie 1781209606 title|id [244.0-361.0].mp4
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Skip ('#EXT-X-ALLOW-CACHE:YES')
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Skip ('#EXT-X-VERSION:3')
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-1-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020d9f6ab080] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 1 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 1 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-2-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020d9f6ab080] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 2 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 2 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-3-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020da150b240] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 3 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 3 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-5-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020da150b240] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 4 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 4 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-6-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020da150b240] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 5 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 5 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Opening 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-10-v1-a1.ts' for reading
[https @ 0000020da150b240] HTTP error 404 Not Found
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Failed to open segment 6 of playlist 0
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Segment 6 of playlist 0 failed too many times, skipping
[hls @ 0000020d9f61a340] Error when loading first segment 'https://somesite.com/1080/seg-1-v1-a1.ts'
[in#0 @ 0000020d9f5db480] Error opening input: Invalid data found when processing input
Error opening input file https://somesite.com/playlist.m3u8.
Error opening input files: Invalid data found when processing input

ERROR: ffmpeg exited with code 3199971767

When I remove --download-sections "*00:04:04-00:06:01", I can get the entire video just fine. I can download sections with every other video I try except for this one. Any idea what's going on?

Posted Jun 11, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

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