Provided is an intelligent prefetcher for prefetching media content segments following a non-sequential naming convention. The prefetching is initiated in response to a server receiving a user request for a particular segment that is not cached. The server passes the request to an origin. The origin scans metadata of a file from which the particular segment is produced. The scanning identifies time or frame offsets for subsequent segments to be prefetched. The origin constructs the requested segment and includes in the segment header, identifiers corresponding to the offset of each subsequent segment selected for prefetching. The segment passes to the server. The server detects the modified header and generates prefetch requests based on each identifier in the modified header. The server issues the prefetch request to the origin and caches the prefetched segments returned by the origin for distribution in response to subsequent user requests for the prefetched segments.