termplay

Name by the awesome @tbodt

Are you a terminal fanboy like me?
Sure, but do you ever watch YouTube? In your terminal?


termplay is the tool to convert images to ANSI sequences.
But it also supports playing videos... and YouTube...
Written in the systems language Rust, it has some solid performance.

When playing a video:
- Concurrency - It's converting to ANSI while ffmpeg is still processing! - Audio/Frame Sync - If one frame in takes longer to load and the audio continues on, - don't just pretend nothing happened! Skip a few frames! - Get back on track! - Controls - Pause video with space - Control volume without arrow up and down keys - Cancel video with Ctrl+C

Example image
Or if you want to maintain ratio
(Landscape image from pexels.com)

Compatibility

This tool is tested in GNOME Terminal, Konsole and alacritty (glitchy but amazing framerate).
Might not be fully or supported at all by whatever terminal you use.

Using

Image

``` termplay-image Convert a single image to text

USAGE: termplay image [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS: -k, --keep-size Keep the frame size. Overrides -w and -h --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information

OPTIONS: -w, --width The max width of the frame -h, --height The max height of the frame --converter How to convert the frame to ANSI. [default: truecolor] [values: truecolor, 256 -color, sixel] --ratio Change frame pixel width/height ratio (may or may not do anything) [default: 0]

ARGS: The image to convert ```

Video

``` termplay-video Play a video in your terminal

USAGE: termplay video [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS: -k, --keep-size Keep the frame size. Overrides -w and -h --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information

OPTIONS: -w, --width The max width of the frame -h, --height The max height of the frame --converter How to convert the frame to ANSI. [default: truecolor] [values: truecolor, 256 -color, sixel] -r, --rate The framerate of the video [default: 10] --ratio Change frame pixel width/height ratio (may or may not do anything) [default: 0]

ARGS:

YouTube

Replace video with ytdl, and supply a URL as VIDEO, and boom!
Watch from YouTube directly!

Also has --format (short -f) to supply formats to youtube-dl to change quality and stuff.

Screen

If termplay is compiled with screen support (enabled by default) and you use X11, you can watch a specific window... Live!
A hacky and barely functional screen_control feature (disabled by default) can also forward keypresses to that window.

This isn't very useful, but it's definitely cool!
TIP: To find your window ID, use echo "ibase=16;$(xwininfo | grep "Window id:" | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | cut -c 3-)" | bc

``` termplay-screen Mirror your screen to the terminal

USAGE: termplay screen [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS: -k, --keep-size Keep the frame size. Overrides -w and -h --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information

OPTIONS: -w, --width The max width of the frame -h, --height The max height of the frame --converter How to convert the frame to ANSI. [default: truecolor] [values: truecolor, 256 -color, sixel] -r, --rate The framerate of the video [default: 10] --ratio Change frame pixel width/height ratio (may or may not do anything) [default: 0]

ARGS: The window to be captured ```

Pre-processing

If you feel like playing a video multiple times on the same settings,
you can pre-process a video.

That means doing all the processing part separately, so you can skip it if you do it multiple times.
Example: ``` $ termplay preprocess video.mp4 Checking ffmpeg... SUCCESS

Creating directory... Starting conversion: Video -> Image... Started new process. Converting: Image -> Text Processing frame622.png Seems like we have reached the end Converting: Video -> Music Number of frames: 621 $ termplay video termplay-video 621 # 'termplay-video' is the default name for the processed folder. ```

Fun fact:
If you change the rate, you have to do it on both while pre-processing and while playing.
Or... don't. And enjoy playing the video in fast or slow motion.

Installing

... That said, it comes with a slight flaw. For now, you have to compile this yourself.

Compile time requirements

Rust v1.18 or more is required. See your Rust version with rustc --version Update rust with rustup update stable

Compiling!

Other than that, this project is hosted on crates.io.
So to install you just need to run cargo install termplay

Default features:

Disabled features:

To disable default features, run

cargo install termplay --no-default-features

To enable specific features, run
cargo install termplay --features "..." where ... is a comma separated list of features.

Arch Linux

If you just want to get this running with default features, you can use the
AUR Package

Ubuntu

Example:

sudo apt install libopenal-dev libsndfile1-dev libsixel youtube-dl cargo install termplay