Media-To-Ascii

CLI and utilities for converting media files (images/videos) to ascii outputs (output media file or print to console).
Supports most standard image formats and video formats (depends on OpenCV).

Only output format for videos is .mp4 at the moment

Examples

mediatoascii is capable of extremely high quality ascii images/videos (click on the images below to see the full resolution), or the usual fun scaled-down ones!

Videos

(From https://www.tiktok.com/@swishanime_/video/7143035431066602794)

Or for a more high quality version: https://i.imgur.com/vRJMpA1.mp4

Images

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How To Use

Basic Usage

Videos

# Playing videos as ascii art in the console (warning, for large videos, this may cause flickering on certain terminals)
mediatoascii --video-path <FILE_PATH>

# Saving ascii art as a video file (only .mp4 is supported as the output format)
mediatoascii --video-path <FILE_PATH> -o ascii.mp4

# Scale down the video by 2x so file size is smaller in storage and resolution
# For large videos, or if you see some alignment issues, please see the `--help` menu, notably settings `--scale-down`, `--font-size`, and `--height-sample-scale`
mediatoascii --video-path <FILE_PATH> -o ascii.mp4 --scale-down 2.0

Images

# Converting images to ascii in the console
mediatoascii --image-path <IMAGE_PATH>

# Outputting ascii images in an image file
mediatoascii --image-path <FILE_PATH> -o ascii.png

# Outputting ascii images as ascii text in a file
mediatoascii --image-path <FILE_PATH> -o ascii.txt --as-text

For the full set of features, see the --help menu:

$ mediatoascii --help
mediatoascii 0.1.0
spoorn
CLI and utilities for converting media files (images/videos) to ascii outputs (output media file or print to console).  
Supports most standard image formats, and video formats.


Usage: mediatoascii.exe [OPTIONS] <--image-path <IMAGE_PATH>|--video-path <VIDEO_PATH>>

Options:
      --image-path <IMAGE_PATH>
          Input Image file.  One of image_path, or video_path must be populated
      --video-path <VIDEO_PATH>
          Input Video file.  One of image_path, or video_path must be populated
      --scale-down <SCALE_DOWN>
          Multiplier to scale down input dimensions by when converting to ASCII.  For large frames, recommended to scale down more so output file size is more reasonable.  Affects output quality. Note: the output dimensions will also depend on the `font-size` setting [default: 1]
      --font-size <FONT_SIZE>
          Font size of the ascii characters.  Defaults to 12.0.  Affects output quality. This directly affects the scaling of the output resolution as we "expand" each pixel to fit the Cascadia font to this size.  Note: this is not in "pixels" per-se, but will roughly scale the output to a multiple of this [default: 12]
      --height-sample-scale <HEIGHT_SAMPLE_SCALE>
          Rate at which we sample from the pixel rows of the frames.  This affects how stretched the output ascii is vertically due to discrepancies in the width-to-height ratio of the Cascadia font, and the input/output media dimensions. This essentially lets you shrink/squeeze the ascii text horizontally, without affecting output frame resolution. 
If you see text overflowing to the right of the output frame(s), or cut off short, you can try tuning this setting.  Larger values stretch the output. The default magic number is 2.046. See https://github.com/spoorn/media-to-ascii/issues/2 for in-depth details [default: 2.046]
  -i, --invert
          Invert ascii greyscale ramp (For light backgrounds.  Default OFF is for dark backgrounds.)
      --overwrite
          Overwrite any output file if it already exists
      --max-fps <MAX_FPS>
          Max FPS for video outputs.  If outputting to video file, `use_max_fps_for_output_video` must be set to `true` to honor this setting.  Ascii videos in the terminal default to max_fps=10 for smoother visuals
      --as-text
          For images, if output_file_path is specified, will save the ascii text as-is to the output rather than an image file
  -o, --output-file-path <OUTPUT_FILE_PATH>
          Output file path.  If omitted, output will be written to console. Supports most image formats, and .mp4 video outputs. Images will be resized to fit the ascii text.  Videos will honor the aspect ratio of the input, but resolution will be scaled differently approximately to `(height|width) / scale_down * font_size`
      --use-max-fps-for-output-video
          Use the max_fps setting for video file outputs
  -r, --rotate <ROTATE>
          Rotate the input (0 = 90 CLOCKWISE, 1 = 180, 2 = 90 COUNTER-CLOCKWISE)
  -h, --help
          Print help
  -V, --version
          Print version

Installation

Below are different ways you can install mediatoascii

[Recommended] Portable Binaries

⚠️ Note: you may need to disable your antivirus for the downloaded executable if it blocks it

Pre-compiled binaries are available to download and use immediately under Releases. These don't require compiling/building dependencies so installation is much faster. Select the one for your system

• mediatoascii-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu for Windows
• mediatoascii-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu for Linux-based systems (Ubuntu/WSL2/etc.)
• mediatoascii-x86_64-apple-darwin for macOS

Extract the artifacts, then you can then run the binary like any shell/script file in a terminal e.g. ./path/to/mediatoascii <ARGS>|`cd path/to/mediatoascii && ./mediatoascii , or you can add it to your system PATH so it can be run from any directory. You can easily find tutorials on the internet for "add a binary file to system PATH" for your OS system.

[Optional] Cargo

If you choose an installation method below that involves the cargo command, you'll want to install the rust toolchain which includes cargo if you don't already have it: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html

Prerequisite: OpenCV

OpenCV 4.x is required on the system if you are not using the pre-compiled binaries installation, which has OpenCV statically linked into the executable.

mediatoascii depends on OpenCV Rust Bindings which require the OpenCV C++ libraries to be installed.

See https://github.com/twistedfall/opencv-rust#getting-opencv for instructions on different systems.

Below is an abbreviation

Ubuntu/Linux/WSL2

You'll need to be on Ubuntu 20.04+ for OpenCV 4.x.

To check Ubuntu version:

lsb_release -a

If you are on an older version of Ubuntu, see various tutorials for updating your system.

Install OpenCV and related libs:

sudo apt install libopencv-dev clang libclang-dev

Check OpenCV version:

dpkg -l | grep libopencv

MacOS

Install OpenCV:

brew install opencv

Check OpenCV version:

brew info opencv

Windows

Direct

Follow https://github.com/twistedfall/opencv-rust#windows-package (recommend chocolatey route).

Make sure you set the environment variables OPENCV_LINK_LIBS, OPENCV_LINK_PATHS and OPENCV_INCLUDE_PATHS properly, according to https://github.com/twistedfall/opencv-rust/issues/118#issuecomment-619608278

Also, make sure the opencv bin/ is in your PATH: https://github.com/twistedfall/opencv-rust/issues/113

If you see this error (or some other ones):

CMake Error at ports/atlmfc/portfile.cmake:7 (message):
  Unable to locate 'afxres.h'.  Ensure you have installed the ATL/MFC
  component of Visual Studio.

Make sure you have Visual Studio installed with Desktop development with C++, ATL and MFC checked. In newer versions of Visual Studio, these may be defaulted to disabled. You can install them in the Visual Studio Installer when you modify the Visual Studio installation.

WSL

You can also install opencv through WSL2 - allowing a Linux subsystem with a terminal to run on Windows: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install.

Then you can follow the Ubuntu setup above.

Note: on WSL2, drives in paths are prefixed with /mnt/c/ rather than C:/

Arch Linux

Install OpenCV:

pacman -S clang qt6-base opencv

Cargo binstall Binaries

# Install cargo-binstall
cargo install cargo-binstall

# Install mediatoascii
cargo binstall mediatoascii

# Run
mediatoascii --help
mediatoascii <ARGS>

Crates.io

cargo install mediatoascii

# Run
mediatoascii --help
mediatoascii <ARGS>

Git

# Clone repository and cd into it
git clone ...
cd mediatoascii/

# Install the package into cargo
cargo install --path .

# Run via `cargo run`
cargo run --release -- --help
cargo run --release -- <ARGS>

Troubleshooting

1. If you're trying to update Ubuntu on WSL2, you may run into silent failures during the upgrade
   • See https://askubuntu.com/questions/1340153/how-to-upgrade-ubuntu-18-04-to-20-04-in-wsl-when-wsl-export-fails
2. error while loading shared libraries: libopencv_videoio.so.4.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
   • Make sure you have OpenCV 4.x installed
3. Picture size 12668x22512 is invalid ... global cap_ffmpeg_impl.hpp:3066 open VIDEOIO/FFMPEG: Failed to initialize VideoWriter or dimensions too large for MPEG-4
   • mediatoascii scales up the image when writing ascii frames and there is a frame size limit to mpeg4. Try setting the --scale-down setting to scale down the output resolution. See https://github.com/spoorn/media-to-ascii/issues/2 for why the image has to be scaled up