A command line based video player written in c that converts and plays videos using ascii characters
Usage of this program is featured here.
This program has only been tested to work on some Linux environments listed below:
| OS Name | Architecture |
|---|---|
| Arch Linux | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Debian 12 | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Ubuntu 20.04 | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Ubuntu 22.04 | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Ubuntu 24.04 | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Termux 0.118.3 (on Android 16) | AArch64 (arm64) |
| Debian 12 (on Android 16) | AArch64 (arm64) |
| Fedora 42 | amd64 (x86_64) |
| Debian 13 | amd64 (x86_64) |
The C program is yet to be tested on mac os and will likely not compile due to use of some specific headers only available on linux.
Most video file types should work as they are decoded with ffmpeg.
The general names build dependencies are listed in build-dependencies-universal.txt. These will be different between systems and just using these names in package managers is not guaranteed to work. Instead use one of the build-dependencies-$(OS_BASE).txt files with your package manager for package names closer to your system with OS_BASE being the operating system closest to yours.
Example: on Arch based distros run
# pacman -S --needed - < build-dependencies-archlinux.txt
To build the c version after installing the nessarary dependencies run:
autoreconf --install
./configure
makeYou can install the binary to your PATH with
sudo make installSome test files are provided to use. To run the program using e.g., one of the test files run:
$ ./vidtty fake-mr-beast-bad-apple-remix.mp4To play a video url just pass it like a file:
$ ./vidtty https://revnoplex.xyz/media/downloads/videos/gamecube.mp4You can play videos from youtube or other websites with yt-dlp (after installing yt-dlp) with:
$ ./vidtty $(yt-dlp -f b -g "ytsearch:bad apple tf2 cover")See vidtxt.md for more information.