png2ascii

Renders a PNG as ASCII characters to either a text file or a PNG.

Supported operating systems:

• Linux
• MacOS
• Windows

mp42ascii

The mp42ascii.sh script in the scripts folder is a rough-around-the-edges bash script that:

1. Uses ffmpeg to extract all the frames of an MP4 as PNG files
2. Rerenders the PNG files as 'ASCII' PNGs using png2ascii
3. Scales and crops the rerendered PNGs using ImageMagick
4. Finally reassembles the PNGs into an MP4 again (uing ffmpeg).

WARNING: it takes hours (and a significant amount of disk space) to process an MP4.

Releases

Version	Description
v0.1.0	Initial release

Installation

Executables for all the supported operating systems are packaged in the releases. Installation is straightforward - download the archive, extract it to a directory of your choice and move the executable for your platform to a convenient location.

Building from source

Required tools:

• Go 1.19+
• make (optional but recommended)

git clone https://github.com/transcriptaze/png2ascii.git
cd png2ascii
make build

Without using make:

git clone https://github.com/transcriptaze/png2ascii.git
cd png2ascii
go build -trimpath -o bin/ ./...

The above commands build the pn2ascii executable to the bin directory.

Dependencies

Dependency	Description
golang.org/x/image	Go extended image processing functions

png2ascii

Usage: png2ascii <options> <PNG file>

where:

<PNG file> is the PNG file to convert

Supported options:

  --out <file>         File to which to write the re-rendered image Defaults to stdout for text and png2ascii.png for PNG.
  --format <text|png>  Output format. Defaults to text. 
  --profile <file>     Conversion profile file (defaults to none i.e. uses the internal default settings).
  --bgcolor            Background colour (for PNG output) Defaults to white.
  --fgcolor            Foreground colour (for PNG output) Defaults to black.
  --font <fontspect>   Sets the font to use for rendering, formatted as <typeface|filepath>:size:DPI. Defaults to gomonobold:12:72.
  --squoosh            Prescales the image to preserve aspect ratio. Defaults to the 'squoosh' setting in the profile (if defined).
  --debug              Displays internal conversion information.

Profiles

Profiles are JSON files that define the settings used for re-rendering an image. The default profile (embedded in the executable) is:

{
    "profile": {
        "charset": "#@80GCLft1i;:,.",
        "font": {
            "size": 12,
            "dpi": 72,
            "typeface": "gomonobold"
        }
        "squoosh": {
            "enabled": true
        }
    }
}

A sample profile that loads a font from a file and sets the squoosh width:

{
    "profile": {
        "charset": "abcdefghijklmnopq",
        "font": {
            "size": 12,
            "dpi": 72,
            "typeface": ".fonts/digital-7.ttf"
        },
        "squoosh": {
            "enabled": true,
            "width": 240
        }
    }
}