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Watch QuickTime movies in the Terminal UNIX
Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 8:56AM PDT • Contributed by: Anonymous
Believe it or not, you can actually view a QuickTime movie in the Terminal, in ascii form. Get the binary from Apple's Developer Pages:ASCII Movie Player. After downloading, just make sure the file is either in a directory on your path, or run it from the download directory (with a "./" in front), and type ASCIIMoviePlayer some_movie.mov.

Suggestion - use a movie that is not too large, or reduce your terminal font very small. I can watch the Two Towers trailer on my 800x600 screen with 6 pt Courier in the Terminal.

It's all pretty useless, but neat nonetheless.
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Watch QuickTime movies in the Terminal | 19 comments | Create New Account
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The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
G E K K E N H U I S !!!!
Authored by: Jacco Rens on Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 1:15PM PDT
wow ... the most nerdish feature i know!

G E K K E N H U I S !!!!

[ Reply to This | # ]
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Authored by: GaelicWizard on Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 2:52PM PDT
This is the koolest geek feature i have found. I LOVE IT!!!!!

Thanx for Posting it!

JP

[ Reply to This | # ]
So cool
Authored by: semios on Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 5:58PM PDT

Now I can watch Invader Zim in ASCII. Here's a screenshot: see at 100%

This is so cool! The code is very understandable and the license allows for modifications and redistributions. I expect there to be a number of derivatives. Some to add color, a terminal controller, and all sorts of cool stuff. This is only the beginning of a very neat app.

Thank you Quicktime Engineering!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Ask and ye shall receive
Authored by: Halo1 on Tue, Oct 22 2002 at 5:12AM PDT
Color version is available here :)

[ Reply to This | # ]
So cool
Authored by: JohnnyBender on Fri, Jul 18 2003 at 10:12AM PDT
Are you using Terminal.app of GLTerm? I found the later to be fastest. Also, what settings are you using? That Zim screenshot you posted looks tight!

[ Reply to This | # ]
QT 6.0.2 Required?
Authored by: macmike42 on Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 7:15PM PDT
Does this require QuickTime 6.0.2? I haven\'t installed it yet, but I will if it is needed for this awesome new codec!

[ Reply to This | # ]
QT 6.0.2 Required?
Authored by: VEGx on Mon, Oct 21 2002 at 7:26PM PDT
Nope, it works fine with QT6, don't need to update to see this :)

[ Reply to This | # ]
Newbie
Authored by: treyh2002 on Tue, Oct 22 2002 at 12:43AM PDT
Well, I'm just getting started, like today, using the Project Builder, and have NO idea what I'm doing. I was able to build the .pbproj file, but i have no idea where to go from here. My terminal doesn't recognize the ASCIIMoviePlayer command, so I'm assuming i'm missing steps. Please help! Oh, and if I don't have QT Pro, does that matter?

[ Reply to This | # ]
Newbie
Authored by: GaelicWizard on Tue, Oct 22 2002 at 1:53AM PDT
You don't need QT Pro
when you hit the build button it did some stuff right? ;)
it actually made a file named ASCIIMoviePlayer this file is either inside the folder named "build" in the same place as the PB file, or in the "Build" directory that you specified the 1st time you ran PB. this is the actual exicutable. you goto the dir in the terminal

cd /users/koolguy/desktop/ASCIIQT (or where-ever)

then type " ./ASCIIMoviePlayer /Users/koolguy/Movies/MyMovie.mov "
and it will play you movie. to make this more usefull you should move the ASCIIMoviePlayer file to your ~/bin or /usr/local/bin folder so that you don't have to goto it's directory to use it and you don't have to type ./

Have fun!

JP

[ Reply to This | # ]
1984!
Authored by: bignumbers on Tue, Oct 22 2002 at 12:07PM PDT
The first file I watched was the 1984 Apple commercial, fitting I think. For large (width/height) movies I had to do some serious reconfig of terminal settings.

Looking through the source there is code to handle color, but I wasn't seeing anything in color in the terminal. So chances are it's pretty close. Although monochrome seems more fitting.

[ Reply to This | # ]
1984!
Authored by: Halo1 on Tue, Oct 22 2002 at 12:36PM PDT
There's no code to handle color, it simply calculates the brightness of each character based on the color values of the pixels of the movie. It doesn't try to recreate the colors. If you want a color version, have a look here.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Neato
Authored by: WillyT on Wed, Oct 23 2002 at 9:29PM PDT
Works with Flash files! Probably anything that QT will run this will run.

[ Reply to This | # ]
window settings
Authored by: poultryfarm on Tue, Oct 29 2002 at 6:34PM PST
what window settings are you guys using for best results?
size font, window size, colors, etc.
thanks

[ Reply to This | # ]
Problems
Authored by: Mato on Thu, Nov 14 2002 at 9:57AM PST
I tried once it worked. Just dragging the player, then the movie, then hit enter. Now it never function again, dont know why. I have [e026:~] at the start but I thought it was more something like [bin:~] before, but as I'm not very terminal guy :/ Can someone help me around here ? Spent 1 hour on this but cant figure out what to do :/
Here's the message when I try :
[e026:~] mato% /Users/mato/ASCIIMoviePlayerSample/ASCIIMoviePlayer/Users/mato/Documents/Bronx/deux_tours_teaser.mov
/Users/mato/ASCIIMoviePlayerSample/ASCIIMoviePlayer/Users/mato/Documents/Bronx/deux_tours_teaser.mov: Not a directory.

The strange thing, as I said, is that it worked once .... :/
Thanks

[ Reply to This | # ]
Problems
Authored by: Pronoun on Thu, Nov 14 2002 at 7:09PM PST

I belive you need a space between the app and the movie.

Try this:

[e026:~] mato% /Users/mato/ASCIIMoviePlayerSample/ASCIIMoviePlayer /Users/mato/Documents/Bronx/deux_tours_teaser.mov

Everyone should watch the Balmer video in this thing, it is one of the funniest ones I have tried.

Here is a Pic
Click here to see it bigger Click here for the movie 5 mb

[ Reply to This | # ]

Problems
Authored by: Mato on Fri, Nov 15 2002 at 6:54AM PST
Dmmit, THE SPACE !! I've tried this for 2 hours, mooved the files everywhere, never thought of the damn space !!! Hu !! <---- SPOT THE LOONY !!

[ Reply to This | # ]
Problems
Authored by: meh on Tue, Oct 18 2005 at 2:38AM PDT
I am still having a problem.
I created a directory in Applications called "ASCIIMoviePlayer" and CDed into that directory.
I then typed macmini:/Applications/ASCIIMoviePlayer myusername$ ASCIIMoviePlayer /Users/myusername/Desktop/SILLIES/sillymovie.mov

the response was:
-bash: ASCIIMoviePlayer: command not found

now, my terminal experience is limited, but it seems that i did this properly. can anyone see what is wrong?

thanks!

[ Reply to This | # ]
Problems
Authored by: meh on Tue, Oct 18 2005 at 2:49AM PDT
oh, cancel that.
i tried it the easy way and it works.

open terminal.
make window really big.
drag application into terminal window.
make sure there is a space character at end.
drag movie file in to terminal window.
hit return.
be amazed... this is sooo cool.


is there any way to capture/output this into a new MOV file?

[ Reply to This | # ]
Watch QuickTime movies in the Terminal
Authored by: bigl00z3 on Sun, Mar 16 2003 at 1:19PM PST
you said useless..... I'm saying a "new" production tool for my videos.
As a vj it's gonna be great to create a quick effect on a video loop..

---
-----------b!gl00z3-------------
--+++zw33t-m4l4x!ng-!m4g3r!+++--
-------www.bigloose.com---------
------info@bigloose.com---------

[ Reply to This | # ]

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