ascii-motion

A terminal-based video player that converts video files into colored ASCII art and plays them in real-time.

How It Works

1. Frame Reading: OpenCV reads video frames sequentially
2. Resizing: Each frame is resized to fit your terminal dimensions
3. ASCII Conversion:
   • Frame is converted to grayscale
   • Each pixel's brightness maps to an ASCII character from the density table
   • Original RGB colors are preserved using ANSI escape codes
4. Display: Colored ASCII frame is printed to terminal
5. Threading: Frame processing runs in a separate thread for smooth playback

Features

• Play any video format supported by OpenCV
• Full-color ASCII art conversion using RGB values
• Playback controls (play, pause, speed adjustment)
• Automatic terminal size adaptation
• Multi-threaded frame processing for smooth playback
• Real-time playback speed indicator

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• OpenCV

Installation

1. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/manthanawgan/ascii-motion.git
cd ascii-motion

2. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

python main.py <video_file>

Example

python main.py my_video.mp4

Controls

Key	Action
q or Q	Quit the player
Space	Pause/Resume playback
← (Left Arrow)	Slow down playback (0.25x → 4x)
→ (Right Arrow)	Speed up playback (4x → 0.25x)

ASCII Density Table

The conversion uses this character density table (darkest to lightest):

     .'`^",:;Il!i><~+_-?][}{1)(|\/tfjrxnuvczXYUJCLQ0OZmwqpdbkhao*#MW&8%B@$

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.