A asciicast to gif utility
Project description
ttygif
A full featured text to gif conversion utility, that just works. It's in beta, so expect rough edges.
Why use ttygif?
- its fast, and easy to install
- can be used with a pipe
- it can be scripted
- it can read asciicast files
- it runs headless
- perfect fit for CI/CD
- works with python 2 and 3
easy install
## requirements gcc and python development libs
pip install ttygif --user
dev install
This will pull the project and submodule assets from github.
git clone https://github.com/chris17453/ttygif.git
cd ttygif
make pull-assets
dev build
pipenv shell
make build
It's portable
ttygif is self contained with no dependencys other than python. GIF encoding and termal emulation are both implimented with internal cython code. No system fonts are required. All you need to get ttygif to work is a c compiler, python and its development libs. ttygif is a cython project.
usage
ttygif version 1.0.792
usage: ttygif [-h] [--input FILE] [--output FILE] [--loop COUNT] [--delay MS]
[--record FILE] [--dilation RATE] [--fps FPS] [--width WIDTH]
[--height HEIGHT] [--debug]
tty output to gif
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--input FILE asciinema .cast file (default: None)
--output FILE gif output file (default: None)
--loop COUNT number of loops to play, 0=unlimited (default: 0)
--delay MS delay before restarting gif in milliseconds (default: 100)
--record FILE output generated cast data to file (default: None)
--dilation RATE process events at a faster or slower rate of time (default:
1)
--fps FPS encode at (n) frames per second (0-25) 0=speed of cast
file, min 3ms (default: 0)
--width WIDTH change character width of gif, default is 80 or what is in
the cast file (default: None)
--height HEIGHT change character height of gif, default is 25 or what is in
the cast file (default: None)
--debug show debuging statistics (default:
themes
Theming is based on the idea of branding your work for display in project repositories, ci/cd and online.
theme support
- user directory. custom themes can be placed in the user directory under '~/.ttygif'
- layers above and below the terminal image
- transparency in layers
- layers can be 1:1, 9slice (scale and tiled)
- layers support cropping and positioning
- palettes are defined by themes
- all layers are mapped to this palette
shipped themes
- default (256 color xterm palette)
- default-4bit (16 colorxterm palette)
- default-2bit (monochrome palette)
- windows7 (windows style wrapped terminal)
- game (8 bit inspired frame)
file size
Gif's are not the best compresed video format, however ttygif has all ability the format allows. Bit reduction results in slightly smaller files For example The folowing table is made from the htop example:
- Specs: 79 frames at 1 FPS for 13.5 seconds
COLORS | Bit Depth | Size | Change |
---|---|---|---|
256 | 8 | 189k | 0% |
16 | 4 | 175k | 7.5% |
2 | 2 | 133k | 29.7% |
cast file to gif
ttygif --input 232377.cast --output ls_pipe.gif --fps=33
pipe to gif
ls -lhatsR | ttygif --output ls_pipe.gif --fps=0
slow down gif
ls -lhatsR | ttygif --output ls_pipe.gif --fps=0 --dilate 10
speed up gif
ls -lhatsR | ttygif --output ls_pipe.gif --fps=0 --dilate .5
Supported fonts
-
All fonts came from https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts
-
copyright FON conversion © 2015 VileR, license: CC BY-SA 4.0
-
ttygif supports the "fd" font format. Basicly text files.
-
All .FON files have been exported to fd files for portability.
-
All fonts are copyright of their perspective owners, not me.
-
default font=Verite_9x16
-
AMI_BIOS
-
AmstradPC1512
-
ATI_8x14
-
ATI_8x16
-
ATI_8x8
-
ATI_9x14
-
ATI_9x16
-
ATI_SmallW_6x8
-
ATT_PC6300
-
CompaqThin_8x14
-
CompaqThin_8x16
-
CompaqThin_8x8
-
DTK_BIOS
-
IBM_3270pc
-
IBM_BIOS
-
IBM_CGA
-
IBM_CGAthin
-
IBM_Conv
-
IBM_EGA8
-
IBM_EGA9
-
IBM_ISO8
-
IBM_ISO9
-
IBM_MDA
-
IBM_PGC
-
IBM_PS2thin1
-
IBM_PS2thin2
-
IBM_PS2thin3
-
IBM_PS2thin4
-
IBM_VGA8
-
IBM_VGA9
-
ITT_BIOS
-
Kaypro2K
-
Phoenix_BIOS
-
PhoenixEGA_8x14
-
PhoenixEGA_8x16
-
PhoenixEGA_8x8
-
PhoenixEGA_9x14
-
TandyNew_225
-
TandyNew_Mono
-
TandyNew_TV
-
TandyOld_225
-
TandyOld_TV
-
ToshibaLCD_8x16
-
ToshibaLCD_8x8
-
Verite_8x14
-
Verite_8x16
-
Verite_8x8
-
Verite_9x14
-
Verite_9x16
-
VGA_SquarePx
-
VTech_BIOS
-
Wyse700a-2y
-
Wyse700a
-
Wyse700b-2y
ESCAPE CODE SUPPORT
- the letters n and m in the middle of the escape sequence are numeric substitutions
- ignore whitespace
Type | Code | Name | |
---|---|---|---|
CSI | ^[ n A | CUU | Cursor up |
CSI | ^[ n B | CUD | Cursor down |
CSI | ^[ n C | CUF | Cursor Forward |
CSI | ^[ n D | CUB | Cursor Back |
CSI | ^[ n E | CNL | Cursor Next Line |
CSI | ^[ n F | CPL | Cursor Previous Line |
CSI | ^[ n G | CHA | Cursor Horizontal Absolute |
CSI | ^[ n;m H | CUP | Cursor Position |
CSI | ^[ n J | ED | Erase Display |
CSI | ^[ n K | EL | Erase Line |
CSI | ^[ n P | DCH | Delete Character |
CSI | ^[ n X | ECH | Erase Character |
CSI | ^[ n d | VPA | Vertical Position Absolute |
CSI | ^[ n ` | HPA | Horizontal Position Absolute |
CSI | ^[ n;m f | HVP | Horizontal / Vertical position |
CSI | ^[ n;m m | Set Text Attributes | |
CSI | ^[ s | SCP | Save Cursor Position |
CSI | ^[ u | RCP | Restore Cursor Position |
DEC | ^[ n;m r | DECSTBM | Set Top and Bottom Margins |
DEC | ^[? 7 h | DECAWM | Auto Wrap Mode / Set |
DEC | ^[? 7 l | DECAWM | Auto Wrap Mode / Reset |
DEC | ^[ 25 h | DECTCEM | Text Cursor Enable Mode / Set |
DEC | ^[ 25 l | DECTCEM | Text Cursor Enable Mode / Reset |
DEC | ^[?1049h | Alternate Screen / Set | |
DEC | ^[?1049l | Alternate Screen / Reset | |
^[?2004h | Enable Bracket Paste Mode | ||
^[?2004l | Disable Bracket Paste Mode |
Features I'd like to add
These are ideas that just pop in my head, or are gathered via discussion.
- documentation
- draw string template for theme, title, overlay
- font /codepage mapping for utf 8,16,13 characters to base 256 map
- embed event stream in gif as control header data
- time period ( capture partial recording based on time stamps x-y)
- add progress bar to top/bottom of gif with n of y H:M:I:S
- asciicast v1 support
- cursor emulation
- cliping
- origin x,y
- logging with ansi stripping
- split gif every n seconds or size
- export as frames, png
- frames/borders, windows 95, x11, mac, fedora, gnome, cinnamon
- lead in and outtro frames, with delays
- output as webm/mp4
The benchmark for speed
- A medium density 60 second screen recording can be rendered to gif in less than 5-8 seconds,
- tested on a 2012'ish 4 ghz 8 core amd running 1866 memory with ssd's and Fedora 29
ttygif-assets
The following resources are located in the ttygif-assets repo
Examples
some random pics from the asciinema.org website, and my computer
htop
- with windows7 theme
pipe
Terminal ray tracing
term-tris dt cannon
- with game theme
Denariusd compile on 30 cores!
surpirsed Pikachu
CACA_DRIVER=ncurses cacademo
Notes
asciicast may split data between events, causing escape codes not to be recognised. ttygif moves all trailing unformed escape codes to the next event. the gif techincal minimum for internal delays is 1ms. I default to 3ms. Testing shows various applications randnomly do not obey values from 1ms to 10ms.
Compatability issues... Maybe I'm wrong.
When your cursor is on the last position of the screen, any printed character causes a wrap, which initiates a scroll up, unless auto wrap mode is on (DECAWM).
I've noticed that asciicast deems to always operate in autowrap mode. If the cursor is on the bottom right most position, and you write a character to that position, the cursor does not autowrap and cause scroll. It should unless DECAWM is on.
So far its a harmess hack, but we will see.
I"ll keep testing, and If I find this a asciicast issue, I'll put in an override mode for those files only.
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