window

effortlessly watch videos directly in your terminal
with support for local, remote or YouTube videos

Report Bug · Request Feature

Window is a terminal-based video player that allows you to watch videos directly in your terminal. It supports local, remote, and YouTube videos assisted by hardware accelerated decoding

Demo of Window playing a YouTube video in block mode, and then halfway in ASCII mode

Note: I use Alacritty as my terminal application which is very performant, your mileage may vary depending on how optimized your terminal is for this kind of application

• Variety of Video Sources

  • Local File: Seamlessly play videos stored on your local machine.
  • Remote File: Stream videos directly from remote URLs, ensuring flexibility and convenience.
  • YouTube Video (using yt-dlp):
    • Video on Demand (VOD): Access and play YouTube videos on demand, with support for various formats and qualities.
    • Live: Watch live streams from YouTube in real-time, providing a unique and dynamic viewing experience.
  • Live Stream: Support for various live streaming protocols, allowing you to watch live broadcasts from different platforms and sources.

• Hardware Acceleration

  • Enhanced Performance: Leverages hardware acceleration to optimize decoding of video streams, reducing CPU usage and providing smoother playback.
  • Multi-Platform Support: Compatible with a wide range of hardware, ensuring optimal performance across different devices and operating systems.

• Error handling
• Full screen mode
• Resizing (Needs a new decoder stream)
• Tests
• Audio??? (Either chopped into length of frame or just kept in sync)
• Subtitles??? (Perhaps as text or just baked in)
• Better color accuracy
• Add inputs like pausing/skipping
• Statically linked binaries

$ docker run -it --rm danonline/window:latest --help
$ docker run -it --rm danonline/window:latest "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

Note: Window requires ffmpeg libraries to be installed, for more information check here

Note: Window requires yt-dlp installed in order to use the youtube feature. You can install it by running pip install yt-dlp.

Check out the releases page for the latest binaries.

Usage: window [OPTIONS] <INPUT>

Arguments:
  <INPUT>  The video file location, url, or youtube link

Options:
  -p, --pixel-clear-distance <PIXEL_CLEAR_DISTANCE>
          Distance from the previous pixel to replace 0 will update every pixel at the cost of performance [default: 2]
  -m, --mode <MODE>
          The character mode to use [default: block] [possible values: block, dots, ascii, ascii-extended, ascii-windows, numbers, blocks]
  -s, --scale <SCALE>
          The scale mode to use [default: fit] [possible values: fit, stretch]
  -r, --remove-fps-cap
          Allow the framerate to exceed the video's framerate
      --hw-accel <HW_ACCEL>
          The hardware acceleration device to use [default: none] [possible values: none, vdpau, cuda, va-api, dxva2, qsv, video-toolbox, d3d11-va, drm, open-cl, meia-codec, vulkan, d3d12-va]
  -f, --fullscreen
          Whether to use fullscreen
  -n, --no-color
          Render without color
  -h, --help
          Print help (see more with '--help')
  -V, --version
          Print version

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

DanCodes - [email protected]

Project Link: https://github.com/dan-online/window