Arch Linux

countrybooter

Member

Registered: 2023-04-25

Posts: 9

[SOLVED] caca / aa support mplayer / mpv / vlc

Hope you're having a blessed day.

POV:
Trying to watch a video with ASCII Symbols in the VT.

I've made the mistake asking ChatGPT. the result was.

mpv --vo=aa /path/to/video 

Which does not work.

But, it's not that simple, you need to compile mpv with libcaca or aalib support, and I just hope that someone here can show me a better way.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 9#p1352569
If you ask yourself, wtf, why, then you most likely are not enjoying the CLI and it's raw, pure beauty or just have better things to do, sorry.

mpv--vo=help

Does not show aa or caca as option, AFAIK it's necessary to recompile from source with libcaca or aalib support.
Which makes sense because tct works, and it's in the vo=help list.

mpv --vo=tct /path/to/video 

With no better idea how to solve this I've tried to compile it from source, but let's not go there, since it's just causing a huge mess with dependencies and I believe either there is another way, I hope, this seems overly complicated.

Other commands I've tried, mplayer/mpv and caca/aa respectively.

mplayer --vo aa /path/to/video 

mpv --vo=caca /path/to/video 

One other player seemed promising, ncplayer but the repo on github is private (requires username and password, ChatGPT shared the link to it nevertheless).
Looking forward to find a solution, thanks in advance.

Sorry if it's not making too much sense, but I've tried to be straight to the point and proof that I've done my research before posting here, hate me for it.
Have a nice day <3

Last edited by countrybooter (2023-05-15 20:35:14)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,206

Re: [SOLVED] caca / aa support mplayer / mpv / vlc

"POV": what the fuck are you talking about?
Is there a question in that post?

mplayer is compiled w/ caca and aa, mpv w/ tct - all of them will work in terminals.
If you want to know how to build mpv yourself, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Build_System
If you have any other question, state it in form of a question.

One other player seemed promising, ncplayer but the repo on github is private (requires username and password, ChatGPT shared the link to it nevertheless).

Nonsense.

https://archlinux.org/packages/communit … notcurses/
=> https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php/Notcurses
==> https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses

Here's a pro-tip: stop asking ShitGPT stuff - it's full of chat and you'll only get garbage for answers.
It's not intelligent in any way shape or form but a reddit driven bullshit generator.

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countrybooter

Member

Registered: 2023-04-25

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] caca / aa support mplayer / mpv / vlc

Thank you for taking the time to answer.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1352567
You are correct, I did the following and wrongly assumed that mpv and mplayer are more similar.
Thank your for sharing your knowledge that mplayer is compiled with caca and aa.

 mpv -vo

Next time I know to do:

 mplayer -vo help

Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/456 … nside-bash the working solutions are:

For terminal emulator (tested with gnome-terminal, kitty)

 DISPLAY= mplayer -quiet -vo caca /path/to/video 

For the VT

  mplayer -quiet -vo caca /path/to/video 

idk...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1258409 … mmand-line

vlc -V caca fileToOpen

Thanks for your help, may good bless your soul.

Last edited by countrybooter (2023-05-15 20:35:38)