LOW Resolution — YT-TV ASCII Render

A tiny, opinionated Rust tool that renders low-resolution YouTube streams as ASCII in your terminal.

display.mp4

Core ideas:

• Use ffmpeg (via a spawned process) to extract frames and audio.
• Convert frames to a small RGB buffer and map pixels to ASCII characters using the pixel2ascii crate.
• Keep the terminal tidy via RAII guards and cursor helpers.

Key dependencies:

• yt-dlp (or other way to provide a video URL)
• ffmpeg
• Rust toolchain (stable, edition 2024)
• Crate: pixel2ascii (included in Cargo.toml)

Quick test

./lowRes-tv-ascii-Render play "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

If you built from source with Cargo, you can also run:

cargo run -- play "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

Requirements

• ffmpeg installed and available on PATH
• yt-dlp (recommended) to resolve YouTube URLs (or provide a local file/stream)
• Rust (for building from source)

Features

• Low-resolution ASCII rendering optimized for terminal playback
• Audio routing (platform-dependent) so you can hear audio while viewing ASCII frames
• Simple CLI using clap with play, info, and check commands

Usage examples

• Play a YouTube URL (example):

  ./lowRes-tv-ascii-Render play "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

• Get info about a source (fps, dimensions):

  ./lowRes-tv-ascii-Render info <source>

• Run a quick check to ensure dependencies are available:

  ./lowRes-tv-ascii-Render check

Project layout

src/
├── main.rs                 # Entry point (very thin)
├── app.rs                  # High-level orchestration
├── cli/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   └── args.rs             # clap definitions
├── terminal/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   ├── cursor.rs           # hide/show/move/clear
│   └── guard.rs            # RAII terminal cleanup
├── media/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   ├── source.rs           # resolve URLs, fps, metadata
│   ├── stream.rs           # spawn ffmpeg, pipe frames
│   └── audio.rs            # platform audio routing
├── render/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   ├── ascii.rs            # pixel → ascii
│   └── frame.rs            # RGB buffer → image
├── commands/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   ├── play.rs
│   ├── info.rs
│   └── check.rs
└── util/
        ├── mod.rs
        └── shutdown.rs         # ctrl+c handling

Development

• Build in release for best performance:

  cargo build --release
  ./target/release/lowRes-tv-ascii-Render play <source>

• Use cargo run -- <command> while iterating on code.

Notes & tips

• Terminal size and font affect the appearance — smaller fonts and wider terminals look better.
• If audio doesn't play, check platform-specific code in src/media/audio.rs and that your system audio is configured.

Contributing

• Issues and PRs welcome. Small, focused changes are easiest to review (fixes, docs, small features).

License

• See the LICENSE file in the repository.

Enjoy ASCII YT in Low Res! 😄

--> Inspired by - SameerVers3