file2video

A terminal tool written in Rust capable of turning any given file into a video by using it to build raw audio and video streams.

Inspired by Binary Waterfall.

Installation

The easiest way to install is via Cargo:

1. Rust and Cargo need to be installed. If they aren't already, it can be done at https://rustup.rs/.
2. Execute the following command, which will automatically download and compile the tool.

  cargo install file2video

Or you can also build and install from source using the following commands (This also requires Rust and Cargo):

  git clone https://github.com/FeatheredOrbit/file2video.git
  cd file2video
  cargo build --release

Using this method though will require you to add the executable to PATH manually.

Usage

A basic use of the tool would look like this:

file2video path/to/file

Where path/to/file can be either a relative or absolute path. The resulting output.mp4 can be found in the same folder as the input file.

But of course it doesn't stop there! A use such as the example above will take use of many default flags, displayed below:

• 44.1kHz for sample rate.
• 8bit unsigned integer for bit depth.
• 2 audio channels.
• RGB for color format.
• 256 by 144 pixels for frame resolution.

Flags

Naturally you can override the defaults using different flags!

--sample-rate / --s:r

Allows you to choose the sample rate of the audio stream. The stream is normalized to 44.1kHz, meaning higher sample rates will result in faster audio, and smaller sample rates will result in slower audio. The paired value must be an integer and can't be negative.

file2video path/to/file --sample-rate 96000

--sample-format / --s:f

Allows you to choose what format will be chosen to interpret the stream as.

Argument	Format
u8	8 bits unsigned integer
u16	16 bits unsigned integer
u24	24 bits unsigned integer
u32	32 bits unsigned integer
u40	40 bits unsigned integer
u48	48 bits unsigned integer
u56	56 bits unsigned integer
u64	64 bits unsigned integer
i8	8 bits signed integer
i16	16 bits signed integer
i24	24 bits signed integer
i32	32 bits signed integer
i40	40 bits signed integer
i48	48 bits signed integer
i56	56 bits signed integer
i64	64 bits signed integer
f32	32 bits floating point
f64	64 bits floating point

file2video path/to/file --sample-format u32

--channels / --ch

Allows you to set the channels used for the audio stream. The paired value must be an integer between 1 and 8.

file2video /path/to/file --channels 4

--color-format / --c:f

Allows you to set the color format to use for the video stream.

Argument	Format
rgb	Standard RGB
hsv	HSV
hsl	HSL
yuv	YUV
ycbcr	YCbCr

file2video path/to/file --color-format yuv

--resolution / --res

Allows you to set the resolution for the frames of the video stream. The value must be in format widthxheight, where width and height are even integers between 16 and 4096.

file2video path/to/file --resolution 150x150

Additional Modifiers

• --reverse-video / --r:v
  Swaps the order of the pixels in the video stream, making the video play backwards and upside down.
• --reverse-audio / --r:a
  Swaps the order of the samples in the audio stream, making the audio play backwards.
• --reverse-bytes-video / --rb:v
  Swaps the color channels of each pixel around, changing how the color is presented.
• --reverse-bytes-audio / --rb:a
  Swaps the order of how bytes are used to create higher bit depth formats. For example, a u32 would normally be built in this order [byte1, byte2, byte3, byte4], but by adding this flag it will instead be built like this [byte4, byte3, byte2, byte1].

Help

All of the above shown flags, including what arguments can be passed to them, can also be seen by using the following flag:

file2video --help

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