katharostech / cast2gif

Tool to render Asciinema cast files to GIFs, *without* using Electron or a web browser. Written in Rust.

Cast2Gif

A tool to convert Asciinema cast files to Gifs without using Electron or a web browser.

Installing

We have yet to get CI setup for automated builds, but there is a musl Linux build that should run on any distro in our pre-release.

Example Recording

Here is an example of a GIF created with cast2gif:

Full Example

Here is a recording showing how to record a clip with Asciinema and render it with cast2gif:

Features to Add

Here are some features to get in as time permits, ordered by importance:

• Support for changing the output resolution/font-size
• Add a slight bit of padding around the terminal window.
• Automated builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux so users don't have to build it themselves
• Support for custom SVG templates to allow you to style the output
• Support for rendering animated PNGs
• Support for rendering animated SVGs

Building and Running

To build you must have at least Rust 1.42+ installed. You can install it with Rustup. Then Run

cargo build --release

After that the cast2gif program will be in the target/release folder.

Run cast2gif --help to get the usage instructions:

cast2gif 0.1.0
Zicklag <[email protected]>
Renders Asciinema .cast files as gif, svg, or animated png.

USAGE:
    cast2gif [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] <cast_file> <out_file>

FLAGS:
    -f, --force      Overwrite existing output file
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -c, --crop <crop>    crop the recording while rendering. Specify crop in terminal cells as
                        `top=[int],left=[int],width=[int],height=[int]`.

ARGS:
    <cast_file>    The asciinema .cast file to render
    <out_file>     The file to render to

History

This project started after a discussion on the Rust forum.

Alternatives

• cast2gif by @foubian
  • A more polished alternative that runs in a web browser and has options for font-size and theme

cast2gif's Issues

Cursor not rendered in GIF

The cursor is not rendered in the converted GIF

Example (source cast):

asciinema.org

cast2gif

Documentation and usage instructions

Hi,

Thank You for this project that you created. I had fun learning rust and how to compile the application. I want to request that you add a few instructions in the README file to help others on how to compile the application and how to use it.

Regards

Web Page to convert .cast to gif

to get a gif image from a .cast file generated with asciinema you can use this tool i develooped to make this task easly : https://github.com/foubian/cast2gif

Can't build with old Rust

Rustc 1.39.0

   Compiling gif-dispose v2.3.0
error[E0658]: use of unstable library feature 'inner_deref': newly added
  --> /home/danbst/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/gif-dispose-2.3.0/src/screen.rs:74:29
   |
74 |         self.blit(local_pal.as_deref(), frame.dispose,
   |                             ^^^^^^^^
   |
   = note: for more information, see https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/50264

Please add also Rust version which it should be built with (yeah, I know I should use nightly, but still would be great for r13y(reproducibility)).

ASNI cursor movement control is not supported

Listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#Terminal_output_sequences

I have a CLI which moves the cursor to repaint existing content, but the GIF always appends content ignoring these control codes. Color codes do seem to be supported, however.

Continuous Integration

Hi,

I think to automate building you could have setup the Github Actions in a flow:

• Whenever a tag is pushed -> Build a version -> Archive artifacts -> (optionally) Attach artifacts to releases tab (I don't know if its possible)

I didn't use Github Actions yet, but I see it can store artifacts like Jenkins: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/configuring-and-managing-workflows/persisting-workflow-data-using-artifacts

Maybe some evening I can try to play with it and push some PR.

Failed to buld cast2gif

error[E0432]: unresolved import `font_kit::loaders::freetype`
 --> src/frame_renderer/fontkit.rs:6:14
  |
6 |     loaders::freetype::Font,
  |              ^^^^^^^^ could not find `freetype` in `loaders`

error: aborting due to previous error

For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0432`.
error: could not compile `cast2gif`.

Env:

stable-x86_64-apple-darwin (default)
rustc 1.43.0 (4fb7144ed 2020-04-20)

Option to force output terminal size to smaller value

The asciinema JSON value represents my terminal, but I often want to truncate the output to a subset in which the content actually appears for a smaller size image.

Docs missing how to render SVG instead of GIF

Docs missing how to render SVG instead of GIF

cast2gif crashes on FreeBSD

Hello,

I've compiled cast2gif on FreeBSD 12.2 (amd64) using Rust 1.47.0 without any warnings/errors.

I got an error/crash when I execute:
./cast2gif ~/test.cast /tmp/test.gif
Illegal instruction (core dumped)

What should I do to help debugging this problem?

Thanks,

Nuno Teixeira