Frequently asked questions
Everything you might want to know about turning video into ASCII art with asciicast.stream — how it works, your privacy, exports, and the developer API.
What is asciicast.stream?+
asciicast.stream turns any video, image, or your live webcam into animated ASCII art directly in your browser. A physically-accurate conversion engine renders every frame into text characters in real time, so you can watch, tweak, and export the result as a video.
Do my videos get uploaded to a server?+
No. The entire conversion happens locally in your browser using the same isomorphic engine that powers the API. Your files never leave your device, which makes it private and fast.
What makes the ASCII output look so good?+
The engine uses linear-light perceptual luminance, automatic percentile auto-levels, unsharp-mask detail enhancement, contour-aware structural glyphs that follow the shapes in the frame ( - / | \ ), Floyd–Steinberg dithering, and an adaptive Bayesian temporal filter that keeps motion flicker-free.
Can I use it from code or an AI agent?+
Yes. There is a REST API at /api/v1/render, an OpenAPI 3.1 spec at /api/openapi.json, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint at /api/mcp, and machine-readable discovery files at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt. Any script or MCP-compatible agent can render images to ASCII, ANSI, HTML, SVG, or JSON.
What formats can I export?+
You can copy the raw text, export a recorded video of the animated stream, or (via the API) render to plain text, ANSI, HTML, SVG, and JSON.
Is it free?+
Yes, asciicast.stream is free to use in the browser. It is part of the Platphorm, created by Michael Barbine, AirCon, and The Machine.