Motion ASCII guide

Every control

Every control in the panel, top to bottom. All sections start open.

Load and save

Choose or drop a videoButton
Opens a video from your device: MP4, WebM, MOV or M4V, up to 250 MB. Dropping one anywhere on the page does the same. It plays muted and loops. See video to glyphs.
Save frameButton
Saves the frame on screen as aikizi-motion-ascii-frame.png, at the full size of the grid. See PNG.
Download videoButton
Records the grid as a video and saves it when it ends: your video from the start, up to 60 seconds, or 6 seconds of the test pattern. See record video and recording limit.

Video

Under the button, a line shows what is drawing, Test pattern or the name of your video, and the size of the grid in cells. Messages about a file that will not open appear under Export.

PauseButton
Freezes the grid, and the video with it; the button then reads Resume. Press it again to go on. See video frame.
RestartButton
Sends the video back to its start, or starts the test pattern over, and plays.

Glyphs

Each cell on the canvas is 6 pixels wide and 9 tall, so 240 columns make a picture 1,440 pixels wide. The rows follow from the shape of the video. See character cell.

Character setChoice
The ramp the picture is built from. Classic is .:-=+*#%@, ten steps. Detailed has 70 steps for finer shades. Soft is .,:;ox%#@. Blocks is ░▒▓█ and Shade ramp is ·:░▒▓█. Dots is .oO0 and Bullets grows from · to ●. Braille uses seven dot patterns, Binary only 0 and 1, and Devanagari ॐ grows from the small circle ॰ and the danda । through र, ट, ग, म, ब, स and क to झ, ten Devanagari signs ordered by how much ink each one holds. See character set, classic ramp, detailed ramp, soft ramp, block characters, shade ramp, bullet ramp, braille characters, binary ramp and Devanagari glyphs.
ResolutionSlider · 60 to 360 · starts at 240
How many columns of characters go across. Fewer columns make bigger, bolder characters; more show finer detail. On phones and touch screens it opens at 160. See resolution.
Frame rateSlider · 6 to 60 · starts at 30
How many times a second the grid is drawn again. Lower looks steppy, like old film; it is also the frame rate of a downloaded video. See frame rate.
InkPick one · Color · Green · Amber · Mono
The colour of the characters. See glyph colour.
  • Color: Each character takes the colour of the video under it.
  • Green: Green on black, like an old terminal: brighter where the character is denser. See phosphor green.
  • Amber: Amber on black, the other old terminal colour. See amber text.
  • Mono: White and greys.

Tone

These sliders change which character each cell gets. In Color ink the colour still comes straight from the video; in the other inks the brightness follows the character.

ContrastSlider · 0.2 to 4 · starts at 2.0
Spreads the brightness apart around the middle, so more cells land on the emptiest and densest characters. The page opens at 2. See contrast.
BrightnessSlider · 0 to 1 · starts at 0.5
Shifts every cell lighter or darker before the character is picked. At 0.5 nothing shifts.
GammaSlider · 0.4 to 2.4 · starts at 1.0
Bends the middle tones: above 1 they get denser characters, below 1 sparser ones. Black and white stay put. See gamma.
GlowSlider · 0 to 1 · starts at 0.18
How strong the soft halo behind the characters is. At 0 there is none. See bloom.
InvertOn or off · starts off
Swaps the ramp, so bright parts get sparse characters and dark parts dense ones. See invert.

Loupe

The loupe is a round glass lens that follows the pointer. With a mouse it shows while you hover over the picture; with a finger or pen it shows while you press and hides when you lift.

Lens sizeSlider · 50 to 220 · starts at 110
How big the loupe is: the number is its radius in pixels, so 110 draws a lens 220 pixels across. On phones and touch screens it opens at 80.
Lens zoomSlider · 1.4 to 7 · starts at 2.6
How much the loupe magnifies. With a mouse, the wheel changes it too while the loupe shows, 0.3 a step.
Chromatic aberrationOn or off · starts on
Lets red and blue drift apart towards the rim of the lens, like real glass. See chromatic aberration and refraction.

Export

A line says how long a video can be; messages about a file that will not open appear here too.

Reset

Your video stays.

ResetButton
Puts every setting back to how the page opened, the phone sizes included, and plays again. Your video stays.