voncode — Play Video as ASCII Art in VS Code / VS Codium

Play any video file as colored ASCII art directly in your editor.

Prerequisites

• ffmpeg and ffprobe must be installed and available on PATH.

Installation

git clone 
cd voncode
pnpm install
pnpm run compile

Then press F5 to launch Extension Development Host, or package as .vsix:

pnpm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package

Install the resulting .vsix via Extensions: Install from VSIX... in the command palette.

Usage

1. Open any file (used as viewport reference).
2. Ctrl+Shift+P → Play Video as ASCII Art
3. Select a video file (mp4, mkv, webm, avi, mov, etc.).
4. Watch colored characters dance in your editor at 5(?) fps
5. Ctrl+Shift+P → Stop Video Playback to stop.

How It Works

1. ffprobe probes the video dimensions.
2. A temporary text file is created as a "canvas", sized to your editor's visible area.
3. ffmpeg decodes the video into raw RGB frames.
4. Each pixel is mapped to a character (by brightness) and colored (by hue) using VS Code's TextEditorDecorationType.

Pixel RGB → brightness -> char
Pixel RGB → hue        -> color

Building

pnpm run compile      # check types + lint + bundle
pnpm run watch        # watch mode for development

License

MIT