vcat - Video Cat

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vcat is a command-line utility for inspecting video streams and developing multimedia software.

Ever SSH'd into a server and wondered whether you're actually receiving video? Maybe the stream is flowing, but is the video valid? Does the image look right? Is it corrupted, frozen, or otherwise unhealthy?

You could run tcpdump to verify that packets are arriving, but that only tells you so much. Inspecting the actual video typically means accessing a machine with a desktop environment or finding another way to view the stream.

vcat bridges that gap by rendering video as ASCII characters directly in the terminal. It won't give you 4K HDR, but it lets you see what your video pipeline is actually producing — without needing a graphical environment.

Installation

NOTE: vcat is not currently available via any Linux package manager

For easy installation on a local or remote (via SSH) linux machine, use the following command.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/patricktumulty/vcat/master/scripts/installer.sh | bash

Design Goals

vcat was built around three main goals:

• GStreamer-based: Leverage GStreamer's multimedia framework to handle video ingestion, decoding, and processing.
• Plugin architecture: Support extensible video sources and functionality through a modular plugin system.
• Cross-compilable and deployable: Keep the application lightweight and portable, with a focus on cross-compilation and deployment to embedded platforms such as NVIDIA Jetson.