Script to convert script command output to animated GIF

While looking around for some nice terminal recording tools for the Linux terminal I came across a neat script on github which could take in the timing information & command output files from the popular script command & convert it to a neat GIF file.

The script has two dependencies:

1. It runs only from within a terminal opened under x-windows direct console GUI.
2. It requires ImageMagick-c++ & ImageMagick to be installed.

Here is the script:


#!/bin/bash

# origin from http://blog.fedora-fr.org/metal3d/post/typescript-to-gif
# modified by tgic to specified output file


# http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-options.php#limit
CONVERTARG="-limit memory 32MiB -limit map 64MiB"

TIMING=$1
SCRIPT=$2
OUTPUT=$3
W=$WINDOWID

if [ ! -f "$TIMING" ] || [ ! -f "$SCRIPT" ] || [ "$OUTPUT" == "" ]
then
    echo "usage: $0 TIMING SCRIPT OUTPUT"
    exit
fi

if [ "$W" == "" ]
then
    echo 'No window found use xvtypescripttogif instead'
    exit
fi

WORKDIR=$(mktemp -d)

t=$(mktemp)
cp $SCRIPT $t

#remove first line
sed -i '1d' $t

#clear screen
clear

#read timing file one by one
curr=0
i=0
while read line
do
    #capture time and chars to read
    cols=($line)
    chars=${cols[1]}

    #read from current char the number of chars to read
    dd if=$t bs=1 skip=$curr count=$chars 2>/dev/null

    #convert to gif frame with a nice frame-number
    n=$(printf "%010d" $i)
    import -window $WINDOWID $WORKDIR/$n.gif

    #and move to next position
    curr=$((curr+chars))
    i=$((i+1))
done <$TIMING
rm -f $t

#now, set gif with delay per frame
i=1
while read line
do
    cols=($line)
    timing=${cols[0]}
    #get next image
    file=$(ls -1 $WORKDIR | head -n $i | tail -n 1)
    timing=$(echo "$timing*100" | bc -l | awk '{print int($0)}')
    command=$command" -delay $timing $WORKDIR/$file"

    i=$((i+1))
done < $TIMING


convert $CONVERTARG $command $WORKDIR/anim-notoptim.gif
convert $CONVERTARG $WORKDIR/anim-notoptim.gif -coalesce -layers Optimize $OUTPUT

rm -rf $WORKDIR


To use it, first run the script command as follows:

[root@cserver ~]# script -t 2> time.txt cmd.txt
Script started, file is cmd.txt
[root@cserver ~]# echo "lets see how this goes"
lets see how this goes
[root@cserver ~]# echo "testing the typescript"
testing the typescript
[root@cserver ~]# exit
exit
Script done, file is cmd.txt

Now supply the time.txt & cmd.txt files as arguments to the conversion script & specify out.gif as the output file.

./typeconv.sh time.txt cmd.txt out.gif

This will replay the commands & create an out.gif file.

Here is the out.gif file created a result of the execution of the script:

Note that the resulting gif does not execute in a infinite loop. It runs only once.