bin2video

A C program for encoding anything as a video file. Inspired by Infinite-Storage-Glitch. Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.

Demo

(Scene from Big Buck Bunny, Copyright 2008, Blender Foundation / https://www.bigbuckbunny.org)

This GIF file can be decoded with bin2video to extract the peppers test image.

Comparison

	bin2video	Infinite-Storage-Glitch	Infinity-Drive
Encode¹	⚡️ 253s²	595s	572s
Decode¹	⚡️ 34s	531s	702s
Custom encoding options	✅	❌	❌
Custom resolution	✅	✅	❌
Custom bits-per-pixel	✅ All values from 1 bit to 24 bits	Only 1 bit or 24 bits	❌
Embeddable³	✅ with embed.sh	❌	❌
Pipe support	✅	❌	❌

¹ Tests were done with a randomly generated 32MB test file on an M1 MacBook Air.
² Depends on FFmpeg options. Goes down to 106 seconds with -- -c:v png.
³ File data can be embedded into a real video. See demo.

Building

Windows: bin2video can be compiled with w64devkit.
macOS: Make sure command line tools are installed with xcode-select --install.
Linux: Make sure build-essential or equivalent is installed.

cc src/*.c -lm -O3 -o bin2video

Dependencies

You must have ffmpeg and ffprobe in your PATH to use this program.

Usage

USAGE:
  ./bin2video [options] -e -i data.bin -o video.mp4
  ./bin2video [options] -d -i video.mp4 -o data.bin

OPTIONS:
  -e          Encode mode. Takes an input binary file and produces
              a video file.
  -d          Decode mode. Takes an input video file and produces
              the original binary file.
  -i          Input file. Defaults to stdin.
  -o          Output file. Defaults to stdout.
  -t          Allows writing output to a tty.
  -f <rate>   Framerate. Defaults to 10. Set to -1 to let FFmpeg
              decide.
  -c <n>      Write every frame n times. Defaults to 1. Cannot be
              used with -I.
  -b <bits>   Bits per pixel. Defaults to 1 (black and white).
  -w <width>  Video width. Defaults to 1280.
  -h <height> Video height. Defaults to 720.
  -H <height> Data height. Set this to a value less than the video
              height to limit the data blocks to a region on top of
              the video. The bottom of the region will be black.
              A value of -1 disables the data height. Defaults to -1.
              Cannot be used with -I.
  -s <size>   Size of each block. Defaults to 5.
  -I          Infinite-Storage-Glitch compatibility mode.
  -E          End the output with a black frame. Cannot be used with
              -I.

ADVANCED OPTIONS:
  -S <size>   Sets the size of each block for the initial frame.
              Defaults to 10. Do not change this unless you have
              a good reason to do so. If you specify this flag
              while encoding, you will also need to do it while
              decoding. When -I is used, this value defaults to 5
              and cannot be changed.
  --          Options following -- will be treated as arguments for
              FFmpeg. Defaults to "-c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p".
              Has no effect in decode mode.

Usage Examples

# Encode archive.zip as a video
./bin2video -e -i archive.zip -o archive.zip.mp4

# Encode archive.zip as a video, storing 3 bits in each pixel
./bin2video -e -b 3 -i archive.zip -o archive.zip.mp4

# Encode archive.zip as a video at 1920x1080 resolution
./bin2video -e -h 1920 -w 1080 -i archive.zip -o archive.zip.mp4

# Extract archive.zip from the video
./bin2video -d -i archive.zip.mp4 -o archive.zip

# Decode video encoded with Infinite-Storage-Glitch
# (Example video taken from Infinite-Storage-Glitch README.md)
yt-dlp -f 247 -o isg-video.webm 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I4fd_Sap-g'
./bin2video -I -d -i isg-video.webm -o archive.zip

# Encode file.bin and merge it with video.mp4 to generate
# video-out.mp4
./embed.sh file.bin video.mp4 video-out.mp4