Question: I just set up a server and ran some sample video tests, but for some reason the video is showing characters and numbers instead of pixels. Here is an image of how I see it:

[![https://i.stack.imgur.com/KlOnO.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KlOnO.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KlOnO.png)

Do you think it has anything to do with the video card configuration, or could it be a simple matter of setting VLC's properties correctly?

I can't install any other video player at the moment because I don't have administrator privileges, so I am stuck with VLC.

Answer: 
VLC supports playing back videos as ASCII art (it does the conversion on the fly). Check your VLC settings, and ensure you choose something other than ASCII output.

*The screenshot is Windows, but it's essentially the same in other operating systems.*

**NOTE:** It's also possible that VLC is falling back to a display mode that will actually work in your setup. If you're running VLC through a terminal emulator or some kind of remoting/client-server setup, then ASCII might be the only display mode that VLC has established will work.

[![VLC Video Settings](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vszbd.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vszbd.jpg)
rr- answer and Ciprian Tomoiaga comment solved my problem! Both MobaXterm and Cygwin did the job. I downloaded [MobaXterm Personal Edition v8.2](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download-home-edition.html) and [Cygwin 2.2.1](https://cygwin.com/install.html)

MobaXterm has a friendlier interface and comes ready out of the box(at least for what I needed: file transfer, ssh communication, X11 server, saving sessions, and some other neat tools :)), so I think I will be using that for the moment. For Cygwin you need to:

* install the following packages(openssh, xorg-server, xinit)
* run XWin once everything is installed
* right click on the X Server you just opened (located in the taskbar), and select Applications->xterm
* in the new terminal session run an ssh command to connect to your server
e.g ssh -X user@server.edu
* -X the argument for x applications over ssh

On the other hand, Moba loaded my putty saved sessions, so I just had to double click, and... I was in :).
But if you don't have any saved session, you need to create a new one, click on the ssh tab, specify the username and host, and save (x11 forwarding and sftp comes checked by default, and the port selected by default is 22)

One small issue I'm still experiencing is that I've only been able to work with low quality videos(i.e 360x240), because "higher" quality videos freeze on the first frame (i.e >640x360). Well, at least using vlc...

Even when I only want to record:

```
vlc videos/SampleVideo_720x480_50mb.mp4 --sout=file/ps:Sample.mpg

```

But well, here is what I have right now:

[![VLC reproducing video using MobaXterm](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2H4gj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2H4gj.png)