MonoView

MonoView is a lightweight frameless desktop video player for Windows. It can render video in monochrome, improve text contrast, convert media with FFmpeg, run parallel batch conversions, and place lockable image masks over selected areas of the picture.

Features

• Frameless, resizable, movable window with persistent minimize/close controls
• Real-time grayscale, brightness, contrast, and 0.5x-3x playback speed
• Single-file and 2/3/4-process parallel batch conversion to H.264 MP4
• Conversion progress, cancellation, and temporary-file cleanup
• Multiple movable/resizable image masks with opacity and lock controls
• Optional always-on-top mode, disabled by default
• NSIS installer and portable Windows build targets

Requirements

• Windows 10 or later
• Node.js 20 or later
• FFmpeg and FFprobe in PATH for conversion and packaging

You can alternatively set MONOVIEW_FFMPEG_DIR to a directory containing ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe when running from source.

Development

git clone https://github.com/cieyyy/MonoView.git
cd MonoView
npm install
npm start

Run syntax checks:

npm run check

Test two simultaneous FFmpeg jobs with your own short video:

node scripts/test-parallel.js "C:\path\to\video.mp4"

Windows packaging

Install FFmpeg so ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe are available in PATH, then:

npm run package:win

The preparation script copies both tools into resources/ffmpeg for packaging. That directory and generated release artifacts are intentionally ignored by Git. The installer automatically appends an English MonoView folder to the directory selected by the user.

Keyboard controls

Key	Action
Space	Play or pause
Left / Right	Seek backward or forward 5 seconds
[ / ]	Decrease or increase playback speed
Ctrl+O	Open video
Esc	Show or hide playback controls

License

MonoView source code is licensed under the MIT License. FFmpeg is a separate project and is governed by its own license terms; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.