What widely-available cross-platform command line program can I use to render a string containing color emoji

Question

I have a program which allows users to create gifs from youtube videos using yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Unfortunately, ffmpeg does not support color emojis.

Here's what it looks like when you try:

ffmpeg -ss 1:57 -to 2:00 -copyts -i /tmp/ytgif_cache/video_httpswwwyoutubecomwatchvnrqxmQruto.webm -filter_complex '[0:v] fps=10, scale=640:-1, split [a][b], [a] palettegen [p], [b][p] paletteuse, drawtext=borderw=1:bordercolor=black:fontcolor=white:fontsize=30:x=(w-text_w)/2:y=(h-text_h)-10:text=🔥 flames 🔥' flames.gif

Imagemagick

Imagemagick, as compiled for my by homebrew, does no better on a static image:

convert -background lightblue -fill blue -pointsize 72 "label:Hot 🌶 stuff" png:- | imgcat

gives:

(Possibly re-compiling with pango would fix this? But my users are not likely to want to have to install custom versions of imagemagick)

Looking for suggestions

What are my other options? How can I render a text string containing emojis into an image suitable for a video caption in a reasonably cross-platform manner?

Answer 1

ImageMagick does support some emojis at the very least. You have to change the coder though. An example with pango coder:

magick -background lightblue -fill blue -pointsize 72 "pango:Hot 🔥 stuff
" test.png

Output:

I had no luck with the pepper (🌶) one though, on Windows latest version. Not entirely sure why, as its Unicode neighbors (🌵) and (🌷) did work fine. Perhaps a font issue. Or Unicode 7+ characters aren't supported too well within the not too up-to-date Pango version included with ImageMagick.

Could have better chances on Linux, where Pango is coming from. Don't have time to further mess with that, personally.