Raw recording of terminal output won't convert to image

when using --raw to output terminal “stuff” the resultant file has embedded characters that make it impossible to convert using ImageMagick or other conversion tools. even using “cat” or “strings” on the resultant “data” file (linux considers the output file to be binary “data” due to the embedded characters), running it through cat | tr to try to remove those characters and then feeding it to ImageMagick convert fails as well. is it strictly necessary to embed special characters in the raw output and/or does anybody have an ingenious way to convert a raw file to an image file? fwiw, this is using the latest git cloned “source” version.