Datamoshing

Datamoshing is a term used when you intentionally used compressed artefacts in a video to create a "glitch" effect.

This effect can be done in many ways. to understand how it works you first need to know how videos work. Videos are made up of two types of frames. I-frames (or key frames) and P-frames. I-frames are still images and P-frames are just instructions for the I-frame.

 P-frames show a plan of where the pixels are going to have moved in the next frame. A video will always tart with an I-frame and then depending on the set-up of the video but it will have a set amount of P-frames before another I-frame. The I-frames repeat as P-frames tend to lose the video quality.

Onto Datamoshing

Datamoshing takes advantage of the I-frames and P-frames and makes it so when you make a timeline of clips there is only one I-frame at the start. Normally there will be I-frames all the way through but an I-frame will remove the effects of the Datamosh. When you add clips in a timeline the program will convert the first frame of the clip into an I-frame. however if you set up the video in a spectific way you can delete the I-frame at the start of the new clip. This will make the last frame of the previous clip say on screen but move to the P-frames of the rest of the video.

This has been used to create music videos in the past 

The Video that brought Datamsohing to my Attention was again a video by Watsky!. Watsky! is an independent artist who uses YouTube as a for of distribution. He has recently (02/09/14) released a new album called "All You Can Do" and has been using different techniques in each of the videos. This is the video for "Bet Against Me" 

There are different ways to do the effects that are happening over the datamoshing like the water effect at the first chord of the Guitar. This is done by taking the last P-frame and copying it over and over again. This will creat some problems though for me as i will be trying to lip-sync my video so I will have to be careful because i will need to replace frames or the video will be out slightly. 

I feel that this technique works with this song as i has a distorted Guitar that is playing the song but the guitar isn't playing often to force multiple cuts, as the transitions are happening on the chords. The effect also works as the camera isn't stationary while shooting. All of the shots are done on pans or zooms. what really interested me about this video was at 1.49 where its coming to the end of the song and the background singers are just repeating "bet against me" but Watsky!'s head is spinning but it will datamosh to it spinning the other way. This is done by Watsky! standing on a rotating platform. I really like this effect and will try to use it, if i have an option to do so.