Video files layer multiple images in sequence in order to make the appearance of motion. To understand I-Frame destruction (and the next section on P-frame duplication), we need to briefly cover how video compression works. I’ll show you a couple different file formats and what they look like when their data is destroyed. Different video file formats glitch in different ways depending on the video codec that was used to compress the video file. We typically do this with a hex editor, a low-level editing tool for looking at the contents of files, but I wrote a tool that can do this in a more automated way which I provide below. Here’s an example of a gif that was made by destroying the file:ĭon't look at the moon when the night is dark

This will make it glitch out in crazy, unpredictable ways and can produce some really cool effects (or break your file - always keep the original copy!). With file destruction, we take any old video file and mess with its data by simply opening it and replacing random bytes with other random bytes. File destruction, I-Frame destruction, and P-frame duplication Let’s run over the fundamental concepts of all of them before we go too deep.

P-frame duplication (also sometimes referred to as the “bloom” effect).

We’ll be going over three primary types of datamoshing that are currently known:

And you can, too! In this tutorial, I’ll go over in detail a couple different ways to datamosh a video to achieve different effects. We datamosh because we can, and because it looks really cool. In plain English, datamoshing is an umbrella term for an array of cool effects you get by glitching, altering, or otherwise breaking the fundamental structure of video files’ data. This is a great introduction to datamoshing for beginners! What’s datamoshing? Learn how to make video glitch art by datamoshing with a variety of tools. Making Video Glitch Art: How to Datamosh, in Plain English

Datamosh video effect