How to Data Mosh

Download the One Stop Data Mosh Kit from:

http://www.court13.com/datamoshkit.zip

Make sure all your files are the same size, there is a program for converting your files in the kit with some presets which i have been using. Importantly this changes the number of keyframes to 99999 automatically so that you can capture the movement frames. It also changes the bitrate to 20000 kbit/s.

Once you've encoded your files, you need to start editing them in AVIdemux. Start by opening your first file, and then Appending the file you want to come after to it.

Now you're ready to start removing I-frames, these are the image frames, similar in animation to the key-frames. We want to remove these and work with the video in-betweens, or P-Frames. See at the bottom it says I-Frame, this is the frame in-between the two videos I just opened. By removing this, I remove the still image that separates the scenes, meaning that only the movement frames of video two will become visible when we export the clip.

I-Frames (above) P-Frames (below)

we now have this very broken up image as the second clip rips through the first without first stopping to completely generate.

This is the technique I have used for the Jamie rant video until the end. Once you've removed your I-Frames you can start to mess around with the P-Frames and then it gets interesting. By repeating single frames the video appears to melt when exported and played, creating a beautiful mess of colours. The more times you repeat the frame the more distorted it becomes.

You can also play with the movement which i really enjoy, it's tricky and you have to capture the right frames, but if you have the head moving slightly and you capture those 5 P-Frames, and loop them you get swirling patterns of colour which look insane.

I haven't used the Data Mosh technique to it's full potential in my piece as it doesn't quite fit in, I think by just removing I-Frames you get a nice broken image, an exaggerated version of when your webcam freezes. I'm defiantly going to play around with it more in regards to timing and movement to see what effects we can create.