It’s not a new trick, but I still enjoy a deliberately glitched video. It evokes nostalgia of the early days of video on the web, when the glitches were unintentional. It is a fun throwback aesthetic that utilizes some video compression and encoding techniques we mostly take for granted in the year 2021. It’s time to revisit it, appreciate the “misuse”, and maybe learn what a RIFF file is while we’re at it.

This talk will go over what datamoshing is and the different types thereof. It will succinctly explain motion vectors and the frames, both I and P, as well as answer the question, What is the AVI container and why is it used in datamoshing? While there will be a slide with links to resources to make one’s own glitched video, the talk will focus on a lower level explanation of why and how a “glitch” occurs rather than a tutorial on how to accomplish it. And of course, there will be a few fun examples sprinkled in there. Presented at Demuxed 2021.