Datamosh 1.0
Look recipes
The five Style presets and exactly what each one sets, plus recipes for creeping damage, masking, and getting away from a look that is too clean.
Each of the five looks is a choice in the Style dropdown. The settings are listed so you know what a style actually changed and which control to nudge afterwards.
Every style starts from the same baseline and then changes a few things. The baseline is: Motion Gain 1, Motion Smoothing 0.3, Motion Threshold 0, Block Size 16 px, Softness 0, Pixel Snap 1, and every Damage control and Spread at 0. So choosing a style also clears any damage you had dialled in.
A style never changes Mosh Amount. Choose a look, then use Mosh Amount, Trigger, Hold or Auto Mode to decide when it happens.
Melt
One shot dissolving into the next: the classic datamosh transition. Pixels stop refreshing while the motion carries on, so the old picture is dragged along by movement that now belongs to the new one.
| Control | Melt sets |
|---|---|
| Motion Threshold | 0, so everything that moves moshes |
| Motion Gain | 1.2 |
| Motion Smoothing | 0.4 |
| Softness | 0.3 |
| Motion Lag | 2, enough to stop it looking like a morph |
Trigger it by hand, or put Datamosh on the composition with Auto Mode set to On Cut (Comp) and let every clip change melt by itself.
Bloom
The motion is held and applied again every frame, so movement piles up on itself and the picture turns into flowing trails.
| Control | Bloom sets |
|---|---|
| Motion Smoothing | 1, the whole trick: the motion stops updating |
| Motion Gain | 1.5 |
| Softness | 0.2 |
| Decay | 0.1, so it recovers instead of collapsing forever |
Motion Lag does nothing in Bloom, because every past frame holds the same motion.
Drag
Only what moves fast smears. Still and slow areas stay sharp, so the shot stays readable and the effect reads as motion trails rather than as breakage.
| Control | Drag sets |
|---|---|
| Motion Threshold | 0.5, about 2 px of movement a frame: the control that makes this look |
| Motion Gain | 2 |
| Motion Smoothing | 0.2 |
| Block Size | 32 px, chunky and light on the GPU |
On slow footage, Drag's threshold can stop anything moshing at all. Lower Motion Threshold until the parts you want come back.
Liquid
The same motion with the blocks blurred together and no snapping to whole pixels: closer to a smooth optical-flow warp than to a codec, which is sometimes exactly what a track wants.
| Control | Liquid sets |
|---|---|
| Softness | 1, blend between blocks |
| Pixel Snap | 0, so it stays soft |
| Motion Smoothing | 0.5 |
| Block Size | 8 px |
Held areas soften a little more every frame in Liquid. That is Pixel Snap at 0 doing its job; raise it if you want the detail to last.
Corrupt
Every damage control on at once. The furthest from clean motion, and the closest to a genuinely broken file.
| Control | Corrupt sets |
|---|---|
| Motion Threshold | 0.1 |
| Motion Lag | 4 |
| Corruption | 0.4 |
| Block Repeat | 0.3 |
| Quantise | 0.7 |
| Chroma Drift | 0.4 |
Quantise 0.7 is a coarse grid, about 6 px at the default Block Size, so blocks moving slower than about 3 px a frame hold where they are instead of sliding. If you want the movement back as well as the damage, lower Quantise.
Default
Not a look: the factory settings, in the same list so there is always a way back. It is the baseline above with Motion Threshold 0.15 and Motion Lag 2, which is what a fresh Datamosh starts with. Choosing Custom restores nothing; choose Default.
Letting the damage creep
Spread is the one control that reaches into areas that are not moving. With it up, the damage starts where the motion is strongest and crawls outward across still parts of the frame. Bring Mosh Amount down and the edge retreats the way it came, so riding Mosh Amount with Spread up reads as a gesture.
| Control | Setting |
|---|---|
| Spread | 0.7 |
| Mosh Amount | ride it: the creep reaches as far as you push |
| Motion Threshold | 0.2, a clear starting point for it to grow from |
Painting where it lands
Mask Amount lets brightness decide where the mosh can stick. On the effect that is the clip's own brightness, so highlights smear and shadows stay clean, or the reverse with Mask Invert.
| Control | Setting |
|---|---|
| Mask Amount | 0.8 |
| Mask Invert | off; on to mosh the shadows instead |
| Motion Threshold | 0, let the mask do the deciding |
The mask is steep: only near-white areas hold for long, so it works best on footage with real highlights, or with a high-contrast motion layer.
On Mosh Transplant the mask comes from the motion layer, which makes it far more useful: see Using Mosh Transplant.
When it looks too smooth
A smooth morph rather than a mosh means the motion estimate is doing its job too well. In order:
- Raise Motion Lag to 4 or more.
- Raise Motion Gain above 1.
- Drop Quality or raise Block Size: rougher motion looks more broken.
- Reach into the rest of the Damage section: Quantise, Corruption, Block Repeat.