v0.1.2

Two FFGL plugins that simulate datamoshing in Resolume, over a shared render core.

Plugin	Where it shows up
Datamosh	Effects list — a layer, a group, or the composition
Datamosh Transplant	A layer's blend-mode dropdown — applies that layer's motion to the layers below

📖 Documentation · Parameter reference · Recipes

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This is a pre-release — read this first

Everything here is verified by an automated test suite: 32 tests running a real
headless OpenGL 4.1 context against synthetic footage with known ground truth,
green on Linux, Windows and macOS.

None of it has been run inside Resolume. The tuning defaults have never seen
real video. Treat this as something to try and report back on, not something to
put in a show without rehearsing first.

Install

Unzip and copy the plugins into Documents/Resolume Arena/Extra Effects, then
restart Resolume. Full instructions are in the INSTALL.txt inside each archive.

macOS users: the bundles are not signed or notarised, so macOS quarantines
them and Resolume silently will not load them — the plugins just never appear.
Clear it with:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Documents/Resolume\ Arena/Extra\ Effects/Datamosh.bundle
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Documents/Resolume\ Arena/Extra\ Effects/DatamoshTransplant.bundle

Windows users: right-click each DLL → Properties → Unblock, if Windows
flagged the download.

Requires Resolume 7.3+. macOS builds are universal (arm64 + x86_64), so Apple
Silicon is native.

Why this simulates rather than corrupts

Datamoshing works by breaking inter-frame compression — deleting I-frames so
pixels persist, or duplicating P-frames so motion vectors keep applying to an
increasingly wrong image.

None of that is reachable inside Resolume. Its playback path uses HAP and DXV,
which are all-intra codecs: every frame is an independent compressed still, so
there are no motion vectors anywhere to corrupt. Even with an H.264 source, an
FFGL plugin receives a decoded texture, never the bitstream.

So this estimates the motion itself and reproduces what a decoder that has lost
its keyframe does with it. For live use that trades up — it works on any source
including cameras and NDI, it cannot desync mid-set, and every stage becomes a
parameter instead of an encoder setting.

What you get

All three classic looks from one pipeline:

• Melt — pixels stop refreshing while motion keeps flowing. With Auto Mode
  → On Cut on the composition, every clip change melts by itself.
• Bloom — freeze the vector field and motion piles up into flowing trails.
• Pixel drag — raise the threshold so only fast-moving blocks smear.

Softness carries it from hard macroblock tearing to smooth liquid flow.
Style presets set a coherent group of parameters from one dropdown.

A Damage group exists to get the motion wrong on purpose — Motion Lag, Block
Repeat, Quantise — because an accurate estimator reconstructs the frame, which
is correct and far too clean to read as a broken codec.

Beat sync via Resolume's clock, and audio-reactive triggering via FFT.

Known gaps

• Not yet validated in Resolume; see the checklist in the README.
• macOS bundles are unsigned and unnotarised.
• The mixer carries an inherited mixVal slider that does nothing — use its own
  Mix parameter. It cannot be renamed away without making the plugin
  unloadable; the reason is documented in the architecture page.
• Performance has only been measured on a software rasteriser. Run
  datamosh_tests --profile on real hardware before committing to 4K.