The VideoLAN Forums

Hi. I am interested in using stills from video for an art project I'm working on. I want to degrade the video is what seems to be standard ways, and control (to some extent) the amount and kind of degradation. I don't know any video terms. Visually, what I'm looking to introduce and control are effects I've noticed when playing back some videos, what I think looks to be:
- smearing (shapes and/or color-blocks appear as if dragging across the screen)
- pixelating
- posterizing (larger contiguous groups of pixelated areas share a single color)
- ghosting (parts of previous frames get stuck and appear on the current frame).

I am running the latest VLC on Macs running OS 10.11 and more recent. I am extracting frames to JPGs using the "Scene" filter. I have had some success with changing settings via the advanced list, but I am just guessing and using trial and error. What settings or controls will allow me to force the video to break-up/smear/pixelate/posterize/ghost/degrade?

The following are the settings I have changed from their defaults. This works as "proof of concept" but I would like more control over the outcome. (Again, I know nothing about video.)
. Input/Codecs ▹ Playback Control ▹ Playback Speed ▹ 100
. Input/Codecs ▹ Advanced ▹ File Caching (ms) ▹ 200 (tried 0, no difference)
. Input/Codecs ▹ Advanced ▹ Clock Jitter ▹ 50
. Input/Codecs ▹ Video Codecs ▹ x264 ▹ Use Psy-Optimizations ▹ [checked]
. Input/Codecs ▹ Video Codecs ▹ x264 ▹ Use Psy-Optimizations ▹ H.264 Level ▹ 0
. Input/Codecs ▹ Video Codecs ▹ x264 ▹ Use Psy-Optimizations ▹ H.264 Profile ▹ High 444
I have played with some of the Interlace sliders, but have seen no differences, but I just noticed that I have not checked "Interlaced Mode"

I am generating a JPG from every 50th frame by playing the video with the scene filter active.

Please let me know if I can provide any additional helpful information. Thanks.