[donutmonger]

I'd be interested to see the result of iterating on an image using these tools. Like go from high res to pixel art, back to high res etc.

[esotericsean]

I remember back in like 2010, someone uploaded and ripped a YouTube video 1000 times and then edited the natural degradation of the compression. Went from perfectly watchable video to horrible static-y mess.

Here it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0

[bringtheaction]

Here’s another one up the same alley that is interesting to watch: VHS generation loss.

> What happens if you make a copy of a copy of a copy (and so on) of a VHS tape? This experiment shows how the quality degrades with every generation.

> The copying was done using two PAL VCRs in SP mode.

> (The video is Fading like a flower by Roxette)

https://youtu.be/mES3CHEnVyI

[_qxjp]

Thanks for the link!

This may sound crazy, but I wonder if there's a way to "automate" this deconstruction with ffmpeg...

[_qxjp]

Update: here's a one-liner that will do exactly that

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -strict -2 -crf 51 output.mp4 && rm input.mp4 && mv output.mp4 input.mp4

For better results, run the above command ten times:

for ((n=0;n<10;n++)); do ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -strict -2 -crf 51 output.mp4 && rm input.mp4 && mv output.mp4 input.mp4; done

[rothron]

Theoretically, it should be possible to recompress the video back into the compressed file with no loss, provided the same codec is used, but it would be far more expensive computationally.

[pbhjpbhj]

Aren't most image/video compression algorithms lossy? There would surely be more than one possible "decompression".

[alanfalcon]

Like translating a phrase into a foreign language and back repeatedly, I inagine you’d end up with something fun and impressionistic. I’d like to see it too.

[Franciscouzo]

Like this? http://www.translationparty.com/

[alexmorenodev]

If you're out of imagination you can copy and paste some comments from here and watch the results.

http://www.translationparty.com/bizarrely-the-pixelated-stuf...

[andruby]

From

> Bizarrely, the pixelated stuff in the images you linked look way better.

To

> But then I remembered I look way better in the morning light.

In one step. Lovely! This sounds like poetry.

[warent]

I've never heard of this before but just wasted 20 minutes on it. Very interesting concept with hilarious results

[setzer22]

Most things I tried were slightly changed from english to japanese just once, then converged. Maybe it's just my lack of imagination!

[reificator]

Most of what I tried gathered somewhat from English to Japanese. Perhaps it is my lack of imagination!

[TuringTest]

The best examples, those with more divergent results, are those with a lot of subordinate clauses, which get mixed-up and moved from different parts of the sentence. You can select complex sentences from the list below.

[6502nerdface]

> Like translating a phrase into a foreign language and back repeatedly, I inagine you’d end up with something fun and impressionistic.

This exact game features in the plot of Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel, Galactic Pot-Healer.

[19870213]

For songs there is this: https://www.youtube.com/user/malineka146/videos