This is an updated rewrite of an earlier post from 2021 in response to a question I got asked on Tumblr recently about getting started making glitch art using non proprietary software - hopefully it will be useful and furnish you the reader with a good toolkit generally for making glitch art on Windows
machines without the need for paying for or obtaining cracked versions
of proprietary software which restricts your freedom to do with the
hardware you own what you will. Its also a basis for starting to
move away from closed source operating systems in general.
* When I talk about windows I mean Windows 10 , not eleven, not doing that , and when 10 becomes eol in less than a year that's the end of me writing guides for Windows. Ill just stick to Linux.
I use mainly linux myself and my work is mainly script based, I keep a codeberg repository for the scripts I use the most, some of which are also for windows 10, details in the readme , but most could be adapted for Windows 10 quite easily. My codeberg is here https://codeberg.org/crash-stop
Hardware
requirements - I believe in recycling and reusing old
equipment as much as possible , my most modern desktop is a 4th gen
i3 with 8gb of ram using the built in graphics from that chip , I've
succesfully created and edited video on older equipment though having
said that the minimum to achieve anything useful would be a late gen
core2duo with 4gb of ram , one of my laptops ( I call it a potato) that I
used for testing until recently rocked an elderly celeron N2840 ( essentially a souped
up atom processor) and that could be used to edit and render very short
videos and run hex editing programs in real time quite successfully
running Linux and batch scripts and such like with Windows 10 ( though these days ie 2024+ really a second gen i3 and 8gb ram plus is minimum on windows 10) . Know
your architecture are you running 32 bit or 64 bit ? I make no
judgements but all the links I've given are generally for 64bit software
, there are 32bit versions available and pages will give you links for
both mostly so remember to check before you download and get frustrated
that some software won't install.
For both Windows and Linux users it can be helpful to have access to either a built in webcam or an external webcam
For
windows 10 when installing software be aware that a recent update to
Windows 10 means some software may trigger a software from unknown
source alert in a dark blue box and you will have to allow the software
to be installed by clicking through that message even though the
software is from a trustworthy source. That being said the first piece
of software to install is
1)Notepad++
which is useful for reading readmes and for creating bash scripts
though my preferred windows and linux editor is geany , this is
installed in the usual windows way get it here http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
It will also help if you want to start getting into experimenting with the wordpad effect ( the best introduction for that is sTallio's here http://blog.animalswithinanimals.com/2008/08/databending-and-glitch-art-primer-part.html though sTAllio refers to using photoshop raw as a format if you use something like ppm or bmp they are near raw formats just open them in and notepad ++ alter some stuff, save with new name and see what happens !!)
you might also want to add a gui hex editor ( on linux I use bless) but this is a nice basic one for windows to start with https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ start slowly, don't change to much at once and remember to avoid the header and save as a new file.
2)After
that install git for windows which will give us the bash like terminal
Git-Bash which we can use to manipulate video with hex editing ,
ffmpeg and ffglitch/ffgac from the command line as its better than
windows powershell and
includes some of of the basic linux/unix command line applications we
will need - get
git bash here - https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-bash
3)
Windows , unlike Linux doesn't really come with a package manager so
for things like ffmpeg its easier to install a third party package
manager like Chocolatey . To install chocolatey you will need to open
windows powershell as administrator ( quick guide here https://www.howtogeek.com/662611/9-ways-to-open-powershell-in-windows-10/ ) - so go to win icon in bottom left hand corner click on it
and in search bar to the right type powershell it comes out top of list , right
click and open as administrator then go here https://chocolatey.org/install
and follow the install instructions carefully. ( you can copy and paste
the commands from there into
windows powershell) read prompts during installation carefully and
answer Y when it asks. Keep powershell open as we are now going to
install more interesting stuff
4) Having installed that keep powershell open and go
https://community.chocolatey.org/packages
and search for ffmpeg ( unless you already have it installed , in which
case make sure you have it added to path of which more in a moment)
find the command to install ffmpeg ( you should choose the latest version I use ffmpeg
4.4 but that's for compatability with older scripts ) then copy and paste that into powershell opened as administrator
which should be ' choco install ffmpeg ' ( without the quotemarks)
follow the prompts and answer 'y' when asked
5)
After ffmpeg search for and install, using chocolatey and powershell ,
imagemagick 'choco install imagemagick', and shotcut 'choco install
shotcut' and python 'choco install python' , python is a
programming language which we need to run Tomato a datamoshing tool by
Kaspar Ravel, Shotuct is an open-source
video editor, which has some interesting filters and rendering profiles
but kdenlive is probably easier to use but that can be downloaded from its website . Most of these applications have their own installers
but its easier to download and install them via chocolatey, but for
completeness sake their websites are
You might want to install sox audio editor ( handy for sonification in scripts if you arent using ffmpeg and Vedran Gligos megaglitchatron script
here ) but its kind of tricky to install on windows to use via git bash. You need to download the portable version
sox-14.4.2-win32.zip extract it then copy the extracted files from within the folder and paste them in C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin ( presuming you have git-bash for windows installed if not you will need to install that first ) we can also do the same for gmic cli from here https://gmic.eu/download.html download the cli
Command-line interface (CLI): zip .
4a) Video editing software
If
you've read through this previously you will notice I haven't included
openshot in the list of software to install , openshot though good is
particularly buggy on Windows and crashes a lot instead for video
editing download
Kdenlive from here
https://kdenlive.org/en/ its also available for Linux. A
good introduction to completely libre and opensource video editors for
Linux , Windows and MacOS can be found here
https://itsfoss.com/open-source-video-editors/ personally on Linux I
use flowblade , and I'd recommend that for Linux users as its the most
stable I've found and copes with larger files really well ( but isn't great for using with odd dimensions so its essential when using it I've found to pre-resize all the clips you'll be working with with something like handbrake) , Kdenlive is probably the better choice.
6) Close powershell and Install in the normal windows way The gimp from
here and audacity from
hereand Handbrake from
here
( handbrake is a really handy gui for re-encoding and transcoding video
it may ask you to install a .net library when you first go to start it -
just say yes and follow the links to the download you need - ie .net to
run desktop apps) and Transmission bittorrent client from
hereOn
first running Transmission on windows a windows defender pop up will
appear , press the allow access button with shield to allow transmission
to connect to the internet - transmission is a safe bittorrent client
we will use to download video from our source of choice if needed .
(I'm
a little wary of recommending
Audacity because of certain controversy's
over its management and direction over the last year but it is still
open source for now and until a stable fork is created it will do .)
Handy for making desktop videos and for capturing the
ephemeral glitches we get when hex editing video and playing it back
live using ffplay
8) If you don't already have Vlc video player installed do so find that
here
useful for video playback and screenshots. If you dont like using vlc
and want something simpler you could try mpv . You can install mpv via chocolatey ie 'choco install
mpv' or go to their website and follow the links ( but chocolatey is
easier and you don't have to mess with adding it to path )
https://mpv.io/
9) Processing , its one of the tools i use a lot so download that
here
but make sure to download version 3.54 not the newer 4.0 beta 1 .
Processing does not come with an installer but instead comes packaged as
a zip file so when downloaded unzip it and look for the exe file to
start it, you can either pin that to your taskbar or as a shortcut on
your desktop once started you will need to install several libraries (I
will explain how to later on.) There is a difference in how processing
stores sketchbook files in Windows compared to Linux , this is important
as on Linux processing creates a folder called sketchbook and that is
stored in the top directory of your home folder, on Windows sketches
that you create are saved and stored in your home folder here
/c/Users/yourusername/Documents/Processing/
10) Finally go
here
and download ffglitch/ffgac , once its downloaded, unzip it and leave
it there until needed as its a standalone binary which doesn't need
installing ( you might need to install 7zip to unzip it as the binary is
zipped using that 7zip here
https://www.7-zip.org/ and while we're at it grab Kaspar Ravels tomato as well , download it from here
https://github.com/itsKaspar/tomato( click on the green window on the right hand side which says code and click Download Zip)
Linux
in many ways is so much simpler and already has much of what we need
installed, such as bash and the basic gnu coreutils that installing
git-bash on windows gives us more info on gnu-coreutils
here
its an altogether more flexible environment for making glitch art
given that the core of glitch art is about finding error through the
misuse of tools , or rather using tools in a way in which they were not
intended.
Anyways
Linux has diverse distributions and package managers but chief amongst
those are either debian based or arch based systems . On Ubuntu, Debian
and linuxmint my main method of installing software is from the
command-line so fire up a terminal and do ( depending on what you do or
dont have installed) presuming you are running Debian 10 or 11, Ubuntu
18.04 and above and Linuxmint 19.3 and above ( should also hold true
for MXlinux and Devuan and derivatives) issue this command from any
terminal:
Sudo apt install ffmpeg imagemagick vlc mpv handbrake sox audacity kdenlive flowblade obs-studio transmission
type in your password when asked and hit enter and that's pretty much it .
I've
added mpv video player to the list for Linux as I've noticed of late
especially in Linuxmint 19.3 and above vlc has become very unreliable in
use.
If
you are using arch based distros you probably don't need any
instructions on how to install programs or use package managers . On
parabola Linux I generally use a simple 'sudo pacman -S packagename'
command or run octopi package manager and search for whatever package it
is that I want. I install flatpaks manually from the command line a
good guide from the arch wiki can be found
here
Installing
processing on Linux is actually pretty similar to that on windows in
some ways, except when its unpacked you can then run the install.sh file
by either right clicking and opening a terminal in the folder that has
just been unpacked or opening a terminal and cd-ing to that folder and
issuing this command './install.sh' which will install processing for
the current user and leave a shortcut on your desktop and an entry in
the programming section of your applications list - you can start
processing by clicking on either link.
Once
you have processing on either windows or Linux installed and started
you will need to install certain libraries. Find tools in the menu
running from left to right at the top of the blank sketch window that
has opened after startup and find tools, click on that and from that
drop down menu after clicking choose add tool, another window will open
titled ' Contribution manager ' click on the tab that says ' Libraries'
scroll down and find the entry that says 'Video | GStreamer-based video
library for Processing ' click on that then find the button that says
install, click on that and wait for the library to install, then click
on entry just below it titled ' Video Export | Simple video file
exporter ' then click on install again - this should give you the
ability with the right script to initialize and use a webcam for input .
To test that use the script below by cutting and pasting it into the
open blank sketch making sure you have a webcam attached to your desktop
pc or laptop then pressing the start button above the test window
shaped like a cassette players start button . All being well after a
short delay you should see video playback and a little glitchiness !
This is a basic sketch I use , it needs a webcam.
import processing.video.*;
Capture video;
void captureEvent(Capture video) {
video.read();
}
void setup() {
size(640, 480);
video = new Capture(this, width, height);
video.start();
}
void draw() {
video.get();
//background(0);
video.loadPixels();
for (int y = 0; y<height; y++) {
for (int x = 0; x<width; x++) {
int loc = x + y*video.width;
float r = red (video.pixels[loc]);
float g = green (video.pixels[loc]);
float b = blue (video.pixels[loc]);
float av = ((r+g+b)/3);
pushMatrix();
translate(x,y);
stroke(r,g,b);
float n = (av+r)/360;
if (r > 100 && r < 250)
{
square(0,0,0);
}
popMatrix();
}
}
}
*
You might also want to go to the contribution manager and install from
the examples tab the first set of examples ' The coding Book' and also '
The nature of code' by Daniel Shiffman , The coding book gives examples
of fun things like slit scan and time displacement which are a good
basis for starting points for code for glitch art in processing.
Mac OS
- I have no real experience of using macs or any apple products, and
as inclusive as I wish to be software wise I can't help finding Apples
walled garden approach to hardware and software a big turn off and
contrary to a lot of my views on open source and software and hardware
freedom in general, that being said MAC OS being unix based it has some
similarities with linux and there is a package installer which should
help you install some of the programs outlined above find that here
https://brew.sh/
