---
title: "How to add compression artifacts with Claude (tested prompt and ffmpeg command)"
description: "At one second the shot turns to badly streamed video, the holographic backdrop breaking into 24-pixel blocks of banded color and the bottle's label text smearing to a blur, until it comes back crisp at five seconds. Install one skill and ask Claude Code, or run the ffmpeg command we tested yourself."
url: https://www.recharm.com/effects/compression-artifacts
---

# How to add compression artifacts with Claude

At one second the shot turns to badly streamed video, the holographic backdrop breaking into 24-pixel blocks of banded color and the bottle's label text smearing to a blur, until it comes back crisp at five seconds.

Made by the command on this page, from our own test clip.

## Get this effect

1. ### Switch to Code in your [Claude Desktop App](https://claude.com/download)

2. ### Install the skill (once)

   ```
   Install the Recharm video effects skill: download https://recharm-growth-staging.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/website/downloads/recharm-video-effects.zip and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills
   ```

3. ### Ask for the effect

   ```
   Add compression artifacts to input.mp4
   How much smaller the damaged copy is encoded; each 8-pixel block shows up this many times bigger: 3
   MPEG-2 quantizer, 2 (clean) to 31 (worst): 31
   ```

## Several videos, several effects, one ask

Put your clips in the folder, mention them with @, and ask for everything at once. Claude runs one tested script after another on each clip, then joins them.

Add compression artifacts to **@clip1.mp4**, put a sale badge on **@clip2.mp4**, give **@clip3.mp4** a VHS look, then join all three with crossfades.

## Settings you can change

Ask Claude to change any of these, or edit them at the top of the command.

| Setting   | Default | What it does                                                                                      |
| --------- | ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `SHRINK`  | `3`     | How much smaller the damaged copy is encoded; each 8-pixel block shows up this many times bigger. |
| `QUALITY` | `31`    | MPEG-2 quantizer, 2 (clean) to 31 (worst). Lower it for subtler damage.                           |
| `START`   | `1.0`   | Second the artifacts kick in.                                                                     |
| `END`     | `5.0`   | Second the picture comes back clean.                                                              |

## Without the skill

Don’t want to install the skill? Paste this prompt into Claude Code and Claude writes the command itself.

```
In input.mp4 (540x960, 30fps), make the shot look like heavily compressed video from 1.0 to 5.0 seconds, with ffmpeg in two steps. First, shrink a copy to one third size (180x320, area scaling) and re-encode it with no audio at the worst MPEG-2 quality: -c:v mpeg2video -qmin 31 -q:v 31 -g 30 -bf 0, at 30fps, into a temporary .mkv file (not .mpg, whose timestamps drift). Second, scale that damaged copy back up 3x to 540x960 with nearest-neighbor scaling so each 8-pixel encoder block becomes a flat-edged 24x24 square, and overlay it at 0,0 on the original only between 1.0 and 5.0 seconds (overlay with shortest=1); before 1.0 and after 5.0 seconds the video must be untouched. Output H.264 yuv420p at 30fps, 6 seconds, same size, keeping the original audio. There's no text to draw, but if you add any, draw it with Pillow, not ffmpeg's drawtext. Save it as output.mp4.
```

## Run it without Claude

This is the exact command we tested. Save it as `compression-artifacts.sh` and run:

```
sh compression-artifacts.sh input.mp4 output.mp4
```

```
#!/bin/sh
# Compression artifacts: from 1s to 5s the shot looks crushed by a starved encoder, all blocky squares,
# banded color and smeared detail, then it comes back clean.
# Usage: sh compression-artifacts.sh input.mp4 output.mp4
# Needs ffmpeg.
set -e
IN="$1"; OUT="$2"
SHRINK=3     # encode at 1/3 size so each 8-pixel block shows up as a 24-pixel square
QUALITY=31   # MPEG-2 quantizer, 2 (clean) to 31 (worst); 31 bands color and wipes out detail
START=1.0    # second the artifacts kick in
END=5.0      # second the picture comes back clean

TMP=$(mktemp -d)
trap 'rm -rf "$TMP"' EXIT
DAMAGED="$TMP/damaged.mkv"

# 1. Re-encode a small copy as badly as MPEG-2 allows: one keyframe a second, the frames between built from it.
ffmpeg -y -v error -i "$IN" -an -vf "scale=iw/$SHRINK:ih/$SHRINK:flags=area,fps=30" \
  -c:v mpeg2video -qmin $QUALITY -q:v $QUALITY -g 30 -bf 0 "$DAMAGED"

# 2. Blow it back up with hard pixel edges so the blocks stay square, and lay it over the clean clip between START and END.
ffmpeg -y -v error -i "$IN" -i "$DAMAGED" -filter_complex \
  "[1:v]scale=iw*$SHRINK:ih*$SHRINK:flags=neighbor[bad];\
[0:v][bad]overlay=0:0:shortest=1:enable='between(t,$START,$END)',fps=30,format=yuv420p[v]" \
  -map "[v]" -map 0:a? -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a copy "$OUT"
```

## More retro and film

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- [70s film look **70s film look**](https://www.recharm.com/effects/70s-film-look)
- [Camcorder date stamp **Camcorder date stamp**](https://www.recharm.com/effects/camcorder-date-stamp)
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## Find 3x _winning ads_

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