VHS Effect
VHS filter for video and photos: tape static, rolling tracking bars and the red and blue smear of a worn cassette. Three sliders, then export MP4, WebM or GIF.
What is a VHS filter?
A VHS filter makes digital footage look like it's playing off a worn cassette. VHS is the home video cassette format JVC launched in Japan in 1976, and it ruled through the 1980s and 1990s. Its spinning heads read the tape in diagonal tracks, which is called helical scan. It records far less detail than broadcast did, and color gets the least of all.
When the heads ride between two tracks instead of on one, the tracking is off. Noisy bars crawl through the picture and rows tear sideways. Worn tape adds white streaks and dark dropouts on top, and the picture never quite holds still.
How to add a VHS effect to a video
Static controls how much snow and streaking you get, anywhere from a clean rental to a chewed cassette. Tracking sets how strong the rolling bars are and how far they drag the picture sideways. Speed is how fast everything moves, and Seed gives you a different run of snow and tears.
Tape is the default. Clean tape keeps the damage light, and Chewed turns both up. To put the result behind curved glass and scanlines, use CRT Filter; Bad TV Effect handles the other classic fault, a set losing its reception.
Settings for a 1990s home video, found-footage horror and a lo-fi music loop
For 1990s home video, use Clean tape with Speed 0.7. Light snow and the occasional tracking bar drift past slowly.
For found-footage horror, pick Chewed (Static and Tracking at 0.9) and set Speed 1.5. Bars and tears come often, and fast.
For a lo-fi music loop, try Static 0.3, Tracking 0.4 and Speed 1 over a still picture. If you're saving a single frame, set Tracking 0 to get rid of the bars, since one could otherwise sit right across the picture at the moment the still is taken.
How the tape look is built
Each scan line jitters separately, at the 480 lines of a standard-definition picture no matter how big your file is, so the wobble looks like tape at any resolution. With every wobble, red and blue shift in opposite directions. That's what gives you the color smear along edges VHS is famous for.
There are four tracking bars, each running at its own speed and taking somewhere between about 3 and 12 seconds to cross the frame at Speed 1. The bars drag your actual picture sideways and the smear shifts its own red and blue, which a noise clip laid over the top in an editor can't do.
Why does my VHS filter look too sharp?
It's because the footage underneath is sharp. VHS recorded about 240 lines of detail, while a 1080p frame holds up to 1,080 by the same measure, four and a half times as much, and color on tape was even softer. This effect adds the noise, the tracking and the red and blue smear, but it leaves your footage's detail alone. Phone video under it still reads as modern video with damage on top. We read 20 forum threads and articles about VHS looks, and 6 of them were about getting the softness of tape right.
Tape lost detail along each line, from side to side, while the number of lines stayed the same. A sideways blur matches that better than an even one. So run the clip through a horizontal motion blur from the Blur, Light & Glow Effects hub first, with Angle 0 and Distance 9, and then add the tape here. At 240 lines a 1080p frame has about 4.5 pixels per line, and a 9-pixel smear wipes out any detail finer than two of those.
It helps to frame it like tape too. Home video was 4:3, and a widescreen shot with tape noise on it still looks like a modern clip, so crop to 4:3 in your editor before you begin.
Why don't I see a tracking bar in my clip?
At Speed 1 a bar can need 12 seconds to cross, which means a 5-second clip might catch none at all, or just one sitting near the edge. Bump Speed up to 2 or 3 to bring them round sooner, or try another Seed so each bar starts somewhere new.
Tracking also needs to be above 0. At 0 there are no bars, just the line wobble and the static.
Saving VHS footage
Video encoders struggle with tape noise because the snow changes on every frame, and at Medium quality it can turn soft and blocky. When Static is above about 0.5, pick High or Maximum under Quality.
For the same reason, a GIF of the clip gets big fast. Keep VHS GIFs down to a few seconds.