VHS, film grain and glitch effects in Video by Zaweba

Clean digital video can feel a little sterile, and a retro treatment is one of the quickest ways to give it a period or a mood. Video by Zaweba has a small family of effects for exactly that: scan lines, film grain, old film, VHS, glitch and chromatic aberration. Between them they cover the look of worn cinema prints, home video tapes and broken digital signals.

What each one imitates

Film grain adds the fine, moving texture of photographic film. It is the subtlest effect in the group and often the most useful, because a touch of grain makes clean footage look less clinical and helps shots from different cameras sit together.

Old film goes further, suggesting a worn print with the marks and unsteadiness that come with age. It suits flashbacks, silent film parodies and archive style inserts.

VHS imitates home video tape, with its soft picture, smeared colour and wobbly lines. Scan lines add the horizontal lines of an old tube television. Together they make a convincing eighties or nineties home movie.

Glitch breaks the picture into the blocks, shifts and tears of a corrupted digital signal. Chromatic aberration splits the colour channels slightly apart at the edges, the colour fringing you see from cheap lenses. On its own it adds a subtle edge, and stacked with glitch it reads as damage.

Building a believable retro look

Real old media has more than one fault at once, so a convincing look usually combines effects with some colour work. A VHS look benefits from lower contrast, slightly raised blacks and muted, warm colour, which the colour controls or a colour effect can provide. Old film tends to be either faded and warm or black and white with grain, so combine old film with sepia, black and white or a faded film setting in the colour correction.

Frame size helps too. Home video was squarer and softer than modern footage, so a little blur or a tighter crop can sell the illusion more than piling on extra effects.

Sound matters as much as picture. A crisp modern soundtrack over a VHS picture gives the game away. The sound effects in Video by Zaweba include old radio, telephone and similar treatments that can roughen a soundtrack to match.

Using glitches with timing

Glitch is at its best in short bursts. A few frames of breakup on a beat, at a cut or as a transition feel energetic. A whole minute of it is tiring to watch. Keyframe the effect's strength so it spikes and drops away, or put it on a short adjustment layer that sits only over the moments you want broken.

The transitions include a glitch transition too, so you can break from one clip into the next with the same look you use inside shots.

Covering a whole section

To give a whole flashback or a fake home video sequence one look, put the effects on an adjustment layer above the clips instead of on each clip. The grain and scan lines then run continuously across every cut, which is what a real tape or film would do. Changing the look later means editing one clip instead of dozens.

You can save a combination you are happy with as an effect preset, an .ozfx file, and apply it again in another project.

Common mistakes with retro looks

Overdoing it is the main one. Heavy grain, heavy scratches and heavy colour shifts all at once look like a filter rather than a memory. Start strong to see what the effect does, then pull it back until it is just noticeable.

Mixing eras is another. VHS scan lines on a black and white silent film look confused. Decide what the source is meant to be and choose effects that belong to it.

And remember viewers watch on phones. Very fine grain disappears on a small screen and the compression of video sites can turn it into blotches. Check an export on the kind of screen your audience will use.

With a light hand, the film and retro effects in Video by Zaweba can make a modern clip feel like a found memory.