VHS Audio Effect

[Eric Schuran]

For my first project I was thinking of making some videos of things happening very badly to people, but to the extreme. Then, I will cut together some America’s Funniest Videos footage so it will look as though some of those clips are on the show. Like, me getting hit by a car or something and the audience laughs. That’s why I want to sell that VHS tape look … that’s how most of them were done back then.

Another idea I had was a crappy low-budget horror movie, because those are my favourite. I can write the music for it as well, which would be fun to do.

As for the wiggle on the blur … I put a fast blur on mine, and then set it to horizontal, and then put a wiggle on that. So it kind of stuttered for a second.

The VHS lines can be done with Fractal Noise, which comes with AE. My problem is masking a part out and putting it in … not sure if I should cut everything BUT then part to have fractal noise, or the opposite. Seems confusing.

You’re lucky you have the ability to get VHS footage on your computer. I don’t have the graphics card that does that … although, why didn’t you just bounce it back and forth and back and forth until you had the right amount of degradation? That’s what I would have done if the option was there … unfortunately I have to do it all in post to make it convincing 🙁

-Eric

[Eric Schuran]

Hey William, you have any footage you can put up yet? I’m eager to see how it all came together.

After some thought, I may do what you mentioned about capturing the VHS noise and overlaying it. Do you have a TV Tuner Card in your computer? I’m guessing so since that’s the norm for transferring analog to PC. I’m looking into getting one.

Sometimes you just can beat the real thing. I managed to make the static on After Effects, but you can tell it’s digital. There’s something special that analog brings that can’t be mimicked.

[Eric Schuran]

P.s.

I found some stock footage of vhs tracking … I overlayed it onto my existing footage and set the blending mode to overlay. What was the mode you used?

Also, are you sure it was Curves you applied? I messed around with that, but it didn’t work out quite right. I tried Levels, and got close, but it darkened my footage considerably.

Any tips you have William, I’m all ears 🙂