Footage Effects: glow, glitch, CRT and VHS on real video — effect skill for editing & clips

For AI agents: find the right skill in one call — curl -s "https://varg.ai/how-to/api/search?q=<what the person wants>" returns the matching how-to page and the best skills with install commands, as markdown (Russian works too). Full index: https://varg.ai/how-to/llms.txt. Every page has a markdown twin: add .md to its path. Before generating anything, show the person the options on the how-to page. From a terminal: curl -fsSL https://varg.ai/install | sh installs the vargai CLI (https://varg.ai/how-to/cli.md): vargai search and vargai install <slug> with no key, every varg model after vargai login.

Eight effects for footage you already have as ffmpeg filter chains and WebGL presets: glow, glitch, CRT, chromatic, halftone, photocopy, zoom blur, heat haze.

Type: Effect · Editing & clips
Slug: footage-effects
Status: live
Publisher: varg (varg, verified)
License: MIT
Source: https://github.com/vargHQ/skills/tree/main/footage-effects
Works in: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, varg Studio
Requires: Node 22 + ffmpeg (HyperFrames) or a Remotion 4 project
Cost: Free: renders locally with HyperFrames, Remotion or ffmpeg. Generated footage, voice or music is billed in varg credits with an estimate first.
Runtime: Minutes per template, mostly render time

What it does

Eight effects applied to real footage, each preset a complete ffmpeg command that was rendered and checked, plus a HyperFrames or Remotion version for compositions. They are accents: strong settings live in short hits on beats and cuts, and the subject's face and the type stay clean.

8 templates, 34 presets. Every rule in the skill cites its source; every preset is exact values (durations, easing, sizes, colors, fonts) in a JSON file the agent loads.

Template	Presets
Acid photocopy: Turn real footage into a stuttering two-ink photocopy (teal, red, cream) or a black-toner zine copy on scanned paper	Stutter flyer, Still print, Mono toner
Chromatic aberration: Split real footage's red, green and blue into a fringe that grows toward the frame edges (lens), across the frame (digital), or pulsing (psychedelic)	Lens (subtle), Radial (strong), Linear RGB split, Acid trip
CRT screen: Put real footage (or a chat/UI scene) on a curved CRT: phosphor mask, scanlines, bloom, rounded corners, optional afterglow	Consumer TV, Arcade aperture grille, Green phosphor terminal, Amber terminal
Digital glitch: Glitch real footage with RGB splits, torn rows, swapped blocks, stutter and macroblock corruption, in deterministic bursts	Subtle, Default, Intense, Jittery, Corrupt
Glow and bloom: Make the bright parts of real footage glow: neutral bloom, film halation, coloured halos or long anamorphic streaks	Soft bloom, Film halation, Sci-fi cyan, Sunset warm, Anamorphic streaks, Ominous red
Halftone footage: Turn real footage into halftone print (one ink or CMY rosettes), an LED wall or a colour mosaic	Ink on paper, Colour screen (CMY), LED wall, Colour mosaic
Radial zoom blur: Pull real footage into a zoom blur toward a centre, as a constant look, a beat punch, a fringed burst or light streaks	Soft pull, Punch-in hit, Fringe burst, Light streak (brightest)
Wave and heat distortion: Make real footage ripple like heat haze or water, or smear itself along its own brightness	Heat haze, Water ripple, Self-smear (colour-driven), Sine wave

Rules every template follows

Deterministic or nothing: every random value is a hash of the frame number and every noise source is seeded, so renders are seekable and parallel-safe.
Generated lavfi inputs never end: cap the output with -t <clip duration> and use blend with shortest=1; pre-render static textures once with trim=end_frame=1,loop=-1.
Work in gbrp for blend, displace and per-channel tricks, but run eq and vignette in YUV: on RGB planes they tint the image.
Threshold, then multi-scale, then add: glow, streaks and halation start from a soft-knee threshold (0.45–0.95), blur at 2–3 scales (about 1:4:12) and screen or add the result.
Real optics are radial: lens chromatic aberration and zoom blur are zero at the centre and grow with radius; flat shifts read as digital glitch.
Accents, not grades: strong aberration, zoom and glitch presets live in 2-frame windows or 0.2–1.5 s hits on beats and cuts; only the subtle presets run a whole shot.

Built from: Xor (@XorDev, GM Shaders); HyperFrames media-treatment recipes; libretro crt-geom and crt-lottes (Timothy Lottes) with @komm64; Kenny Mitchell and Tiago Sousa (GPU Gems); Maxime Heckel and Paper (Ksenia Kondrashova, Agu Seguí); Steve Yedlin; Andrew Kramer (Video Copilot); Remotion, Boris FX, Maxon and Notch docs.

Renders locally with HyperFrames or Remotion for 0 credits; generated footage, voice or music runs through varg with a cost estimate first.

Use when

How to add chromatic aberration to a video with ffmpeg
How to make a zoom blur punch transition on the beat
How to make footage look like it's on an old CRT TV
How to add glow and bloom to night footage
How to add film halation to video
How to turn a video into halftone dots or an LED wall

Not for

Animate a mesh gradient background behind the title (use paper-shaders)
Color grade this clip teal and orange (use a color-grading skill (LUTs))
Generate a glitchy cyberpunk clip from text (use varg-ai)

Install

Claude Code: claude plugin marketplace add vargHQ/skills && claude plugin install varg@varg
Codex: npx skills add vargHQ/skills --skill footage-effects -a codex -y
Cursor: npx skills add vargHQ/skills --skill footage-effects -a cursor -y
OpenClaw: npx clawhub@latest install footage-effects
Gemini CLI: npx skills add vargHQ/skills --skill footage-effects -a gemini-cli -y
Any agent, with the vargai CLI: vargai install footage-effects

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/files/72c55813-c0fa-4cf2-9f64-ec4f7ed0e7ae/file_4c5a3702ba3d.mp4 — example (credit: varg grade on Tears of Steel (CC BY 3.0, (CC) Blender Foundation | mango.blender.org))

More editing & clips skills

Short-form FFmpeg cookbook: copyable commands for Reels: Footage into a 9:16 MP4 with FFmpeg: crop to vertical, burn captions, trim and join, music under the voice.
Splice AI clips into a video with FFmpeg: Splice generated clips into an original video with ffmpeg without A/V drift: absolute trims, one audio track.
Turn raw product footage into a TikTok ad with FFmpeg: Footage into a 9:16 ad: hook at second 0, no dead air, text hook, CTA, -14 LUFS, one MP4 per hook.
Chengfeng Videocut: Chinese talking-head editing: word-level transcript, five-pass flub sweep, human review in a Studio, subtitles, export.
Claude Code Video Toolkit: Open-source video workspace for Claude Code: script, voice, music, visuals and Remotion render on your own GPU account.
Herk Edit Kit: Nate Herk's kit to edit talking-head videos, reels and Shorts: silence and flub cuts, storytelling, motion graphics.