--- title: "Footage Effects: glow, glitch, CRT and VHS on real video — AI video effect for editing & clips" description: "Eight effects for footage you already have as ffmpeg filter chains and WebGL presets: glow, glitch, CRT, chromatic, halftone, photocopy, zoom blur, heat haze. Install in Claude Code, Codex and Grok with one command." url: https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/footage-effects updated: 2026-10-29 --- # 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="` 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 ` 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](https://varg.ai/how-to/effects.md) · [Editing & clips](https://varg.ai/how-to/browse/skills/editing.md) - **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 ` 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](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook.md): 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](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/varg-ffmpeg-mixing.md): 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](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/ecommerce-video-edit.md): Footage into a 9:16 ad: hook at second 0, no dead air, text hook, CTA, -14 LUFS, one MP4 per hook. - [Chengfeng Videocut](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/chengfeng-videocut.md): Chinese talking-head editing: word-level transcript, five-pass flub sweep, human review in a Studio, subtitles, export. - [Claude Code Video Toolkit](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/claude-code-video-toolkit.md): Open-source video workspace for Claude Code: script, voice, music, visuals and Remotion render on your own GPU account. - [Herk Edit Kit](https://varg.ai/how-to/skills/herk-edit-kit.md): Nate Herk's kit to edit talking-head videos, reels and Shorts: silence and flub cuts, storytelling, motion graphics.