Pixelate — effect skill for transitions

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A breaks into ever larger pixels, swaps at the coarsest point, and B sharpens back.

What it does

Built on Pixelize by gre (gl-transitions), MIT. The write-up and recipes below are varg's.

Blocky mosaic grows then shrinks; reads as digital or retro gaming.

When: Gaming, retro, tech, censorship gags.

Watch out: Serious brand films; very large blocks on vertical video lose the subject.

Timing: 0.4–0.8 s (CapCut Mosaic 0.47 s)

Also called: Mosaic, pixelize, 8-bit transition, pixel dissolve

In FFmpeg

Same size/fps/pixel format on both inputs (see the Normalize card). offset = duration(A) - T = 5.0 - 0.6 = 4.4.

ffmpeg -i a.mp4 -i b.mp4 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]fps=30,settb=AVTB,format=yuv420p[a];[1:v]fps=30,settb=AVTB,format=yuv420p[b];\
[a][b]xfade=transition=pixelize:duration=0.6:offset=4.4[v];\
[0:a][1:a]acrossfade=d=0.6[au]" \
  -map "[v]" -map "[au]" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a aac out.mp4

In HyperFrames

npx hyperframes add grid-pixelate-wipe; dithered: ordered-dither-pass.

In Remotion

glTransition({name: 'pixelize'}) (1.x name; Pixelize in 2.0) or @remotion/effects/pixelate driven by interpolate() on a canvas-based <Video>.

In CapCut

Transitions tab → Glitch / Basic → Mosaic, Blocks. Desktop: drag the tile onto the cut between two clips and set Duration in the right panel ("Apply to all" reuses it on every cut). Mobile: tap the small white square between clips, pick the transition, drag the duration slider, tap ✓. Tab labels and placement change between versions and regions.

Ready-made components

Where this comes from

Use when

Not for

Install

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/how-to/previews/ad57a1e97506/take-pixelate-mosaic.mp4 — pixelize between two shots, with the timeline strip of the edit. Footage: WING IT! (2023), Blender Studio | studio.blender.org, CC BY 4.0; Big Buck Bunny (2008), (c) copyright 2008, Blender Foundation | www.bigbuckbunny.org, CC BY 3.0. (credit: Rendered by varg · WING IT! (2023) + Big Buck Bunny (2008))

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Run the generation on varg

varg is one API key for the models these skills drive — Seedance 2.5, Kling 4, Veo 3.1, Wan 3, Nano Banana 2.1, GPT Image 2.5, ElevenLabs v4 and 200+ more — billed in credits, with a cost estimate before anything runs.