video recorder look with adobe after efffects

skateboard video recorder look with adobe after effects

To bring some change and nostalgia to all your HD skate footy, you can create a video recorder look in Adobe After Effects: Grainy, with tv interferences and color shifting.

STEP 1 – GRAIN

  1. Create a new After Effects composition and name it “VHS Look”.
  2. Import your skateboard footage and drag it to the timeline window (>File >Import >File).
  3. Select the skate video footage on the timeline and add some noise. (>Effect >Noise & Grain >Noise)
  4. Now create a few keyframes and change the grain around for each one of them.
  5. To get sudden changes between the keyframes you have to disable the interpolation (the change in-between keyframes): Select all keyframes and click right to get in the “keyframe-interpolation”-menu. Select “Temporal Interpolation >Suppress”.
  6. Create a pre-composition (>Composition >Pre-Composition) and call it “grain comp”.

STEP 2 – COLOR SHIFTING

  1. Copy the existing layer twice and place them accurately on top of each other.
  2. Name the layers “red”, “green” and “blue”.
  3. Next you have to mix the channels for each layer (>Effect >Color Correction >Channel mixer): For the “red” layer change green and blue to “off”. For the “green” layer change red and blue to “off”. For the “blue” layer change red and green to “off”.
  4. Then lighten all layers (>Effect >Blending Mode >Lighten)
  5. Move the layers a few frames against each other.
  6. Create a pre-composition (>Composition >Pre-Composition) and name it “shifting comp”.

STEP 3 – TV-INTERFERENCES

  1. Either you download the two striped images below or you create your own with an image editor software: Make sure the size of the images fit the size of your video project in After Effects (or are slightly bigger). Create a white background and overlay it evenly with thin black lines. Call this image “odd”. Open, invert and save a copy of this image as “even”.
  2. Import both images as seperate layers into your After Effects project (>File >Import >File).
  3. Duplicate the “shifting comp” layer and put all layers in the following order: (from bottom to top) “shifting comp” – “odd” – “shifting comp copy” – “even”.
  4. Add the “odd”-layer as “Luma-Key” to the “shifting comp”-layer (>Select “odd”-layer >Effect >Keying >Luma-Key).
  5. Switch off the “visibility” off this matte-layer (odd).
  6. Add the “even”-layer as “luma-key” to the “shifting comp copy”-layer (>Select “even”-layer >Effect >Keying >Luma-Key). Also switch off the “visibility” off this matte-layer (even).
  7. Slightly offset the “shifting comp”-layer horizontally (>Effect >Distort >Offset).
  8. Select all layers, create a pre-composition (>Composition >Pre-Composition) and call it “final comp”.
  9. However the footage doesn’t look very interfered until you shift the lines a bit: Import either the “even”- or “odd”-layer again and place it with drag’n’drop on top of all other layers.
  10. Add a multiplying blending mode to this layer (>Layer >Blending Mode >Multiply)
  11. Eventually set the opacity between 15 and 30 percent.

FINE TUNING

Optional you could add a horizontal Gaussian Blur to the “even”- and “odd”-layers (>Effect >Blur and Sharpen > Gaussian Blur).

streetwar_odd

streetwar_even