Guide · Updated
This VHS filter plays your video or photo back as if from a VHS tape: soft sideways, with color that runs past edges, streaky tape noise and the deck’s sharpening, and for video the muffled, hissy sound of the tape’s audio track. Choose a file above; it runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
It is built from the format’s own limits, each from a spec or a source below, not from a costume: no REC, no PLAY, no timecode and no random glitches, none of which were on the tape. Clack, whose site this is, doesn’t make VHS; it is a film camera app for Android.
01 · Steps
How to make a video look like VHS
- Choose a video or photo. An MP4, MOV or WebM video, or a JPEG, PNG or WebP photo, from your phone or computer. It is read in your browser and never uploaded.
- Set the tape. Tape wear sets the noise, from a new tape to one played or copied many times. Head switching shows or hides the torn lines at the bottom edge.
- Make the video. A video shows one frame to set it by. Make the VHS video runs every frame and the sound through the model, on your device, with a progress bar; up to one minute.
- Download. An MP4 of the video, or a JPEG of the photo, 480 lines tall.
02 · The model
What VHS does to a picture
VHS recorded each line of the TV picture as a signal in time, so nearly everything it does happens along the line, sideways. The filter does each of these:
| Limit | VHS | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Lines | 480 | NTSC VHS records the TV picture’s own lines: 525, about 480 of them picture. Your picture is made 480 lines tall, its shape kept. |
| Detail | 240 TV lines | About 3 MHz of brightness signal gives 240 lines of detail across a width equal to the picture’s height, about 333 pixels across a 4:3 line. Half the vertical detail: VHS is soft sideways. |
| Color | A tenth of that | Color gets about 300 kHz against brightness’s 3 MHz: about 24 lines, some 40 pixels across a 4:3 line. Color runs past edges sideways. |
| Color delay | 2 px late | Color arrives a little after brightness, so it sits to the right of edges. Decks were meant to line them up and often didn’t quite; how far is our choice. |
| Tape noise | 45 dB, more with wear | A deck’s video signal-to-noise ratio in standard play. The noise is in the signal along the line, so it is streaked sideways: short streaks in brightness, long smears in color. |
| Sharpening | A soft halo | Decks sharpened the picture on playback (the picture control). An unsharp mask along the line; its width and strength are our choice. |
| Head switching | The last 6 lines | Where the deck changes from one video head to the other, the bottom lines come out shifted and noisy, on every tape. A TV hid them; a capture shows them. Optional. |
| Frames | 29.97 a second | NTSC’s rate. Video is made at it; faster video drops frames, slower repeats them. |
| Sound | 100 Hz–10 kHz, 42 dB | The linear audio track every deck plays: mono, a narrow band, and hiss 42 dB under the sound. Wear adds hiss as it adds picture noise. |
The numbers are NTSC VHS in standard play: 480 lines, 240 lines of detail, 3 MHz and 300 kHz, the linear track’s 100 Hz to 10 kHz and 42 dB from Wikipedia’s VHS article; 45 dB from a JVC deck’s specifications. Our arithmetic: 240 TV lines are 120 light and dark pairs across a width equal to the picture’s height, a quarter of a cycle per pixel at 480 lines; the filter passes half the contrast there, which comes to Wikipedia’s 333 pixels across a 4:3 line, and color gets a tenth of it. The color delay, the sharpening, the head switching’s size, how much wear adds (up to 15 dB) and noise in the color at the same level as in brightness are our choices, not measurements.
03 · Left out
What it doesn’t do, and why
- No REC, PLAY, battery or timecode. They were on the camcorder’s or the VCR’s screen, not on the tape. A camcorder recorded the date only if you turned it on.
- No tracking bars or glitches. They come from a damaged tape or a deck out of alignment, not from every tape; added at random they are decoration. Head switching happens on every tape, so it is in.
- No crop to 4:3. VHS was 4:3, but cropping a phone’s tall video to 4:3 would throw away most of it. Detail is counted per picture height, so the tape’s detail is the same at any shape; crop first if you want the TV’s frame.
- No interlace. VHS played 60 half-pictures a second; the filter makes whole frames at 29.97 a second, as a deinterlaced capture shows a tape.
- Standard play only. The slower LP and EP speeds are softer and noisier still, but we found no numbers good enough to model them. PAL (576 lines, 25 frames) isn’t modeled either.
04 · By hand
How to make a VHS effect in Premiere, After Effects or CapCut
The same limits work in any editor that can blur sideways and blend by color:
- Scale the clip to 480 pixels tall (640 × 480 for 4:3, 854 × 480 for 16:9).
- Blur it sideways only, about a pixel: Gaussian Blur with Blur Dimensions set to Horizontal, in Premiere and After Effects alike.
- Duplicate the clip on top, blur the copy sideways about 15 pixels, move it 2 pixels to the right and set its blend mode to Color: brightness stays sharp, color smears.
- Add a little noise and blur it sideways too, so it streaks; then sharpen lightly (Unsharp Mask).
- For the sound: mono, a high-pass at 100 Hz, a low-pass at 10 kHz and a little hiss.
Phone editors such as CapCut have no sideways blur by color, so the steps don’t carry over: run the clip through the filter above first, then edit the MP4 it gives you. Any REC or timecode overlay you want goes on top in the editor, as text.
05 · Clack
Clack doesn’t make VHS
Clack is a film camera app for Android: eight films, each modeled from its data sheet, and the Digicam, a digital compact around 2000 that also films. There is no VHS in it and none planned. If you came for an old look on a photo, try the film filter or the digicam filter; for one straight from the camera, the app.
Join the list to hear when Clack is on Google Play.
Questions
- What is a VHS filter?
- A filter that makes video or a photo look as if it was played from a VHS tape: soft, with color that smears sideways past edges, streaky noise and muffled, hissy sound. VHS was the home video tape from the late 1970s to the 2000s.
- Does it add REC, PLAY or a timecode?
- No. Those were never on the tape: REC and the battery were in the camcorder’s viewfinder, PLAY was the VCR’s own display on the TV. This filter makes what the tape itself did to the picture and sound. If you want the overlay, add it as text in your editor.
- Does the VHS filter work on video?
- Yes. Choose an MP4, MOV or WebM up to a minute long (longer ones are cut at one minute). Your browser decodes it, runs every frame and the sound through the model and saves an MP4. It needs WebCodecs: current Chrome, Edge and Safari, and Firefox on a computer.
- What format is the video?
- An MP4 with H.264 video and AAC sound where your browser can encode them, as Chrome and Edge can. Where it cannot encode AAC, the sound is Opus; where it cannot encode H.264, the video is a WebM. The tool says what it made.
- Why is it only 480 lines?
- That is VHS: NTSC’s 480 lines of picture, and only about 240 lines of detail across. A larger file would hold nothing more; enlarge it in your editor if you need to.
- Does Clack make VHS?
- No. Clack is a film camera app for Android: films, and the Digicam, a 2000s digital compact. This VHS filter is a free tool on its site, nothing more.
- Is my video uploaded?
- No. It is decoded, drawn and encoded by your browser, on your device; the page sends nothing anywhere.
- Is the VHS filter free?
- Yes. No sign-up and no watermark; what you make is yours.
Sources
- Wikipedia, VHS (lines, bandwidth, resolution, linear audio)
- JVC HR-J631T, specifications (240 lines, 45 dB)
- JVC HR-XVC37U, picture control
- AV Artifact Atlas, head switching noise
- AV Artifact Atlas, Y/C delay error
Wikipedia’s VHS figures cite Poynton, Digital Video and HDTV (2003), Taylor and others, DVD Demystified (2006), and Goldwasser, “VCRs”, Poptronics (2000). Video is read and written with Mediabunny, in your browser.