Skip to content

Pulse & motion effect

Crowd Heat Waves

Crowd Heat Waves is a beat-reactive motion effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Vertical heat distortion bands like air over stage lights.

Runs live on video, images, a camera or generated art. Stack it with any other effect, and route LFOs, envelopes or any of ten audio bands to its controls so it moves with the music.

Try Crowd Heat Waves free All effects

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines — Source

The eye-in-triangle art, upper half broken into vertical strips wobbling sideways, the bottom untouched — Crowd Heat Waves, default settings

What Crowd Heat Waves does

Splits the frame into about two dozen vertical columns, each wobbling sideways on its own phase, with noise rising up through them like air over lamps. The bottom of the frame stays almost still and the shimmer builds toward the top, where hot spots pick up an orange glow. Bands sets the column count, Warp the wobble, Glow the orange.

Using Crowd Heat Waves

Where it works: Adds heat haze over stage footage or a crowd shot without hiding the subject, since the base of the frame stays clean. Low Warp over a still cover gives a slow shimmer for a looping post.
With the music: The shimmer runs on the clock alone. B3 (bass body) on Warp makes the air churn with the bassline, and B9 (air) on Glow lets the orange flare with the top end.
Starting point: Bands centre, Warp a quarter, Glow three-quarters, with the brightest lights sitting near the top of the frame.

Controls

Bands: Heat column band count.
Warp: UV displacement strength.
Glow: Hot air orange add strength.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Crowd Heat Waves