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Transport effect

Freeze

Freeze is a beat loop effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Grabs a frame on the bar and holds it, then lets the picture run again.

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 Freeze free All effects

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

The eye-in-triangle held as a frozen frame, slightly enlarged and tilted off centre — Freeze, default settings

What Freeze does

Grabs a frame each time a window on the beat grid turns over and holds it, then cuts or dissolves back to the live picture before the next grab. Grab sets the window from half a beat to two bars, Hold how much of it stays frozen, Release cut versus dissolve. Drift slowly zooms into the held frame, and Ghost leaves some of it over the live picture.

Using Freeze

Where it works: Stutter edits on footage and live sets where a pause on the bar should hit like a hand-made cut. In a Reel, a dancer stops dead on each downbeat and moves again between.
With the music: Locked to the track's beat grid already, and free-running at 120 BPM without one. MIDI-map Hold to a fader for hand-played freezes, or put B1 (kick) on Ghost so each kick leaves a trace of the held frame.
Starting point: Grab at centre, Hold at centre, Release at a quarter, Drift at a quarter, Ghost hard left.

Controls

Grab: How often a new frame is taken, from half a beat to two bars.
Hold: How much of that window the frame stays frozen for.
Release: Whether the picture cuts back in or dissolves back in.
Drift: Creep on the held frame, so a long hold does not read as a dropped feed.
Ghost: How much of the held frame stays over the live one after the release.

Pairs well with Freeze