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Glitch effect

Glitch Blocks

Glitch Blocks is a glitch video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Horizontal slice offsets, scanlines, and digital noise.

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 Glitch Blocks free All effects

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

The eye-in-triangle cut into horizontal slabs, several shifted sideways, with scanlines and red-cyan fringes — Glitch Blocks, default settings

What Glitch Blocks does

Cuts the frame into slabs, from 18 up to 72 as Blocks rises, and at default Speed throws a random few of them sideways twelve times a second. Slice sets how far they jump. Detail adds grit and a red and blue fringe on the torn edges, while faint scanlines follow the cuts whatever it's set to. Direction switches between Rows, Columns and Rings that tear outward from the centre.

Using Glitch Blocks

Where it works: Short, hard cuts in a Reel or a logo sting, where a few torn slabs read as a broken signal and most of the frame stays intact. With Slice kept low it also works as quiet texture under a slow intro.
With the music: The tears jitter on their own clock rather than the beat. Put B1 (kick) on Slice so the slabs only jump hard on kicks, and a beat-triggered Envelope on Blocks to snap the cuts finer at each hit.
Starting point: Blocks at a quarter, Slice at centre, Detail at a quarter, Direction on Rows, then push Slice up until the triangle's edges split.

Controls

Blocks: Horizontal block frequency.
Slice: Row slice displacement strength.
Detail: Scanline, noise, and RGB fringe.
Direction: Which way the slices are cut, and which way they slide.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Glitch Blocks