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Pulse & motion effect

Motion Push

Motion Push is a beat-reactive motion effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. The picture warps along its own measured motion, smearing where things move.

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 Motion Push free All effects

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

The eye-in-triangle illustration almost untouched, since a still frame has no motion to push — Motion Push, default settings

What Motion Push does

Drags the picture along its own measured motion, so a moving hand or head smears in the direction it travels while still areas stay put. On a still image nothing happens, which is why the card looks untouched. Push sets how far pixels drag, Smear adds a directional blur, Split peels red and blue apart along the vector, and Gate stops camera noise from making a still shot crawl.

Using Motion Push

Where it works: Adds weight to movement in dance footage, a live camera on the booth or a crowd shot, since only what moves gets pulled. Faces and hands stretch like long exposures, which suits a slow-motion Reel.
With the music: Motion drives it, not the track. B1 (kick) on Push stretches the smear harder on each kick, and B8 (hats) on Split adds a colour tear with the hi-hats.
Starting point: Push centre, Smear three-quarters, Split a quarter, Gate centre, Sense centre, then raise Gate if the background crawls.

Controls

Push: How far the measured vectors drag the picture.
Smear: Directional blur length along the vector.
Split: Color channel separation along the vector.
Sense: How little texture counts as motion worth pushing.
Gate: Speed floor. Raise it to stop a still frame breathing on sensor noise.

Pairs well with Motion Push