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Light & lasers effect

Oscilloscope Trails

Oscilloscope Trails is a neon and laser effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Glowing waveform scanlines with temporal shimmer.

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 Oscilloscope Trails 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 with two glowing sine waveforms across its middle, green on the left fading to magenta — Oscilloscope Trails, default settings

What Oscilloscope Trails does

Draws two glowing waveforms across the middle of the frame, each a sum of sines that undulate over time, shading from green on the left to magenta on the right. The traces are generated, not read from the audio. Line sets their glow, Scan adds a faint scanline shimmer to the picture, and Trail feeds a trace of the previous frame along the lines.

Using Oscilloscope Trails

Where it works: Synth-heavy and electro sets, lyric videos where a waveform should sit behind the words, and Reel intros that want a lab-bench look without covering the subject beyond a band across the middle.
With the music: The waves move on their own clock, not the track. To tie them to the music, send B3 bass body to Line so the traces flare on each bass note, and B8 hats to Scan for shimmer on the hats.
Starting point: Line at three-quarters, Scan at a quarter, Trail at centre, so the two traces read clearly without washing out the picture.

Controls

Line: Waveform line glow strength.
Scan: Vertical scan shimmer on the base image.
Trail: Delayed-frame trail add strength.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Oscilloscope Trails