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Glitch effect

Quantum Smear

Quantum Smear is a glitch video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Random horizontal line displacement with panicked VHS saturation.

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 Quantum Smear free All effects

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

The eye-in-triangle shredded into thin shifted horizontal lines, oversaturated in red, blue and green — Quantum Smear, default settings

What Quantum Smear does

Slices the frame into thin lines and, eighteen times a second at default Speed, throws about half of them sideways by random amounts, so the image shreds into flickering strips. Red and blue split unevenly on every line, and Panic crushes saturation toward overload. Next to Glitch Blocks the lines are thinner, more of them move at once, and the colour runs louder.

Using Quantum Smear

Where it works: Drops and breakdown hits, where the frame should look like it's losing sync entirely. Too busy to hold for long, so keep it to a few bars in a Reel or a short burst live.
With the music: An Envelope triggered by the beat on Smear keeps the frame intact between hits and shreds it on each one. B8 (hats) on Lines changes the slice thickness with the hi-hats.
Starting point: Lines at centre, Smear at a quarter, Panic at a quarter, Direction on Rows, then ride Smear up into the drop.

Controls

Lines: Scan-line density for displacement bands.
Smear: Horizontal burst offset and chroma split.
Panic: Saturation crush toward VHS overload.
Direction: Which way the burst lines are cut, and which way they tear.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Quantum Smear