Skip to content

Glitch effect

RGB Matrix Mixer

RGB Matrix Mixer is a glitch video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Patches each colour channel into the others against a delayed copy, with the nonlinear blends an analog mixer offers.

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.

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines
Source
The eye-in-triangle recoloured in dark purple, brick red and sea green, like an overdriven video mixer
RGB Matrix Mixer, default settings

What RGB Matrix Mixer does

Routes each colour channel into its neighbours, combines that with the live picture through a mixer's arithmetic, and drives the result past white. At the default Difference blend the art turns dark purple, red and sea green. Cross and Skew set how channels feed each other, Delay pulls the patched copy from up to 0.8 seconds back, and Overflow picks Clamp, Wrap or Fold.

Using RGB Matrix Mixer

Where it works
Recolouring footage further than a grade will go, since Wrap and Fold turn blown highlights into contour bands. With Delay raised, movement shows up as colour edges, which gives a pack loop an analogue video-synth feel.
With the music
B3 (bass body) on Drive pushes more of the picture into the Wrap or Fold bands on each bass note. An LFO on Skew rolls the channel routing round the colour ring across a phrase.
Starting point
Delay hard left, Cross at centre, Skew at a quarter, Blend on Difference, Feed at centre, Drive at a quarter, Overflow on Fold.

Controls

Delay
How far back the second channel comes from. At zero it is this frame, so the matrix becomes pure channel patching.
Cross
How much each channel feeds the others rather than itself.
Skew
Which way the cross-feed leans around the channel ring.
Blend
The arithmetic between the two channels.
Feed
How hard the patched channel is driven into the picture.
Drive
Gain before the overflow stage.
Overflow
What happens to signal driven past white.

Pairs well with RGB Matrix Mixer