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Pulse & motion effect

Seismic Shear

Seismic Shear is a beat-reactive motion effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Diagonal shear and tear with chroma. Map shear to B2/B3; tear and chroma to B1 for snappy hits.

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 Seismic Shear 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 wavy sideways ripples along each edge, fringed red and cyan — Seismic Shear, default settings

What Seismic Shear does

Bends every row sideways along a smooth sine wave so edges wobble like a warped print, then splits red and blue along the same direction. There's no clock, but the wave's frequency and phase both follow intensity, so as the level rises the ripple rolls through the rows. Tear sets the wobble, Chroma the split, Shear leans the whole frame (slight at centre, hard at the right end), Direction rows or columns.

Using Seismic Shear

Where it works: Softer than a slice effect because the tear is a continuous wave with no hard breaks, which suits vocal breakdowns and rolling basslines. Over type it reads as a tremor rather than damage.
With the music: It waits for routing. B1 (kick) on Tear sends a tremor through the rows on each kick, and B7 (snare) on Chroma splits the colour on the snare.
Starting point: Tear three-quarters, Chroma centre, Shear centre, Direction on Up and down, then send B1 to Tear.

Controls

Shear: Diagonal lean of the whole frame. Centre is the authored slight tilt, right leans it hard.
Tear: Row-modulated horizontal tear offset.
Chroma: RGB sampling split after warp.
Direction: Which way the shear and the tear run.

Pairs well with Seismic Shear