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Glitch effect

Time Machine

Time Machine is a glitch video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Every pixel sits at a different moment in the last 32 frames, so one frame holds about half a second at once.

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 Time Machine free All effects

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

The eye-in-triangle bent and stretched, its lower edge curving where parts of the frame show older moments — Time Machine, default settings

What Time Machine does

Keeps the last 32 frames, about half a second at 60 fps, and shows each part of the picture at a different age, so anything moving bends and stretches. Time map sets the layout (Rings from centre, Top to bottom, Left to right). Ripple sends waves of older time through it, Edge hardens the gradient into frozen slices, and Chroma puts red and blue at different moments.

Using Time Machine

Where it works: Performance or dance footage and slow camera moves, where a body smears into a curve of itself. Needs movement to show anything, so give it a clip rather than a still cover.
With the music: The ripple waves travel on the effect clock, set by Speed. B1 (kick) on Depth reaches further into the past on each kick, and a slow LFO on Ripple crossfades between a clean slit scan and travelling rings.
Starting point: Depth at three-quarters, Time map on Rings from centre, Ripple at a quarter, Chroma at a quarter, Edge at centre.

Controls

Depth: How far into the past the oldest pixels reach.
Time map: Which direction time runs across the frame.
Ripple: Sends waves of past time travelling across the frame.
Chroma: Puts each color channel at a different moment.
Edge: Soft time gradient through to hard cut-off slices.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Time Machine