VHS Overlay

Everything below can be changed without touching the animation. Hand the list to an agent, or edit the values at the bottom of the component file.

• Stamp

  stamp · string

  The camcorder date burned into the lower right corner, set in the tape's mono face and always in capitals, the way 90s camcorders printed it: month, day, year. Use the real date the footage was shot for a flashback, or any date you want the clip to feel like. Leave it empty to hide the stamp.

  now: JUN 14 1997

• Show play

  showPlay · boolean

  Show the VCR's PLAY readout and its triangle in the top left, as if the tape has just been put in. Turn it off when the clip should feel like the camera's own footage rather than a tape being played back.

  now: true

• Tracking

  tracking · number

  How bad the tracking is, 0 to 1: the height of the rolling band, how far the picture tears sideways inside it and how much snow it carries. 0 is a perfectly tracked tape with no band, around 0.6 is a worn rental, 1 is a tape that needs somebody to turn the tracking knob.

  now: 0.6

• Noise

  noise · number

  Tape noise, 0 to 1: the fine horizontal grain crawling over the picture and the white dropout streaks that flick across it. 0 is a clean first copy, around 0.25 a home recording played a few dozen times with the picture still clear, 0.6 and up a copy of a copy where the grain starts to compete with the picture.

  now: 0.25

• Stage

  stage · boolean

  Draw a stand-in home video under the effect, a backyard birthday on a summer afternoon, so the look can be judged on a picture. Turn it off, with `ground` off, to export the tape look alone on a transparent background for your own footage. The sideways tear and the colour fringing need a picture to act on, so over your own clip they show on the readouts and in the band rather than on your footage.

  now: true

• Ground

  ground · boolean

  Fill the picture with the brand's ground colour when the stand-in scene is off. Off leaves the picture transparent, which is what you want for laying the tape look over your own footage. The soft corners are always painted.

  now: false

• Brand

  brand · string

  Brand token id, one of the keys of BRANDS. Its ground colour fills the soft-cornered surround the tape picture sits in, its mono face sets the date and the PLAY readout, and its two accents colour the balloons, bunting and tablecloth of the stand-in party.

  now: slate