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> the physical qualities of VHS offer much more than the 0s and 1s carried on an electron stream directly to televisions that's the money quote. maybe watching

> the physical qualities of VHS offer much more than the 0s and 1s carried on an electron stream directly to televisions that's the money quote. maybe watching videos with tracking issues gives the whole experience an ambient warmness missing from evil computers.

rzzzt 11y ago
This made me wonder if there are any plugins that would simulate the visual artifacts of head tracking, limited bandwidth, etc. for video playback, the same way as there are effect plugins for music production which approximate the characteristics of tube amps, record players and tape decks.
- grubles 11y ago
  There is an iOS app called Glitché[0] that simulates the VHS effect for images. Video is planned. [0] http://glitche.com/ http://glitche.com/
  - krallja 11y ago
    VHS Camcorder[0] has been making the rounds on my Instagram feed. I fear $3.99 is a bit too steep for a silly video filter. [0]: https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-your-v.html https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-yo...
- pdkl95 11y ago
  While I haven't heard of any project that emulated the tape-specific effects of VHS, the video game emulation community has done a lot of work on emulating NTSC. For example, Blargg's NTSC libraries[1] simulate composite and s-video derived gamma curves, blur, marginal horizontal-sync, color bleeding and fringing, and more. The color "correction" really helps the look of old game systems that were designed for NTSC. I've seen GLSL post-process filters for MAME (or was it a MAME derivative?), too. Some of those even simulated stuff like the curved surface of a CRT. Also, there is xscreensaver's "xanalogtv" hack. I wonder how hard it would be to modify one of these to include bad tracking. side note: I believe MAME has (or had?) a mode that would slowly accumulate some of "brightness" from any saturated pixel that stayed the same for a large numbe4r of frames. This data was saved globally, so if you played certain old games that were very static, you would get "monitor burn" after images. [1] http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html
- nitrogen 11y ago
  The Kung Fury short films have what appears to be a mock head tracking offset effect. Maybe they used an actual VCR, or faked it manually, though.
WalterBright 11y ago
I've found that older VHS tapes often suffer from losing the sync signals, making the display shiver and bend. This can be corrected somewhat with a device called a Time Base Corrector. One can collect the tapes and boxes, but being able to play the tapes is inevitably going away. If you've got a video projector, watching even a good quality VHS tape that way is just awful (blotchy, fuzzy, smeary). I'm all for the preservation of history, but I have no desire to handle VHS tapes ever again, and will always prefer higher res formats.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Remember that in the heyday of VHS, a "big" TV was maybe 19", and VHS picture looked just fine on those.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    Not really just fine. I went to the movies a lot because the TV was so lousy. These days, the HD picture is so good I no longer go to the movies.

rzzzt 11y ago

This made me wonder if there are any plugins that would simulate the visual artifacts of head tracking, limited bandwidth, etc. for video playback, the same way as there are effect plugins for music production which approximate the characteristics of tube amps, record players and tape decks.

grubles 11y ago
There is an iOS app called Glitché[0] that simulates the VHS effect for images. Video is planned. [0] http://glitche.com/ http://glitche.com/
- krallja 11y ago
  VHS Camcorder[0] has been making the rounds on my Instagram feed. I fear $3.99 is a bit too steep for a silly video filter. [0]: https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-your-v.html https://boingboing.net/2015/08/21/vhs-camcorder-app-makes-yo...
pdkl95 11y ago
While I haven't heard of any project that emulated the tape-specific effects of VHS, the video game emulation community has done a lot of work on emulating NTSC. For example, Blargg's NTSC libraries[1] simulate composite and s-video derived gamma curves, blur, marginal horizontal-sync, color bleeding and fringing, and more. The color "correction" really helps the look of old game systems that were designed for NTSC. I've seen GLSL post-process filters for MAME (or was it a MAME derivative?), too. Some of those even simulated stuff like the curved surface of a CRT. Also, there is xscreensaver's "xanalogtv" hack. I wonder how hard it would be to modify one of these to include bad tracking. side note: I believe MAME has (or had?) a mode that would slowly accumulate some of "brightness" from any saturated pixel that stayed the same for a large numbe4r of frames. This data was saved globally, so if you played certain old games that were very static, you would get "monitor burn" after images. [1] http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html
nitrogen 11y ago
The Kung Fury short films have what appears to be a mock head tracking offset effect. Maybe they used an actual VCR, or faked it manually, though.

WalterBright 11y ago

I've found that older VHS tapes often suffer from losing the sync signals, making the display shiver and bend. This can be corrected somewhat with a device called a Time Base Corrector. One can collect the tapes and boxes, but being able to play the tapes is inevitably going away. If you've got a video projector, watching even a good quality VHS tape that way is just awful (blotchy, fuzzy, smeary). I'm all for the preservation of history, but I have no desire to handle VHS tapes ever again, and will always prefer higher res formats.

ams6110 11y ago
Remember that in the heyday of VHS, a "big" TV was maybe 19", and VHS picture looked just fine on those.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  Not really just fine. I went to the movies a lot because the TV was so lousy. These days, the HD picture is so good I no longer go to the movies.