What are VHS and analog video effects?

VHS effects replicate the visual characteristics of analog videotape -tracking errors, color bleeding, horizontal distortion, and signal noise. The aesthetic evokes 1980s-90s home video and has become a distinctive element of retro and vaporwave visual styles.

Authentic VHS artifacts include tracking lines (horizontal bands of distortion), rainbow fringing where colors separate at high-contrast edges, vertical hold issues causing the image to roll, and static noise. Head switching creates brief disruptions at frame boundaries. Tape degradation produces ghosting and generation loss.

Digital recreation uses plugins in After Effects, Premiere, or dedicated apps. Key elements include adding chromatic aberration, horizontal displacement that varies over time, scan line overlays, noise layers, and subtle color shifts toward oversaturated warm tones.

For authentic results, some artists process footage through actual VHS equipment -recording to tape and recapturing with deliberate tracking misadjustment. This produces genuine analog artifacts impossible to perfectly simulate digitally. Our VHS effects guide covers both digital simulation and hardware approaches.