Technique

Vhs Effects

Glitch art on VHS and analog video uses the faults, noise, and instability of tape and video electronics as the primary aesthetic. Instead of fighting dropouts and tracking errors, you design with them.

Kodak Moment VHS Animation

What is VHS glitch art?

Glitch art is the practice of using analog or digital errors - artifacts, bugs, distortions - as an intentional visual language in video and image-making. In the VHS / analog realm, those “errors” come from:

  • The physical magnetic tape (damage, wear, misalignment)
  • The signal path (cables, mixers, enhancers, converters)
  • The display chain (CRT feedback, sync loss, color drift)

This emerged from experimental video art and circuit bending cultures, where artists explored the material limits of video technology rather than hiding them.

How analog VHS video works (for glitching purposes)

You do not need full broadcast engineering theory, but a few basics help:

  • VHS records a composite video signal as magnetic patterns on tape.
  • That signal encodes luma (brightness), chroma (color), and sync (timing).
  • When tape or circuitry is disrupted, these components desynchronize or degrade, producing:
    • Horizontal tearing and jitter
    • Color bleeding and rainbow bands
    • Dropouts, noise, and tracking bars
    • Rolling, unstable frames

Analog gear expects a stable sync and proper voltage levels. Glitch art often intentionally breaks or destabilizes those expectations, sometimes to the edge of complete signal loss.

Core VHS / analog glitch techniques

1. Tape-based manipulation

Directly working on VHS cassettes is the most tactile entry point.

Common approaches:

  • Physical tape damage

    • Crumple, crease, or lightly sand the tape surface.
    • Introduces dropouts, streaks, and sudden bursts of noise when played back.

  • Tape splicing and reassembly

    • Cut and re-tape segments out of order or with gaps.
    • Causes jumps, black frames, sync hiccups.

  • Manual “tape riding”

    • Open the VCR and gently touch / drag the moving tape with a tool as it plays.
    • Produces live, responsive warping and tearing.

  • Tracking misalignment

    • Intentionally misadjust the tracking or use a badly aligned deck.
    • Creates classic horizontal noise bars and unstable image edges.

These methods are destructive: every pass through the deck can further alter the footage.

2. Circuit-bent and “dirty” video devices

Analog glitch often centers on abusing hardware not designed for art at all:

  • Old video enhancers, titlers, time-base correctors, mixers, converters can be modified (“circuit bent”) to expose unstable behaviors and glitch states.
  • Devices nicknamed “dirty video mixers” simply mix two composite sources without proper sync handling, causing collisions and distortions where signals overlap.

Typical behaviors you can coax out:

  • Sudden color inversion or saturation spikes
  • Image tearing when sources drift out of sync
  • Flickering overlays and ghost images
  • Rhythmic pulsing artifacts as controls are swept

Because these devices were never meant for this use, experimentation and documentation are thin, which is part of their appeal.

3. Camera and CRT feedback

Feedback is foundational for analog glitch aesthetics:

  • Point a camera at a CRT that is displaying that camera’s feed.
  • Slightly adjust angle, zoom, and brightness.
  • The image collapses into fractal tunnels, ripples, and recursive patterns.

You can insert glitch boxes, mixers, or enhancers before the CRT to shape the feedback’s color and geometry.

Many artists then re-record the CRT output back to VHS or capture it digitally for editing.

4. Hybrid analog–digital workflows

A practical modern approach:

  1. Edit digitally to arrange your base footage.
  2. Downscale the output to composite video and send it into analog gear.
  3. Route through:
    • Circuit-bent processors
    • VCRs and mixers
    • CRT feedback loops
  4. Re-capture with a capture card or a camera aimed at the CRT.

This gives you the control of digital timelines with the texture and unpredictability of analog errors.

Tools and setup essentials

At minimum:

  • A VHS VCR (ideally 2 if you want tape-to-tape).
  • One or more glitch-capable devices (enhancer, bent titler, dirty mixer, etc.).
  • A CRT television or monitor for authentic analog display.
  • A way to capture: another VCR, a digital capture device, or a camera filming the CRT.

From there you can expand into:

  • Multiple mixers for complex routing
  • Dedicated analog video synths
  • Sync generators / TBCs to stabilize the most extreme signals

Practical tips for working with VHS glitches

  • Document your signal path. Take notes or photos of how gear is chained when you hit a particularly good look; analog setups are easy to forget or bump out of alignment.
  • Work in passes. Record long continuous runs of improvisation instead of chasing one “perfect” moment live. Review later and cut out the best sections.
  • Treat hardware gently. You are stressing circuits but avoid shorting power rails or overheating devices. Circuit bending should be researched and done carefully, not blindly.
  • Control your chaos. Reserve one “clean” path so you can blend stable imagery with heavy glitch, rather than turning everything into unreadable noise.
  • Embrace degradation. Re-recording from tape to tape or repeatedly filming a CRT compounds analog texture in a way no plugin can fully match.

VHS glitch art thrives where control meets failure: learn how composite video is “supposed” to behave, then push each component until it falls apart in ways you can play like an instrument.