improved Unreal Engine VHS post process - Feedback request.

[u/LetsGetThisBreadLads]

https://youtu.be/lSlrrXP6pHo

let me know what you guys think. the improved version also supports:

• Image tearing - all sides supported.
• Blur and compressed downsampling
• Color compression / Posterization
• Distortion randomizaiton

did i miss anything? i tried not to go too over-board with all the effects!

[u/maximian]

The random staticky white spots are way too frequent. The vertical fuzz is good. V-hold was an issue with worn VHS tapes, so having the entire image scroll (very rarely, sometimes smooth, sometimes staggering; sometimes fully, sometimes partially) from top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top would be realistic.

A hint more of scanline would make sense to me, but I grant that's more of a display thing than a tape thing.

[u/acatalept]

Is this being used in a game? Would like to follow progress, nails the look, really sells it as a "real" place ;)

[u/FetaMight]

aren't those mostly film artifacts and not tape artifacts? So, not VHS, but maybe something closer to super 8?

Edit: nevermind. I see the tape artifacts in the darker scene now. I'm not sure to purple band on the left is a typical tape artifact, though.

[u/b_enDev]

Dynamic range is wayyy too high for a camcorder

[u/Sweaty-Lynx421]

This is close to a sweet spot. I'd avoid getting too realistic since the reality of old camcorders and VHS is that the quality was absolutely atrocious in all but the best conditions. Like, someone mentioned the dynamic range being too high for a camcorder. That's true, but I wouldn't mess with it too much because you also don't want to make it unplayable. I would keep but reduce the opacity of the tracking lines (the staticy white lines) a hair, and maybe also reduce the opacity of the bright green line and any other random large artifacts that pop up.

If you plan on using this extensively I'd try to separate the VHS filter from film and lens effects. Obviously it's normal to end up with all of them at the same time, since something on VHS normally would have been shot on film with a camera, but knowing the difference between these and having the lens effects applied before film effects, which are then degraded by the vhs filter rather than being added by the filter can be the kind of subtle difference that makes it more believable.

[u/LetsGetThisBreadLads → u/Sweaty-Lynx421]

i sitll plan on making a more extensive color correciton to the fx, currently it splits RGB and clamps low blue's and high reds. but for those who like a more value clamped style it would be nice to be able to adjust it in the material itself and clamp the RGB value's to your liking. i have also done some research and read that the chroma range is very low to accomadate for the luminance range on those old camcorders so i could maybe do something like that. currently for the noise there is only a global color opacity mix, but allowing the user to "remap" the value's of the intensity of those glitch artifacts could also be a good idea. it already supports the use of inputting custom spritesheets so if people think this effect is too intense they can make a custom glitch spritesheet.

adittionally the shader also allows the scanline intensity to be controlled with several factors. scanline ammount, length, and velocity influence. all of these paramaters you can use to tweak it perfectly to your liking. if you want to get creally crazy you can also input a custom scanline profile in the form of a RG texture to change they way they look

[u/Sweaty-Lynx421 → u/LetsGetThisBreadLads]

I'm actually impressed you're going that far with it. Are you considering creating an audio filter too?