--- title: "VHS Filter for Video – Free Online | colorgrade.video" description: "Make a video look like an old VHS tape: colour bleed, soft detail, scanlines, tracking noise and a date stamp. Preview live, export MP4. Free, no upload." url: https://colorgrade.video/vhs-filter --- Free · runs in your browser # VHS Filter for Video Real tape emulation, not just a colour preset: smeared colour, soft lines, tracking wobble, head-switching noise and a ticking camcorder date stamp, previewed on your clip and exported as MP4. To make a video look like VHS, soften the picture sideways, blur and smear the colour much more than the brightness, add line jitter and noise, darken every other line, and frame it 4:3\. Open a clip above and the studio starts with the **VHS** look, which does all of that at once; the picture moves like tape because every flicker is tied to the video’s own time. The **VHS & tape** chip in **All looks** holds eight more, from the light **Clean Deck** to **Worn Tape** with dropouts and a rolling crease. Each part of the effect has its own slider in the **VHS tape** section of the **Creative** panel, and **Date stamp** burns in a camcorder clock that ticks as the video plays. Everything runs in your browser and the clip never leaves your device. If you only want the faded colour of the period without tape damage, the [vintage video filter](https://colorgrade.video/vintage-video-filter) is the gentler option, and the [film look](https://colorgrade.video/film-look) covers grain and halation from celluloid rather than tape. Video guide ## VHS Filter for Video: Tape Looks, Tracking and a Date Stamp Duration: 0:42 Your browser can't play this video. [Download the MP4](https://colorgrade.video/media/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp/video.mp4) or read the[full transcript](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp). Chapters 1. [ Play from 0:00 The VHS look ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=0) 2. [ Play from 0:10 Tape looks ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=10) 3. [ Play from 0:20 Tune the tape ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=20) 4. [ Play from 0:29 Date stamp ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=29) 5. [ Play from 0:33 Before and after ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=33) 6. [ Play from 0:40 Try it yourself ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp#t=40) English captions [Watch page and full transcript ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/vhs-filter-tape-looks-and-date-stamp) ## How to add a VHS filter to a video 1. ### Open your clip Choose **Open video or photo** (**Ctrl/Cmd+O**) or drop a file on the page. The studio opens with the **VHS** look applied, so you see the tape effect on your own footage straight away. 2. ### Pick a tape look The quick picks switch to the tape looks: try **Camcorder 1995** for a home video with a date stamp, **Rental Copy** for a softer, dubbed tape or **Tracking Error** for a damaged one. **Intensity** scales the whole effect. 3. ### Tune the tape Open **Creative** and the **VHS tape** section: raise **Colour bleed**, **Tracking** or **Tape noise**, switch **4:3 frame** on or off, and press **New tape** to move the jitter and dropouts somewhere else. 4. ### Add the date stamp In **Date stamp**, set **Show** to **Date**, **Time** or **Both**, then choose the **Date**, **Start time**, **Position** and **Colour**. **On-screen text** adds **PLAY ▶** or a blinking **● REC**. 5. ### Export the video Choose **Export** (**Ctrl/Cmd+Enter**), then **Export video**. Every frame is rebuilt on your device with the same tape pattern you saw in the preview, and **Download video** saves the MP4. ## What makes footage look like VHS VHS has a recognisable look because of how a home video recorder stored the picture. Each trait below is a consequence of the format, and each has its own control in the **VHS tape** section. ### Soft detail: about 240 lines across the picture A VHS recorder kept roughly 240 lines of horizontal detail per picture height, against well over a thousand in a modern 1080p file. Fine texture such as hair, foliage and text blurs sideways, while vertical detail is limited by the 480 or so visible lines of the TV picture. **Softness** filters the brightness along each line and snaps the picture to 480 tape lines, then adds the faint bright halo that a recorder’s sharpening circuit left beside edges. ### Colour bleed: colour recorded at a fraction of the detail VHS records colour separately from brightness, on a low-frequency carrier with only a few hundred kilohertz of bandwidth, roughly a sixth of what brightness gets. Colour therefore spreads well past the edges of objects and trails to the right of them, which is why a red jumper on tape seems to glow beyond its outline. **Colour bleed** blurs the colour signal far more than the brightness and smears it rightwards with an exponential tail, the same direction as a real recorder. ### Head-switching noise and tracking The tape is read by heads on a spinning drum, and the playback switches from one head to the other a few lines before the end of each field. On a CRT that ragged band was hidden by overscan; in a digital transfer it shows as a torn, noisy strip along the bottom of the frame. **Head-switching noise** recreates it. When the heads don’t follow the recorded tracks precisely, lines wobble sideways, a band of noise rolls through the picture and the frame occasionally drops a line; **Tracking** does all three, more of each as you raise it. ### Scanlines, noise, dropouts and creases **Scanlines** darkens every other tape line and nudges odd and even lines apart, like the two fields of an interlaced picture. **Tape noise** adds the horizontally stretched grain and blotchy colour noise of a weak signal. **Dropouts** are short white streaks where the magnetic coating was damaged or dusty, and **Tape crease** sends a band of distortion through the frame every few seconds, as a crinkled stretch of tape passes the heads. ### The 4:3 frame Almost everything recorded on VHS was 4:3\. **4:3 frame** keeps the centre of your picture and puts black bars at the sides of a widescreen clip (or above and below a tall phone video). The file keeps its original shape, so it still fits the platform you post to; the effect, the noise and the date stamp all sit inside the 4:3 picture. ## Camcorder date stamp Many home camcorders could burn the date and time from their own clock into the recording, usually in a bottom corner in blocky white or amber characters. **Date stamp** draws the same kind of dot-matrix text, and because it is added before the tape effects, it bleeds, jitters and catches the noise like the rest of the picture instead of floating on top. * **Show**: **Date**, **Time** or **Both**. The clock starts at **Start time** and runs with the video, so the seconds tick during playback and in the export. * **Date style**: JUN. 14 1996, 14.06.1996 or 1996.06.14\. **Clock**: **12-hour** (shown as AM or PM) or **24-hour**. * **Position**: any corner. **Colour**: **White** or **Amber**. * **On-screen text**: **PLAY ▶** in the top corner like a VCR’s display, or **● REC** with a blinking dot like a camcorder viewfinder. The stamp is one setting for the whole grade, so it stays when you try another look. **Camcorder 1995** and **Holiday Tape** switch it on for you if it is off. ## VHS, Video8, MiniDV or film? “Old home video” covers several formats, and they don’t look alike. Choosing the right one makes the result more convincing. * VHS and VHS-C (1980s to early 2000s): the softest of the lot, with strong colour bleed, noise and tracking faults. Use **VHS**, **Rental Copy** or **Worn Tape**. * Video8 and Hi8 camcorders: similar tape artefacts, but Hi8 holds noticeably more detail. Use **Camcorder 1995** and lower **Softness**, or start from **Clean Deck**. * MiniDV and early digital camcorders (from the mid-1990s): sharp, clean and digital, with no colour bleed. A cool, contrasty colour grade such as **Early Digicam** in the **Vintage** chip fits better than any tape effect. * Super 8 and 8 mm film: grain, warm faded colour and a soft vignette, but no scanlines. That is **Home Movie 8mm** on the [vintage video filter](https://colorgrade.video/vintage-video-filter) page. ## On iPhone, Android and photos There’s nothing to install: the page works in Safari and Chrome on a phone, with the panels in a bar along the bottom. A phone renders every frame itself, so a long 4K clip takes a while to export; choose a smaller **Size** in **Export** for a quicker, softer file, which suits the VHS look anyway. Use **Share** to send the result to your photo library. Photos open too. A VHS effect on a JPG, PNG or WebP image exports as a still with the same softness, colour bleed and date stamp, which is a quick way to make a tape-style cover image for a video. ## What it doesn’t do * Sound is passed through untouched: there is no tape hiss, wow or flutter. * Scanlines and the field offset are drawn on each frame; the clip isn’t converted to interlaced video, and the frame rate stays the same. * It is an emulation built from the traits above, not a simulation of the full analogue signal, so extreme settings look stylised rather than like a specific recorder. * A LUT can’t carry any of it: **Export .cube** saves only the colour of a tape look, not the bleed, noise or stamp. ## VHS filter questions ### How do I make a video look like VHS? Open it above: the studio applies the **VHS** look, which softens detail, smears the colour, adds tracking jitter, head-switching noise and scanlines, and frames the picture 4:3\. Adjust any of them in **Creative** \> **VHS tape**, then choose **Export** and **Export video**. ### Is there a free VHS filter for iPhone? Yes, this one runs in Safari on an iPhone with no app and no account. Open the video from your library, pick a tape look, then **Export** and **Share** it back to Photos. Nothing is uploaded. ### How do I add a VHS date stamp to a video? Open **Creative**, then **Date stamp**, and set **Show** to **Date** or **Both**. Type the **Date** and **Start time** you want; the clock runs from there as the video plays. **Camcorder 1995** turns the stamp on for you. ### Can I add a VHS effect to a photo? Yes. Open a JPG, PNG or WebP image instead of a video, choose a tape look and export a still. The date stamp shows the start time you set, since a photo has no running clock. ### Will the exported video look the same as the preview? Yes. Every random part of the effect, from the line jitter to the dropouts, is worked out from the video’s own time and a seed, so the export repeats the preview frame for frame. **New tape** picks a different seed. ### What is the difference between the VHS filter and the vintage filter? The vintage filter changes colour and adds grain: faded blacks, warm or drifted colour, a vignette. The VHS filter rebuilds the picture as tape would carry it, with smeared colour, softness, tracking faults and scanlines, on top of a tape-like colour response. ### How do I get rid of the black bars? Switch **4:3 frame** off in **Creative** \> **VHS tape**. The tape effects then cover the whole frame at its original shape. ## More colour tools and guides * [ Color grade a video online Try hundreds of looks on your own clip, fine-tune them in the studio and export, all on your device. ](https://colorgrade.video/) * [ Vintage video filter Home-movie, 70s and 90s camcorder colour for any clip, with grain and a vignette. ](https://colorgrade.video/vintage-video-filter) * [ Film filter for video Film stock colour, grain size, halation and bloom, and what each one imitates. ](https://colorgrade.video/film-look) * [ Make a video black and white Classic mono, sepia and toned looks, with control over the grey mix. ](https://colorgrade.video/black-and-white-video) * [ Cinematic color grading online Film-style looks, moody palettes and the controls that make a grade feel like cinema. ](https://colorgrade.video/cinematic-color-grading)