How do I make a video look old?
Open it above, pick a look from the Vintage chip, raise Fade so the blacks turn soft, and add Grain and Vignette. Lowering Saturation slightly and warming the colour finishes the effect.
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Vintage Video Filter
Faded reels, warm 70s colour and the palette of a 90s camcorder, applied to your clip with a strength slider and a before-and-after split. Nothing is uploaded.
A vintage video filter makes a modern clip look as if it came out of a box of old reels or tapes, mostly through colour: faded blacks, a warm or slightly green cast, gentler saturation, and then grain and a vignette for texture. The tool above opens with Home Movie 8mm. Press All looks (L) and choose the Vintage chip for the rest, including Camcorder 1994 for the colour of a 90s home video.
To be clear about what you get: these looks change colour and texture, not the structure of the picture. They do not add tape tracking lines, colour bleed, interlacing or blur, so a VHS look here means the palette and grain of the era rather than damaged tape. If you want footage that looks shot on film instead of simply old, try the film look. For a fully monochrome past, see black and white video.
How to make a video look vintage
Open the video
Choose Select video or drop the file on the page. Home Movie 8mm is applied straight away so you can see the effect on your own footage.
Choose an era
Open All looks (L) and tap Vintage. Try each look with the arrow keys, or press Surprise me under the quick picks for something unexpected.
Age it to taste
Set Intensity with the slider or - and =. In Pro tools (P), raise Fade on the Basic tab for washed-out prints, and add Grain and Vignette on the Effects tab.
Save your version
If you build a favourite combination, Save as my look (Shift+S) keeps it under My looks in this browser for the next clip.
Export
Choose Export video, wait for Your video is ready, then select Download video or Share on a phone.
What makes footage look old
Our sense of “old” comes from how film and early video aged and how they were made. Reproducing a few of those traits is enough to place a clip in the past.
Faded blacks
Projected film never reached a true black, because of flare in the projector and the screen, and old prints lose density over the years. Lifting the deepest shadows slightly, so they become a soft charcoal or brown, is the single most effective vintage cue. Fade does exactly that.
Colour that has drifted
The three dye layers in colour film do not age at the same rate. In many prints from the 1950s to the 1980s the cyan dye faded fastest, so surviving copies drift towards pink and red. Home-movie reversal stocks varied: some held their colour for decades, others turned yellow or magenta. A vintage look picks one of these drifts and commits to it.
Texture and lens character
Small-gauge film shows coarse grain, and the cheap lenses on home cameras shaded the corners. Grain, a larger Grain size and a soft Vignette cover both. Keep Vignette softness high so the edges fall off gradually, the way a real lens does.
Decade by decade
- 1970s: warm, golden-brown colour, low contrast and faded blacks. Start from Home Movie 8mm, or combine the Warm chip with extra Fade and a brown Shadow tint.
- 1980s: brighter, more saturated primaries with a slight magenta lean, the period of glossy print film and early home video. Raise Saturation and set a pink Highlight tint.
- 1990s: consumer camcorders gave a distinctly video look: strong reds, cool whites and crisp contrast. Camcorder 1994 recreates the colour, grain and vignette of that era.
- Y2K and early digital: small-sensor digital cameras from around 2000 often looked cool and slightly green with punchy contrast. The Cool chip with a little Grain gets close; the Cross-process looks give the louder, fashion-shoot version of the period.
Vintage, retro and Y2K overlap. “Vintage” usually means genuinely old, faded media; “retro” means a modern image styled after a past decade; “Y2K” is the specific look of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
What this filter does not do
Real VHS and camcorder footage was soft, smeared colour sideways across edges, wobbled at the bottom of the frame and showed tracking noise when the tape was worn. None of that is simulated here. The looks give you the colour and grain of the era, which is often all a project needs, but if you want visible tape damage you will need an editor or effect designed for it.
- No 4:3 crop: the frame keeps its shape. Crop in your editor if you want a square-ish old TV frame.
- No dust, scratches, light leaks or frame jitter.
- No change to the frame rate; shoot at a lower rate if you want a jerkier home-movie motion.
Within those limits you have full control. Every vintage look can be pushed further in Pro tools, and Export .cube (Shift+L) saves its colour as a LUT for other editors, as explained on the free LUTs page.
Vintage filter questions
How do I get an 80s or 90s camera look?
For the 90s, use Camcorder 1994, which gives the strong reds, cool whites and grain of a consumer camcorder. For the 80s, raise Saturation and add a pinkish Highlight tint on top of a Vintage look.
Can I add a VHS filter to a video here?
Partly. Camcorder 1994 gives the colour, grain and vignette of home video from that time, but it does not imitate tape faults such as colour bleed, softness or tracking lines.
Vintage vs retro vs Y2K: what is the difference?
Vintage suggests real, aged footage with faded colour. Retro is a deliberate modern nod to a past decade. Y2K refers to the cool, glossy look of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Can I make it black and white or sepia instead?
Yes. Open All looks and choose Black & white or Sepia & duotone, or see the black and white video page for more on toning.
Will the vintage look lower the quality of my video?
The resolution stays the same unless you pick a smaller Size under Export settings. Every frame is re-encoded, so choose High quality to keep the added grain crisp.