Create an Old TV Footage Effect

on Sep 23rd 2011 with 41 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: Just After Effects... enjoy
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Run Time: 33:28 min

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Download Source Files

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from back in the archives of Aetuts+. Today we’ll look at a tutorial from Greg DiGenti that was first published in Feb 2009. You’ve probably seen other old TV effect tutorials, before but in this tutorial Greg pays attention to minute details like the RGB pixel separation and teaches us how to achieve this look using all built-in After Effects tools.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

File size 361 MB

 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Greg DiGenti is an artist who has been working in graphic design for years and has recently taken the skills he learned working with Photoshop, illustrator, and Flash, and moved into the realm of motion graphics and animation using After Effects as his primary tool. Though his career in this field has been relatively short, he has already worked on several projects such as an animated viral marketing piece for Sony BMG, an animated comic book for Studio 407, a book trailer, and several effects shots and an animated credit sequence for a Wax Poetics/Fourth Density produced documentary. His portfolio can be found at http://12gaugechicken.com.  

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  • http://herseyhakkinda1sey.wordpress.com brum

    Great tuts. Thanks…

  • Malte

    Nice One!

  • KevinJ

    Hi Greg,

    There seems to be a hum in your audio, making your voice softer.

  • http://www.sacnow.net Loay

    Thanks you.
    really good tutorials

  • Patrick

    how do you get the keys you pressed to pop up what capture program?

  • Ben P

    Looks like a good one..!

  • Sjoerd

    well done!! i like those old effects, hope to see more :D
    greetings from the netherlands

  • http://www.uniexproductions.com Carlos

    Where is the downloadable illustrator file?

  • http://www.happyfolio.nl Julien

    Funny effect

  • Greg DiGenti
    Author

    I used KeyCastr (http://stephendeken.net/software/keycastr/) to show the pop-up keyboard shortcuts.

    As far as the illustrator file, I’ve contacted the AETuts editor about this and reminded him to make it available.

  • http://aescripts.com Lloyd Alvarez

    Vector File is now linked above

  • DLevy

    By the way this is an awesome tutorial and an effect that the Post guys, at the news station where I work, have painfully tried to remake using Final Cut and have done a horrible job. Thank you for sharing and it will definately be of use to me. The use of the displacement map and fractal noise is also something that new AE users can learn to set themselves apart from others. grayscale images are so important in AE and other apps.

  • http://www.uniexproductions.com Carlos

    Thanks!

  • http://www.pillaidesign.com Pillai Design

    Great Effect, Looks very cool, Can’t wait to try it out.

  • http://www.burningvision.net VertigoSFX

    Woahh wicked. I didn’t expect this to be a good quality looking appearance but i was surprised…this looks real good. I’m going to have to give it a try!

  • franco

    In un tv le linee sono orizzontali e non verticali

  • Taro

    Thanks! Finally I made something out of it…great tutorial!

  • bachtiar

    why i can’t see your preview tutorial, it just like the video was deleted :)

  • bachtiar

    how i can see your Tutorial, it’s Awesome Bro ^ ^

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  • http://tuts.cgbaran.com/ CgBaran Tuts

    Great effect thanks

  • James and confused

    ok, so i am able to follow along untill it comes time to turn on the track mat for the vector file, (im on a pc if that makes the difference) but there is no drop down menu for the file in the position above the composition. how do i get it to let me set it to the alpha track mat… im kind of beginner, so please bear that in mind.

    • Planetmirth

      Hi James, Sounds like you have the Transfer Control Panes hidden. At the very bottom of the screen you should see three icons. The second one should be a circle with an overlapping square. This toggles the Transfer Control Pane on and off. Clicking it should hopefully solve you problem.

  • James and confused

    apparently i cant use the word bare and bear correctly either, ha!

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  • Planetmirth

    Thanks for the Tutorial. This site looks great.

  • Brian E.W. McNulty

    Thanks so much for this tut; it was very well explained!

  • kate

    its telling me that the video is corrupt. am i doing something wrong

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  • http://www.balkhjournalism.blogsky.com Moonzajer

    thanks man for all , hey where can i get some footages to use in my projects , any download link

  • ravi

    great tute! is there anyway to just download the video, as opposed to having to view it online each time you wan to look at the tutorial? i click on the”download tutorial” and it just plays the video in quicktime.

  • http://www.mojafarma.rs Poljoprivreda

    tut i amazing. i spend a time playing with it.

  • William Vesga

    Really great but i think that the pixels could be smaller !!!

  • Sylvia

    First of all, the effect is great. Really above and beyond what I’ve seen so far. However, it would be really nice if when making tutorials people put some energy into it. Isn’t the principle that you are doing it so other people can get something out of it? Or is it just another resume page? Like, get a capture program that can zoom, so I can see some values (if you’re not going to mention which ones you’ve used). And you say “option” click. Okay fine, you don’t know that option equates to alt, but at least tell what it’s for, then people will have a clue, if they’ve done this before. If they haven’t, god help them with a tute like this. Like “click option stopwatch to get into the expression for the [blabla] property…” I mean, we’re not mind readers. And even if we were mind readers, you’ve already stopped thinking about the tutorial, so when we read your mind it could be something like “wow, this is a nice beach,” because who knows where you’ll be by the time we see this.

  • abc

    The tutorial looks great, but I’m a complete beginner and I’m already stuck at 3:00. I can’t seem to find the ‘Expression’ in order to type ‘time*500′. Also, what is ‘option click’? Does anyone know what the commands for a pc are? I have the cs4 version, does that make any difference?

  • NickH

    love this tutorial. Prob the best results i have seen for creating that old tv pixelated look, a lot of the others i have just seen are just scan lines and nothing else. Could you tell me how you make the ai file? or is there anywhere you can download it from?

  • Bamalam

    Can i please have a link to the vector file please? cannot find it on this page mid-way through the tutorial things are looking great but need to make the next step?

  • http://www.liambauckham.com liam bauckham

    nice tutorial. will have to use this

  • vixca

    thanks for the tutorial :)

  • Eli

    i did something similar to this
    http://youtu.be/o01az_6s524

  • http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/vfx/create-an-old-tv-footage-effect/ jeremy

    at 3:00 could you please tell me the commands for pc

  • http://donielamor.blogspot.com Belajar Desain

    very nice tutorial, thank you.

  • http://www.pelupessy.com Jerrold Pelupessy

    Thanks for the tutorial worked splendidly for me!

  • http://www.aarongrimes.com Aaron Grimes

    Used this tutorial in the creation of this music video, THANKS.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_xy6mTZKbE