Free Final Cut Pro plugin: Aged Film a4d effect

There is a version of Aged Film in Final Cut Pro X, but the version available in Motion has more controls. I’ve used that as the basis of Aged Film a4d:

Here are some two examples of different looks using the effect:

Here are the controls:

Frame Slip: Sets the vertical position of the frame – ranging from -100 to 100.

Jitter: The vertical distance that the ‘film’ jumps up and down.

Vary Jitter: The maximum amount the value for Jitter can randomly change from the set value.

Focus: How blurred the film can be.

Vary Focus: The maximum amount the value for Focus can randomly change.

Brightness: How bright the image is. 1: No brightness added or taken away

Vary Brightness: The maximum amount the value for Brightness can randomly change.

Saturation: How colourful the film is. 1: Image doesn’t have colour added or taken away.

Vary Brightness: The maximum amount the value for Saturation can randomly change.

Scratches: How many scratches are added to the film.

Scratch Colour: The colour of the scratches. If you turn down the reveal arrow for this control you can also choose the opacity of the scratches.

Hairs:
Dust:
Grain: The amount of each material added to the clip.

Frequency of Variation: How often new random values are chosen for parameters that are varying. The lower the number, the more often new values are chosen.

Random Seed: Although the distribution of varying values and overlaid content seems completely random, they are determined by a single ‘seed’ value. If would like exactly the same distribution for every clip given the same settings, keep this value the same. If you’d like the scratches, hair, jitter etc. to look different using the same settings, change the value of the random seed value.

If you turn on video animation curves, you can use them to control the way that the frame slips:

In this case the frame jumps at the start of the clip and slowly slips to a new negative value (the frame slips downwards) before instantly changing to a positive value and gradually slipping back to zero.

Installation

Download this disk image:

It includes an installation script for Spherico’s Motion Template Tool application, if you don’t have it on your Mac, download it. It is a freeware/donationware tool that simplifies effects installation for Final Cut Pro X users. MTT installs effects for Final Cut Pro X in the correct folders, creating them if need be. You don’t need to have Motion 5 or MTT installed for these effects to work.

Once you have MTT installed on your computer, double-click the ‘Install Aged Film a4d 1.0.mtt’ file.

If you don’t want to use MTT, install these effects in Home / Movies / Motion Templates / Effects / Stylize:

If you find this free plugin useful, you might like my Alex4D Animation Transitions plugin pack:

Find out more about Alex4D Animation Transitions.

There are many more free plugins on my Final Cut Pro X page