Create Vintage Videos Using FFmpeg in 4 Simple Steps

Every single vintage effect misses out on one crucial factor - Resolution. Vintage films (even when scanned in 4K) do not have the same type of aliasing and sharpening aspects that digital cameras have. This effect is what “makes” it vintage for me.<p>If you haven’t seen, Apollo (2019) documentary is simply stunning and even though it’s in 4K, it appears vintage.

For working with FFmpeg for programmatic video editing, I also recommend using moviepy: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Zulko&#x2F;moviepy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Zulko&#x2F;moviepy</a><p>Discussion a few years ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16297295" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16297295</a>

It’s cool to see more people writing posts and experimenting on this topic. I was surprised at how little info I could find trying to research this about a year ago, and spent a decent chunk of this year experimenting with trying to create vintage&#x2F;retro video filters using FFmpeg. If anyone is curious, I shared a bunch of my notes on this topic here a little while ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zayne.io&#x2F;articles&#x2F;vintage-camera-filters-with-ffmpeg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;zayne.io&#x2F;articles&#x2F;vintage-camera-filters-with-ffmpeg</a><p>Disclaimer: I’m still an FFmpeg noob

Site doesn&#x27;t work well with disables JS because of AMP. please disable this useless crap.

To me the film damage&#x2F;dust&#x2F;hair overlay seems a bit severe. It’s kind of a default “old stuff looks like this” filter, but I don’t think old films were actually this damaged unless it was stored outside for years or something.

Slightly off-topic, but why do old time football videos always seem like they&#x27;re played at 80% speed?

Does anybody know how to overlay a shorter footage on a longer one? Because the shortest footage just freeze at the last frame in the tutorial. I want the shorter overlaid footage to loop on top of the longer one, Here is what I&#x27;ve tried:<p><pre><code> ffmpeg -i &quot;Old Film Grain.mp4&quot; -i &quot;main-footage.mp4&quot; -filter_complex \ &quot;[0]format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.25[fg];[1][fg]overlay[out]&quot;\ -map [out] -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 18 final.mp4 </code></pre> The shortest footage (Old Film Grain.mp4) doesn&#x27;t loop as an overlay.

You forgot to add a vignette filter :)<p>Also, the vignette preset for the curves filter is a bit over-the-top, you may want to get a smoother preset (the vignette filter can import Photoshop preset files, so you can look if you can find a free preset somewhere). Alternatively you can find out strategic keypoints within GIMP and translate them to FFmpeg parameter (a bit more hassle I admit), but note that the interpolation between points might not be exactly the same.

Seems like a cool weekend project to get this whole flow working as a lambda.<p>Charge people 10$ a month or so to upload and convert videos to this

If only now you could add the film going through the projector shutter sound! (and the reel flapping at the end when done)

I&#x27;d add some blur, applied in random spots but large enough not to notice it&#x27;s shifting.