How to start a Video Bender Build / Help identifying an effect?

technical questions/help
1

Good afternoon folks.

I’ve been spending the better part of 6 months working with a MeltedElectronics Chroma Corruptor which I’ve been having resounding success experimenting with for adding texture and extra effects to my videos.

I’ve been considering saving up for a Pushkar mixer, but before I do I wanted to try my hand at making a mixer. I have a soldering iron, along with a multimeter I’m borrowing from a coworker. I wanted to ask if there was a guide for building one for someone new to reading those electrical charts or whatnot that I’ve seen uploaded here.

As for the effect, I think I asked this some time back but I don’t recall ever getting an answer for this; how is the wavy background achieved in this video (1:52)? I can reasonably assume that the purple background is keyed out in post, along with the headshots being placed over the background video. I’m guessing this is a feedback loop using a mixer, but again, I’m unsure. I don’t have a CRT display, as I use a capture card to view the output from my VCR and corruptor. That being said, I do plan to pickup a camera and CRT soon, so if what’s left is the mixer then I’d be very interested in learning so I can attempt to build my own.

2

Pushkar actually made a great video bending tutorial not too long ago.

That scrolling effect is likely created using some sort of internal mixer feedback but there are many ways to achieve it. And you don’t necessarily have to bend a video mixer or even own a mixer to do it. The three main ways I’m familiar with:

  • Bent video mixer. This will likely be the most costly and time consuming. Many ways to go about bending.
  • Mixer internal feedback with something in the middle of the loop processing the signal. That meltedelectronics device in an IFB loop would probably do the trick.
  • Cheapest option: Add scrolling effect in post processing with free software. OBS and TouchDesigner are both capable of this.

If you have a hard time finding a CRT, I would get an LCD if at all possible. A lot of older LCDs are actually fairly tolerant to glitches, and they’re much lighter, usually cheaper than CRTs. If you find you lose signal a lot when trying to process video you may want to get a mixer with a good time base corrector or even a standalone TBC.

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