How it works
This VHS font generator sets your title in one of 6 fonts, then slides a cyan copy left and a red copy right: the colour split that stands for worn tape. It opens on PLAY over a tape counter.
Read the full guide
Why tape colour bleeds
VHS records brightness at up to 3 MHz and colour at 300 kHz. Wikipedia puts that near 333 points across a line for brightness and about 40 for colour, so colour cannot hold a sharp edge. VHS glitch is the tidy version: two clean copies where tape would smear. Strength of the look sets the gap, from about 1% of the type size to nearly 5% each side.
Six fonts, three kinds
VT323 and Share Tech Mono are fixed-width, so a counter's digits sit in columns. DotGothic16, Pixelify Sans and Silkscreen are pixel fonts; Silkscreen has capitals only and sets SP 0:00:00 1.9 times as wide as VT323, so it comes out smaller. Rubik Glitch is a heavy sans with horizontal bands knocked sideways.
Tips
- White letters on Transparent trip the hard-to-see warning, which assumes a white page. Over dark footage they read fine.
- No font here has a play triangle or record dot, so the REW and FF texts use << and >>.
- Writing ł, š or ž? Only Share Tech Mono has them, and no font here has ğ.
Questions and answers
Which font is closest to a VCR's on-screen text?
None copies any deck's lettering. VT323 and Share Tech Mono come nearest: fixed-width and plain, one with a dotted zero, one slashed. VT323 came from the glyphs of a text terminal, its pixels nudged to copy the tube's sideways smear.
Can this VHS text generator add scan lines or a tracking error?
Not yet. Those belong to the whole frame, and this tool draws only letters: the colour split, Motion blur for a sideways smear and Soft glow for a bright tube. For frame damage, lay a Transparent PNG over footage in a video editor.
How do I put VHS text over a video?
Under More options set Background to Transparent. The PNG is cut to the lettering, colour split included, and drops onto a track in a video editor. It is a still picture: nothing flickers.