make a realistic vhs / vintage look – after effects vhs tutorial

When it comes to the VHS / Vintage style I found that a lot of tutorials I’ve watched seem to mostly be the same steps — colour grade, chromatic aberration, and then some sort of overlay to finish it off. And while that’s probably more than enough for most people, I wanted to figure out what it was that made VHS footage look the way it did so that I could recreate the style more authentically. So after watching some playlists of VHS footage on YouTube and taking notes on what stood out, I read some wiki pages, opened up After Effects and played around until I got a decent looking attempt that I felt held up decently next to real VHS footage. The 3 main things I noticed and then tried to recreate were: - A dark edge around many of the higher contrast shapes - VHS footage that’s been imperfectly deinterlaced that gives it a ghosting - Chromatic aberration mostly on the edges of higher contrast shapes