Bursts of signal breakup: the frame tears into horizontal slices that shear sideways, the colour channels split, blocks corrupt, and analog noise crawls over the whole thing. It fires in bursts on a timer rather than running flat out, to simulate intermittent signal loss
Controls
| Control | Range | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intensity | 0 – 2 | 1 | Overall strength of a burst |
| Speed | ×0.1 – ×4 | ×1 | How fast the pattern mutates. ×1 re-rolls the tear 24 times a second |
| Interval | 0 – 8 s | 3 s | Seconds between bursts. 0 runs it continuously |
| Duration | 0.1 – 2 s | 0.4 s | How long a burst lasts |
| Slices | 4 – 80 | 24 | Horizontal bands the tear snaps to. Fewer is chunkier |
| Shift | 0 – 120 px | 30 px | How far a torn slice moves sideways |
| RGB Shift | 0 – 20 px | 4 px | Chromatic channel split during a burst |
| Blocks | 0 – 1 | 0.5 | How much of the frame corrupts into displaced cells |
| Noise | 0 – 1 | 0.35 | Analog noise and scanline flicker during a burst |
The Burst Timeline
The effect performs no rendering between bursts. A burst decays over its Duration rather than cutting out, and the wait for the next one is jittered around Interval so the rhythm never becomes metronomic
Setting Interval to 0 removes the timeline entirely and holds the glitch on permanently. This can be used for a persistent “signal lost” screen
Shortening Interval while a burst is pending brings the next one forward rather than making you wait out the old schedule, so the slider responds while you are dialling it in
Tuning It
The two sliders that change the character rather than the amount are Slices and Speed. A few slices with a large Shift give heavy, deliberate tearing; many slices with a small shift give a fine, noisy shimmer. Speed decides whether the pattern strobes or crawls
RGB Shift and Noise help distinguish analog and digital glitch styles — raise them together for something analog, drop Noise to 0 and keep Blocks high for a digital, codec-failure look
It shares a stage with Pixelate, so the two compose: with both on, the tear operates on an already-blocked frame
Last updated on September 19, 2026