How do you get the video look?

[TermoShockers]

Is there a way to replicate the look of footage shot on an 80's camera on a more modern consumer grade digital camera?

[WesScog]

There are a few ways to do that, it all depends on if you want to go a more "hardware"-centric or software-centric route.

The easiest option is just to film with a camcorder manufactured in the 80's and get a good composite capturing system to take the signal from it and digitize it for editing.

The second would maybe to get a VCR, get a video output for your computer, record it to VHS, then recapture from the VHS. You might have to repeat this a few times to try to more accurately replicate the repeated signal degradation.

Barring that, depending on what editing suite you have (Adobe and Vegas should both be able to do this), you can add in noise and grain, soften it a little, and bump up the brightness and contrast a tad to give it a more blown out videoish look (It would be helpful for you to shoot the footage maybe a little overexposed to begin with, and don't use any progressive modes if you can help it).

Then perhaps throw in a light yellow/orange tint, and boost the saturation a little. Then output at a lower bitrate than your source material (I think 2mb/s is the VHS standard, i'll double check that).

You could also combine all of these to get an effect that I think would be more authentic overall, but I think that is a good general direction to head in. A little oversaturated, low dynamic range, low resolution, more noise, and 60 interlaced.

[yugosaki]

added to what wes said, I would oversaturate the reds specifically. Alot of the older formats tended to oversaturate or even bleed the reds.

[NerdWithNoLife]

On a side note, it is amusing that you are trying to get a video look. It breaks up the usual routine of everyone trying to get "the film look." Thanks for bringing this up.