HEXTAZE
The effects
HEXTAZE renders eleven video effects live on the iPhone, while you shoot. Each one is played on the XY pad: Y is always the dose, up is full, down is subtle; X does what the effect needs. Every effect has several presets (56 in all), and every preset ends in a colour finish: 15 palettes for effects without colour of their own, 7 grades that keep the colours of the ones that have it.
Most of these effects need a past. HEXTAZE keeps the last 32 frames in GPU memory, so clones, time-warps, smears and feedback can reach into it. That is why they are impossible on a still, and why they are played live rather than added in an editor.
- GHOST clones in time
- Up to four clones of you, trailing behind in time. The pad's X axis goes from dry, where you cover your ghosts, to wet, where you fade under them. Built on the 32-frame memory: each ghost is you, a few frames ago.
- Searches it answers: clone effect camera app, ghost trail video effect iPhone, echo of yourself in a video.
- WARP time-warp, five ways
- You leave the world's clock, five ways. ECHO leaves four fading copies of you. RGB splits red, green and blue in time. SLICE is a slit-scan: every line of the picture is delayed more than the one above it. HITCH freezes you, then catches up on every beat. SWING rolls your delay back and forth over two beats. X is how far back, Y is how much.
- Searches it answers: slit-scan camera app, beat stutter video effect, time displacement effect live on iPhone.
- AURA a halo of past outlines
- A coloured halo traces your outline, one slice of time after another. HUES gives every slice its own colour. Uses on-device person detection, so the halo follows you and not the room.
- TRIO two mirrors, facing you
- Two mirrored copies of you, left and right, facing you. X moves you from behind the mirrors to in front of them. The clones are cut out by the subject mask, so they sit in the room rather than over it.
- CRUSH bit-crush and retro palettes
- Fewer bits, bigger pixels, dithering. Palettes: RGB, GAMEBOY, MONO and CGA. The 8-bit, pixel-art and early-PC look, rendered live while you shoot.
- Searches it answers: pixelate video live, bitcrush camera, Game Boy camera effect iPhone, CGA palette video.
- TRIAD RGB split, five ways
- Red, green and blue come apart, five ways. BURST splits them in time with a chromatic zoom. SHIFT slides them left and right. SPIN turns red and blue away from green. ZOOM is a breathing colour tunnel. SWAP leaves trails in swapped colours. Shift, spin and zoom show even when you keep still.
- Searches it answers: RGB split camera app, chromatic aberration video effect, colour separation glitch live.
- CCD a 2007 compact camera
- The look of a 2007 compact digital camera: vertical smear, blooming, clipped highlights, colour fringe and blocky compression. The Y2K digicam aesthetic, on video, in real time.
- Searches it answers: digicam filter for video, Y2K camera app, CCD look on iPhone, 2000s camcorder effect.
- LOOP video feedback
- Video feedback: the picture feeds back into itself with zoom and rotation, from comet trails to a full spiral. The classic camera-pointed-at-the-monitor effect, without the monitor.
- Searches it answers: video feedback app, feedback loop camera effect, infinite zoom spiral video.
- SMEAR every part of the frame, a different moment
- Each part of the picture shows a different moment, following a map: vertical, horizontal, luminance, radial or mirror. The SPECTRUM map, in the PULSE preset, reacts to sound: the loudest frequencies drag their column into the past.
- Searches it answers: time smear effect, temporal displacement map video, audio-reactive video effect iPhone.
- MESH the picture on a 3D grid
- The picture laid on a 3D grid, raised by its own brightness and rolled by a wave. Tilt the phone to tilt the grid. Style: SOLID or WIRE. Pattern redraws the picture as contour lines (TOPO), halftone dots (DOTS), hexagons (HIVE) or scan lines (SCAN) that fold with the grid. Shape changes the form it takes: WAVE, PEAKS, BLOCKS, DUNES, RIPPLE or a breathing BULGE.
- Searches it answers: 3D wireframe video effect, displacement mesh camera app, halftone video live.
- DROP a living backdrop
- The room behind you becomes living matter: marble, vortex, ink, TV snow, lost signal. It moves with the sound, and its strobe follows the beat and can light you. X walks the colour wheel, Y adds glitch. PUSH makes the matter part around you, with ripples on the bass. Contains flashing lights: HEXTAZE keeps full-screen flashes under three per second.
- Searches it answers: replace background live video without green screen, strobe effect on the beat, audio-reactive backdrop iPhone.
Stacks
After the effects on the ribbon, six ready-made chains combine two effects: SURF, SHRED, DROWN, HAZE, RETRO and GRIND. Some put their second effect on you alone. In Settings › Chain you can build your own, up to three effects, each on its own zone: the whole frame, the person, or everything but the person. Order matters: each stage works on what the one before it made.
The finish
A key beside the pad changes the colour of any look: 15 palettes and 7 grades. The die rolls every parameter of the current effect, never so low that the effect disappears, free and unlimited.
Subject and background
Person detection runs on the iPhone. Any effect can be applied to the whole frame, to you alone, or to everything but you. Mask preview shows what HEXTAZE sees as you, to check light and framing before a take.
Every effect, preset and stack is free to play, with 8-second takes and a small HEXTAZE mark. Read the FAQ for what the one-time unlock changes. Some looks, DROP's strobes most of all, flash on the beat; if flashing light affects you, skip them.