VID · Video tools

Droste Video Effect

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Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Put a clip inside itself. Each level places a smaller, turned copy of the frame in the middle of the previous one, and the copies repeat until they are too small to see.

Depth, scale, and rotation

Recursion Depth sets how many copies are nested, from 2 to 12. Scale per Level is each copy’s size relative to the one around it: around 60% gives a gradual tunnel, 30% a sharp drop. Rotation per Level adds a turn at every level, which accumulates into a spiral.

Motion through the tunnel

All levels play the same moment, so anything moving in the frame moves in every copy at once. Handheld footage makes the whole tunnel sway together. A locked-off shot of a person or a screen gives the clearest infinite-picture illusion.

Frequently Asked Questions

A picture that contains a smaller copy of itself, which contains a smaller copy, and so on. It is named after the Droste cocoa tin, whose label showed a nurse holding the same tin.

No. Every copy is the current frame, so all levels move in sync. A copy delayed by a few frames would need a stateful video step, which the engine does not have yet.

In the center of the frame. The Droste image tool can move the recursion center onto a screen or frame in the picture; the video version keeps it centered.

It is copied into the export unchanged when the container can hold its codec, and re-encoded when it cannot. A note under the export button says which happened.

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