Settings guide

Every control below is described by what it actually does in the renderer, so you can predict the result before you export.

How a frame is built

The tool draws your media onto a canvas (media wider than 1280 px is scaled down to 1280 px), splits it into a square grid, and redraws each cell with its own small color shift. On top of that it can add per-cell blur, per-cell position warp, a detail pass, and one or two fixed overlay patterns. Each animation frame repeats this with fresh noise values.

Grid settings

Grid size

16, 32, 64, or 128 cells per side. Fewer cells make large, blocky patches that read as glitch art. More cells make a finer shimmer that is easier to ignore at normal viewing distance.

Enhanced mode and variation interval

Enhanced mode changes when the noise re-rolls: instead of following the sync cycle, it re-rolls every N frames, where N is the variation interval (1 to 120). It also nudges each cell sideways by up to 8% of the cell width, which makes the motion feel less rigid.

Detail mode

Draws a contrast-boosted copy of the source over the grid in soft-light blend. Depth (1 to 30) raises the contrast boost, and edge strength (0 to 100%) controls how opaque the pass is. Use Reprocess to re-render the current frame after changing these while paused.

Effect settings

Noise type

White noise gives every cell an independent random value, so bright and dark shifts can clump together. The blue option steps through an evenly spaced golden-ratio sequence instead, so the shifts spread more uniformly across the grid and look smoother at the same variance. The spacing is blue-noise style, not a formally verified blue-noise distribution.

Hue, lightness, and saturation variance

Each cell gets its own shift within the range you set: hue up to ±90°, lightness up to ±25%, saturation up to ±25%. Hue variance is the most visible on colorful sources. On near-monochrome sources, lightness variance does most of the work.

Sync cycle

How many frames a noise pattern is held before it re-rolls, from ×1 (new pattern every frame) to ×12. Higher values read as a slower, steadier flicker and export smaller GIF files because fewer frames differ.

Blur and warp

Blur (1 to 10 px) softens each cell. Warp (1 to 20 px) offsets each cell from its true position by a random amount up to the value you set, which is what produces the torn, displaced look.

Overlays

The high-frequency overlay tiles the frame with a faint fixed checkerboard at about 3% opacity. Strong overlay draws the same pattern in soft-light blend at higher opacity; its intensity slider maps to roughly 4% to 14%. Both are fixed patterns that persist across frames. What these overlays can and cannot do.

Region mask

Draw Region lets you drag a rectangle on the preview. Inside applies the effect only within the rectangle; Outside applies it everywhere else, which is useful for keeping a face or signature clean while the background animates.

Preview and meter

Preview FPS (1 to 180) only affects playback smoothness in the browser, not the export. The watermark toggle stamps a small "GRID NOISE" label in the bottom-right corner. The noise strength meter is a summary of your current slider settings, not a measured protection score.

Starting points

Subtle texture on artwork

• Grid size 64 or 128
• Hue ±10 to 20°, lightness ±3 to 6%, saturation ±5%
• Sync cycle ×2 or ×3
• Blur off or 1 px, warp off
• High-frequency overlay on

Heavy glitch clip

• Grid size 16 or 32
• Hue ±60 to 90°, lightness ±15%
• Enhanced mode with a variation interval of 2 to 5 frames
• Warp 10 px or more, blur 2 to 4 px
• Detail mode with high edge strength for extra crunch

For export settings and format trade-offs, see the export formats page.