How to Make Glitch Effect Premiere Pro — A Quick & Easy Guide

How to Make Glitch Effect Premiere Pro

Cut up your timeline

Throughout this article we’ll go through the step-by-step process on how to create a glitch effect from scratch in Premiere Pro.

The process we will be following is the same process outlined here in this video tutorial by Peter McKinnon. 

Start off by selecting the Blade tool and creating a sequence of cuts on your timeline. These cuts can be every frame or every few frames. The idea here is to space them out so that they are noticeable when every other block of footage is deleted. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the segment of your timeline that has these cuts will be where your glitch effect plays. So make sure you make the cuts at the appropriate and desired point in the footage. The number of cuts will also determine the length of the glitch effect. 

Glitch transition Premiere Pro tutorial

Delete blocks of footage

Next, delete varying blocks of footage. This can be every other frame, or completely at random. Experiment with the frames you do delete and let the video play to see if you like the strobing effect it creates.

If the duration of your glitch effect is not long enough, simply create more cuts and delete more blocks of footage. Deleting random blocks of footage in no distinct pattern will help make the effect more glitchy.

How to make Glitch Effect Premiere Pro

Create copies of your frames

Once you’re finished deleting your blocks of footage, the remaining frames on your timeline will be staggered. To create the glitch effect, you will need to duplicate these staggered blocks. Simply hold down ‘ALT’ on your keyboard and drag the frame upward to duplicate it. 

Repeat this for the remaining staggered blocks on your timeline so that every block has a duplicated clip on the track above it. 

Video Glitch Effect Premiere Pro Tutorial

Reduce the opacity

For each duplicated clip, reduce the opacity. Do this by selecting the duplicated clip, navigate to “Effect Controls” and drop the opacity to around 50%. 

Repeat this for every duplicated frame on your timeline. Now, it’s time to bring the glitch effect to life.

How to Make Glitch Effect Premiere Pro

Shift the frame 

For each duplicated clip, slightly shift the position of the frame. Do this by navigating to the same “Effects Control” panel as above.

Adjust the “Position” of the duplicated frame slightly so that it creates a faded duplicate frame in the video. 

Repeat this process for every duplicated frame. To make your glitch effect more interesting, try to change the positions and alterations to the positions for each frame. For example, the first duplicated frame can move slightly to the right while the second frame can be moved upward and increased in scale. This will make for a visually more interesting glitch effect. 

Adobe Premiere Pro Glitch Effect Tutorial

RGB Splitting

Finally, to get the cool color glitch effect, you’ll want to split the RGB color channels of each clip. You can do this by going into the “Effects” tab in Premiere and find the “Arithmetic” effect.

Drag and drop this effect to the desired frame. In the “Effects Control” panel for this clip, you’ll notice the red, green, and blue channels are now separated. To start adjusting the colors of the frame, click “Operator” and from the drop down menu select “Max.”

Then increase the value of the color you want your frame to predominantly be. This will cause the frame to be washed in that color. To reduce the saturation and blending of the image, click “Blend Mode” under “Opacity.” From the drop down menu, select “Linear Dodge (Add).”

The final result of following these steps is a simple glitch effect that alters the colors, sharpness, and position of specific frames. Feel free to experiment with things like positioning and RGB splitting to get different and unique glitch effects that you like.