Filters

Filters change how a clip looks: soften it, break it into blocks, turn it black and white, darken its corners. A clip can carry up to four at once, and any clip that draws can have them, text, shapes and graphics included.

Where: Clip tab ▸ Picture ▸ Filters
Agent tools: set_videoset_action_endpaste_attributes

Add a filter

Select the clip and open the Clip tab’s Picture sub-tab.
Open the Filters section. On a clip with none it reads “No filters on this clip.”
Choose Add Filter. A Blur at 50 % joins the end of the stack.
Pick the filter you want in the row’s popup that reads Blur, and set its Amount.

Changing a filter’s kind keeps its Amount. A clip can hold four, as the “4 at most” beside Add Filter says, and the button greys out at that point.

Each change is one undo step. While the section is closed, its header shows none, the filter’s name, or a count such as 3 filters.

The seven filters

Filter	What it does	At 100 %
Blur	Softens the picture.	A radius of 24 pixels
Sharpen	Crisps up edges and fine detail with an unsharp mask.	A gain of 2
Pixelate	Breaks the picture into square blocks. The clip’s edge and rounded corners stay clean.	Blocks 64 pixels across
Sepia	Gives the picture a warm old-photo tone.	The full tone
Noir	Turns the picture black and white and adds contrast. Taking Saturation to its lowest only removes the colour.	Fully black and white
Vignette	Darkens towards the edges in an ellipse fitted to the clip’s cropped shape. The darkening starts a little under halfway from the centre to the corners.	Black corners
Invert	Turns the picture into its negative.	The full negative

Blur and Pixelate are measured in the clip’s own pixels. Scale a clip up and the effect grows with it, and the same Amount looks finer on a 4K clip than on a 1080p one.

Set how strong a filter is

Amount runs from 0 to 100 %, with quick picks at 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100. At 0 the filter stays on the clip and does nothing. Sepia, Noir and Invert mix from the original picture towards their full effect as the number rises.

Stack and reorder filters

Each filter’s row starts with a number popup, which is its place in the stack. Pick a different number to move the filter. You can’t drag rows. A move is one undo step.

The place doesn’t decide everything, because Frame Job always works through a stack in this order:

Pixelate, whatever its place.
The Color section of the Color tab: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue.
Blur and Sharpen, whatever their places.
The rest of the Color tab: Light, Wheels, Curves and Look.
Sepia, Noir, Vignette and Invert, in the order of their places.

So the order only changes the picture among Sepia, Noir, Vignette and Invert. Noir then Sepia gives a warm black and white, while Sepia then Noir gives a plain one. Moving a Blur above or below a Sepia changes nothing.

Filters of the same kind combine:

In one stack	You get
Two Blurs	One wider blur. Two at 100 % reach a radius of about 34 pixels, and four reach 48.
Two Sharpens	The sum of the two.
Two Pixelates	The coarser of the two.

Remove a filter

Choose Remove in the filter’s row. Reset in the section’s header takes off the whole stack, and it’s there only while no action is selected.

Animate a filter

An action can ramp a filter’s Amount, for example a blur that builds across a clip.

Add the filter and set Amount to where the ramp should start.
Add an action on the clip and keep it selected.
Set Amount to where the ramp should end.

With an action selected, each control does something different:

You change	What happens
Amount	It ramps across the action.
The filter’s kind	It switches at the action’s end, and the row shows “at end”. The other filters keep ramping.
The filter’s place	It moves at the action’s end.
Add Filter or Remove	It changes the clip itself rather than the action, so it isn’t animated.

See Set what an action animates to for how the rows behave in an action.

Filters on an adjustment clip

An adjustment clip has no Picture sub-tab, so it can’t take a filter from the inspector. It gets one through Paste Attributes instead.

Put Sepia, Noir, Vignette or Invert on an ordinary clip and press ⌘C.
Select the adjustment clip.
Press ⌥⌘V, or choose Edit ▸ Paste Attributes.

The filter then applies to everything behind the adjustment clip for as long as it lasts, and to nothing on a track in front.

Blur, Sharpen and Pixelate can’t go on an adjustment clip, because it has no picture of its own to sample. Pasting from a clip that has one stops with an error naming the clip and the filter, and changes nothing.

Good to know

There’s no video noise reduction or film grain, and Frame Job doesn’t load third-party effects such as OFX plugins. Noise reduction is for sound.
A filter covers the whole picture for the whole clip. To blur or pixelate one region, such as a face, use Obscure.
For a colour treatment, such as a warm or a film look, use Looks.
Frame Job has no store or library of effects, stickers or stock footage. What comes with it is these filters, the looks and the bundled graphic templates. Bring your own pictures for the rest.
Frame Job can’t stabilise shaky footage.
With several clips selected, the rows show the first clip’s stack, and any edit gives every selected clip that whole stack.
A nest clip shows the Filters section, but a filter on it has no effect. Put filters on the clips inside the nest.
On a matte track, a clip’s filters shape the cut it makes. Alpha and Inverted Alpha read only transparency, so Sharpen, Sepia, Noir, Vignette and Invert change nothing there.
A clip’s reflection shows its filters too.

With an agent

An agent sets a clip’s filters with set_video, as a list of kinds and amounts, with each amount from 0 to 1. The list replaces the old one whole, so it sends every filter it wants to keep, and an empty list clears the stack. A fifth filter is an error, and nothing changes. It can put Sepia, Noir, Vignette or Invert straight onto an adjustment clip, with no paste. See Tools: picture and grade.

With set_action_end, an agent can give an action a list of a different length, which switches at the action’s end rather than ramping. See Tools: animation.