01
Type your stack
One line or several. A big title, a wide-tracked name under it, a smaller credit under that. Each line gets its own size, tracking and spacing, and each one rolls its own fonts independently.
Glitch title generator
The title that will not hold still
One word, re-typeset in a different font every two frames, torn by an animated grunge matte and dragging ghost trails behind it. The After Effects recipe, running in a browser tab.
Open AfterburnFree to try. No install.
Showcase
Three presets, same engine
Every clip here is a real export from the editor, not a mockup. Open any of them and the settings are already loaded.
What the effect actually is
Most people read this as a distortion filter. It is not. The engine underneath is a font roulette: the same word is re-typeset in a different typeface every two frames, roughly 125 times across a clip. Serif, condensed, brush, monospace, and every so often a symbol face that renders as pure unreadable soup.
Everything else is stacked on that. An animated grunge matte tears the letters into fragments and re-rolls every frame. Motion blur reads the font churn as movement and leaves ghost trails made of the faces that came before. A hard glow blows the whole line white on flare frames, and film grain sits over all of it.
Four steps
From a word to a title card
02
Pick a font pack
Chaos throws every face at it, the way the original did. Display keeps it heavy, Editorial keeps it literary, Machine keeps it monospaced. Set how many frames a face survives before the next one lands.
03
Dial the burn
Strobe depth, tear coverage, ghost trail length, flare frequency, glow and grain. The defaults are measured off the original clip frame by frame, so the starting point is already the look.
04
Export MP4
Encoded in your browser with WebCodecs at your chosen aspect ratio. The file is the preview, frame for frame. Nothing uploads and nothing queues.
Comparison
Against doing it the long way
The original is a five-step After Effects build with two paid plugins. Here is what changes when it runs in a browser instead.
| What you need | zlabz | The usual route |
|---|---|---|
| Software | A browser tab | After Effects subscription |
| Plugins | None | RSMB and a glow plugin, bought separately |
| The font changes | Automatic, every two frames | Around 125 font changes keyed by hand |
| Grunge texture | Generated, never repeats | Source a glitch clip and matte it yourself |
| Time to first result | Seconds | An evening, then a render |
| Changing the words later | Retype and export again | Reopen the project and re-key the text |
Other ways people make this
After Effects + RSMB + Deep Glow
The original route and still the most controllable. It also costs a subscription, two plugins and an evening of keyframing before you see a frame.
Premiere Pro Title Presets
Fine for clean lower thirds. There is no font-per-frame mechanism, so the churn that defines this look is not reachable.
Canva Text Animations
Quick and free, but the animation presets are transforms on a fixed typeface. The letterforms never change.
CapCut Glitch Text
Ships a preset called glitch that shakes and chromatically splits the text. It is a different effect that shares a name.
Product names belong to their owners. Listed for comparison only, with no affiliation implied.
Where it lands
It is a title card effect. It works wherever a name needs to arrive hard and leave fast.
- Music video titles
- Artist name, track name, producer credit. The stack of three is exactly what the original was built for.
- Film and short intros
- A cold open that burns the title in and cuts. Export with lead-in and lead-out frames so it drops straight onto a timeline.
- Reels and TikTok hooks
- Portrait by default. The strobe survives aggressive compression better than soft motion graphics do.
- Stream and event stings
- Short loops that read at a glance. Export on green and key it over anything.
- Merch and poster type
- Scrub to a frame you like and take the still. The torn letterforms print well.
- Brand and logo cards
- Add an image row and it burns alongside the type, torn by the same matte rather than sitting behind it.
Questions
Do I need After Effects?+
No. Everything runs in the browser tab, including the MP4 encode. There is nothing to install and nothing to buy.
Where do the fonts come from?+
From the typefaces the site already loads, plus the standard faces on your system. You pick a pack rather than individual fonts, because the effect needs twenty-odd faces to read as chaos.
Can I use more than one line of text?+
Yes. Add as many rows as you want. Each has its own size, letter tracking and spacing, and each rolls its fonts independently, so the lines never flip together like one flat image.
Can I put an image in it?+
Yes, as a row in the stack. It is not a background: the same matte tears it, the same ghost trails follow it and the same flares blow it white. You can place it above the text, below it, or on its own.
Is the strobing safe to publish?+
The default is a hard strobe with black frames, which is faithful to the original but is worth thinking about for photosensitive viewers. Lower the strobe depth, or use the Editorial preset, and it holds steady instead.
Does it cost credits?+
Building and previewing are free and unlimited. One credit is charged when you export a video, and you need to be signed in for that.
Burn a title in
Type a word, pick a pack, export. No timeline, no plugins, no render queue.