Time as a visible axis
The time warp scan, with a real export
Drop a video or photo and a bar sweeps the frame, freezing everything it passes. Or turn the whole picture into a timeline: slit-scan smears, ghost and light-painting trails, time ripples and grids where every tile is a different second. Renders frame by frame, so the MP4 is exact.
What is the time warp scan effect?
A scan line crosses the frame and everything behind it stops moving. What you end up with is not one moment but many: the top of the picture is from seconds ago, the bottom is live, and the edge between them is wherever the bar happens to be. Phone filters made it famous; the technique itself is slit-scan photography, which is nearly as old as film.
Chrono does the general version. Age is a value per pixel, so it does not have to follow a straight bar: it can ramp along an angle, be driven by brightness, pulse outward in rings, or step through a grid one tile at a time. Every look comes from one idea, that a pixel may come from a different moment than its neighbour.
How it works
From clip to time machine in four steps
Drop a video or photo
Upload any MP4 or image, or start on the built-in demo. Everything runs locally in your browser, nothing is uploaded to a server.
Pick a look
Start from Time Warp, Ghost Trails, Light Painting, Liquid Time, Time Rings or Time Grid, then switch between the six effects freely.
Aim the sweep
Set the direction and speed of the bar, how long it holds, how far back the frame can reach, and how the past is tinted and faded.
Export a clean MP4
Every frame is rendered offline through the same shader and muxed with your original audio. No watermark on paid plans.
Why zlabz
A temporal effect cannot survive a dropped frame
Phone filters and screen recorders capture in real time. A time effect is built from the frames before it, so a frame lost under load does not just soften the picture, it tears the sweep and stutters the trails. Chrono walks the timeline once, offline, at full quality.
Time warp scan alternatives
TikTok Time Warp Scan
The filter that made this famous. It is camera-only, vertical, watermarked and offers no controls. Chrono runs the same idea on footage you already have, with the sweep under your control.
CapCut Scan Presets
CapCut and similar editors ship a scan preset, but it is a fixed animation over the clip rather than a true per-pixel time buffer, and there is no slit-scan or echo mode.
After Effects Time Displacement
After Effects Time Displacement does real temporal displacement and is the professional reference, but it needs a subscription, a desktop and a render queue. Chrono is one page in a browser.
Slit-Scan Plugins & Scripts
Slit-scan scripts and plugins give beautiful results for people willing to script them. Chrono ships the same family of looks as presets with a live preview.
Product names belong to their owners and are named for comparison only. Details reflect public information as of July 2026 and may change.
What creators make with it
One idea, six ways to bend a clip.
The scan trend
Recreate the freeze-sweep everyone knows, but from real footage and exported clean.
Dance and movement
Freeze a spin band by band so one frame holds a whole phrase of choreography.
Light painting
Blend many moments additively so motion draws itself in light across the frame.
Transitions
Let the bar wipe through a cut, or smear one shot into the next with a slit-scan.
Title reveals
Sweep across a logo or lyric so it assembles out of its own past.
Photos that move
Give a still a slow synthetic camera move, then smear it through time.
Time warp scan questions, answered
Is Chrono free?
Yes. You can open every control and preview on any clip for free. Exporting requires a free sign-in, and paid plans remove the watermark.
Can I do the time warp scan without TikTok?
That is exactly what this is. Chrono runs the freeze-sweep in a browser on any clip you upload, with control over direction, speed and hold, and exports a clean MP4 instead of a watermarked in-app capture.
Does it work on a photo, or only video?
Both. A photo has no past to smear, so Chrono can give it a slow synthetic camera move first, which the time effects then work on.
Where is my footage processed?
Entirely in your browser with WebGL2. Your video is never uploaded to a server.
What is the difference between the scan and slit modes?
Scan freezes each pixel permanently as the bar passes it, so the frozen part can be many seconds old and stays sharp. Slit maps a rolling window of the last second or two across the frame, so the whole picture keeps moving as one continuous smear.
What do I need to run it?
A modern browser with WebGL2, such as Chrome or Edge. No install, no plugins.
Freeze time on your next clip
Open Chrono, drop a video, and watch the bar leave the past behind it.
Open Chrono free