How do you recreate a 90s anime VHS or CRT look on AI-generated video footage in post-production?

Recreate the 90s anime VHS/CRT look by layering effects in one finishing pass: soften the over-sharp AI footage with slight blur, grade toward a warm washed broadcast palette, add heavy film grain, Film Damage artifacts, dual-axis scan lines, and a dust overlay at ~8% opacity — all achievable with DaVinci Resolve's built-in Resolve FX.

Start one step before post: bake as much of the aesthetic into generation as you can. When generating the base footage, Seedance 2.0 (available inside invideo, where the invideo agent routes each shot to the right model) holds the stylized 2–3 frame motion aesthetic of traditional anime — giving you cel-animation-style movement to degrade, rather than smooth 24fps AI motion fighting the retro treatment.

Then work through the post pass in this order:

1. Soften the image first. AI generations come back ultra-sharp with a plasticky surface quality; VHS never resolved that detail. Add a small amount of blur across the whole frame before anything else — every subsequent effect sits more convincingly on a softened base.

2. Grade for broadcast-era color. Targeted color grading is one of the three pillars of the CRT/VHS texture, alongside grain and intentional imperfections. Pull the grade toward a warm, slightly washed palette with lifted blacks, and adjust until it reads as tape rather than digital — play with the grade the same way you would when pushing AI footage toward film.

3. Add film grain. Apply DaVinci Resolve's Film Grain (Resolve FX) at high strength and opacity with a small grain size — this recreates analog texture rather than a faint digital shimmer.

4. Add tape damage. Layer Resolve's Film Damage FX on top for moving lines and specs — the intermittent analog artifacts that read as a worn tape rather than a clean render.

5. Build the CRT screen structure with scan lines. Apply two instances of Resolve's Scan Lines FX rotated 90° to each other, at high frequency and low sharpness — the dual-axis pattern simulates a real screen's dot-matrix appearance instead of flat horizontal stripes. Keep the scan lines on their own adjustment clip, separate from the other effects, so you can fade them independently (for example, easing them off during close-ups).

6. Finish with a dust overlay. A dust particle overlay set to around 8% opacity adds the final layer of imperfection without calling attention to itself. For an optional CRT-glow touch, an Edge Detect adjustment clip with increased edge blur and width at low brightness produces a subtle bloom that reads as phosphor glow rather than a flat image.

Two principles hold the whole treatment together. First, intentional small imperfections are the point — a pristine image with a scan-line filter on top reads as a filter; stacked, slightly irregular degradation reads as tape. Second, don't rely on the AI footage alone: replacing or augmenting select shots with custom Resolve work is what separates the result from a preset slapped on a render.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

What I wasn't trying to recreate though, was just the art style. I was trying to recreate a feeling.

— a filmmaker documenting an AI-animated series production