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VKO Shader for Final Cut Pro

SHADERS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

A native Final Cut Pro & Motion effect built around a GPU shader engine. 91 shaders, a live thumbnail browser, drop-in custom GLSL, every control keyframable. Runs on the GPU, animates on the timeline, reacts to your project's audio. Works with or without sound.

Build your own shaders in the free web editor, drop them straight into Final Cut Pro or Motion. Library grows as far as you take it.

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$49.99
  $37.49
Special price valid until September 12, 2026
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Description

Browse. Click. Render.

Stop pre-rendering loops and stacking plugins to fake generative motion. VKO Shader runs real GLSL on the GPU, live on your timeline — scrub it, keyframe it, retime it like any other effect. Pick one of 91 built-in shaders or write your own, and it just renders: no precomps, no external apps, no round-trips.

VKO Shader effect controls and thumbnail browser in Final Cut Pro

Write a shader. Hit render.

Import your own .glsl with one click (or drop files in the VKO Shaders folder). They appear in the browser instantly — no Final Cut Pro or Motion restart — and recompile on every save. You write plain GLSL; VKO Shader cross-compiles it to Metal on macOS.

Locked to the beat.

This isn't just an audio meter wired to a slider. VKO Shader runs the same beat engine as the VKO1 live VJ app — FFT spectral analysis with real onset and beat detection, reading your composition's audio track directly. Kicks hit, the visuals hit. No manual keyframing, no expression rigging.

No audio in the timeline? Set a BPM and every shader pulses in perfect tempo — a beat-locked animation with nothing but a number. Dial Audio Amount to blend hand-keyed motion with the live beat, anywhere between fully manual and fully reactive.

Use the free web editor to create new shaders, add modifiers, remix them, have fun!

Make more shaders!

Don't want to write code? Build shaders visually in the free VKO Graph Editor — node-based, runs in your browser, exports ready-to-import .glsl. There's a button for it right inside the plugin.

Key features

- 91 built-in GLSL shaders, browsable as live thumbnails

- Works on clips, shapes, and titles in both Final Cut Pro and Motion

- Mask to Shape: shaders stay inside whatever they're applied to

- Audio-reactive (bass/mid/treble/beat) or driven by a fixed BPM

- Beat Sync: auto-generate Palette/Shader keyframes on a musical grid

- Drop-in custom GLSL/.frag import, with instant reload

- Free web graph editor for building your own shaders, no code required

- Native FxPlug 4 + Metal, Universal binary

- Every control is keyframable

  • 0:00 Intro
  • 0:00 Installing the plug-in
  • 0:00 Applying VKO Shader to a clip, shape and title
  • 0:00 The Browse thumbnail grid
  • 0:00 Mask to Shape
  • 0:00 Keyframing speed, complexity, palette
  • 0:00 Importing your own GLSL
  • 0:00 Audio-reactive + BPM
  • 0:00 Rendering out

Discussions

Want to talk about it?

Head over to r/aescripts to chat with fellow users about this product.

Need Support?

Please open a support ticket to be connected directly with the author of this product

Version History

1.0 -

Aug 31, 2026

* Native FxPlug plugin for Final Cut Pro and Motion, one installer covers both hosts.
* 91 built-in GPU shaders across 33 color palettes, rendered live on Metal every frame — including the new Daft Cyber pack (14 synthwave/cyberpunk shaders).
* Live thumbnail browser in the Inspector alongside the Shader menu — click to pick, right-click a custom shader to remove it.
* Drag-and-drop custom shaders (`.glsl`/`.frag`) — installs instantly, no restart. Free web-based node graph editor for building your own with no GLSL required, exporting straight to a file the plugin reads.
* Mask to Shape: the shader confines itself to whatever it's applied to — titles, shapes, masked layers — instead of filling the whole frame.
* Audio-reactive: drop a track for local bass/mid/treble/beat analysis, or type a BPM and skip audio entirely. Either way the beat phase locks to the timeline's absolute position, so it stays in sync across trims and cuts.
* Every parameter is a standard, keyframeable FxPlug parameter — eases and retimes with the clip like a built-in effect.

Compatibility

Final Cut Pro

12, 11

EULA

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

This software ("the Software Product") and accompanying documentation is licensed and not sold. This Software Product is protected by copyright laws and treaties, as well as laws and treaties related to other forms of intellectual property. The author owns intellectual property rights in the Software Product. The Licensee's ("you" or "your") license to download, use, copy, or change the Software Product is subject to these rights and to all the terms and conditions of this End User License Agreement ("Agreement").

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Any claim must be made within the applicable warranty period. All warranties cover only defects arising under normal use and do not include malfunctions or failure resulting from misuse, abuse, neglect, alteration, problems with electrical power, acts of nature, unusual temperatures or humidity, improper installation, or damage determined by the author to have been caused by you. All limited warranties on the Software Product are granted only to you and are non-transferable. You agree to indemnify and hold the author harmless from all claims, judgments, liabilities, expenses, or costs arising from your breach of this Agreement and/or acts or omissions.

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If any provision of this Agreement shall be held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remainder of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect. To the extent any express or implied restrictions are not permitted by applicable laws, these express or implied restrictions shall remain in force and effect to the maximum extent permitted by such applicable laws.

Updated: Oct 21, 2025 1:35 AM

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