Adding logo with Alpha channel to Quicktime and exporting as .mp4

I'm adding a PNG file with alpha channel to my existing movie file using "Add to Selection and Scale".
I then have my movie with the overlayed graphic.
When I then Export as an mp4, the alpha channel is ignored!
Any help, anyone?

Yes it looks perfect in Quicktime.
But for some reason I can't save it as anything else or even export a still frame without the alpha being ignored and the image going all fuzzy.

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What codec to convert .MXF and MP4 files into to use with alpha channels in Ae and Pr CS6?

When I import .mxf File, shot on a Canon C300, into after effects, the alpha channel options are greyed out, when I look in, interpret footage, main. This also is the case importing .MP4 files, shot on a Gopro hero 3. I used to use final cut and using compressor convert the files to pro res 4444 or 422. What's my new workflow for preparing files with alpha channels to use in After Effect and Premiere and do I use Media Encoder to do it?

When I import .mxf File, shot on a Canon C300, into after effects, the alpha channel options are greyed out, when I look in, interpret footage, main. This also is the case importing .MP4 files, shot on a Gopro hero 3.
Better question: Where do you expect that Alpha channel to come from and contain any useful info for transparency? You're making a fuss over a non-issue. Unless you apply keying or other methods of creating transparency, even if there were an Alpha channel it would be fully opaque and then what's the point?
Mylenium

Imported logos with alpha channel in titler bug

Hi!
If I import this logo in Titler the small black text disappears, but if I import it to premiere then All OK.
Why?
LD_logo_3d_horizontals.png

OK, while it is a bug in the Title Designer as far as I am concerned, it is the same one from the very first Premiere Pro version.
The Title Designer does not like graphics with partial opacity. Your PNG file is partially transparent.
This is your graphic blown up in Photoshop. It is obvious to me what the problem is when I look at it.
I took your text and filled in all of the partially transparent pixels with solid black, and it worked in the Title Designer just fine. I didn't do it carefully, I just sampled the lighter pixels and filled them in. The text got a bit ragged when I did that.
I don't know what font that is and I don't have time to figure it out right this minute, but I suggest that you delete the text and type in new text. Or, very carefully fill in the light spots in the text you have.

Why can't I see the Finder thumbnails for .mov files with alpha channels?

Ever since I upgraded to Mavericks I haven't been able to see the thumbnail for or preview using spacebar any .MOV clips that contain alpha channels in Finder. PSDs and PNGs with alpha channels are fine, and I can still see their thumbnails and previews, it's just .MOV clips with alpha. Here are a couple screenshots:
Most of these clips are using a PNG codec, but I converted on to the Animation codec and tested it in After Effects to make sure it kept the alpha channel and it did, but the same thumbnail error persists.
Any idea why this might be or how to fix it?
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Thanks.

ok, have copied the photos again from the memory card and hey presto, it all works fine. So in summary...for RW2 files from GF1 camera, I have no thumbnail images, couldn't view in Preview, and neither Quickview nor Coverview were working. Ran the bit of code provided at "https://discussions.apple.com/message/18369759#18369759" (thanks to Snoop Dogg) and then recopied the photos onto my Mac (only required for photos copied since upgrading to Lion, everything from before the upgrade is fine anyway).
Hope others find this helpful.

Import QuickTime with Alpha channel into Flash CS3

Is it possible to import a QuickTime movie with alpha channel into an FLA and have the FLA recognize the Alpha channel? When I've done this, it just shows opaque black instead of an alpha channel. I need that black to be transparent so I can see the layers below the video layer.
Thanks in advance for any help.

I don't know the answer to your question.
Do you have a video player where you can verify that the alpha channel in the video is displaying as you expect?.... that is, the background is transparent?
I have used flv files with alpha and a NetStream vid player to overlay Flash video on a Web page.... but not directly in the timeline.:
http://www.mrfilmbiz.com/
the walkon... could have had other action (like Flash artwork) going on in the background... but that may not really be what you are looking for.
But lacking any other solutions, you could have your alpha channel vid file playing in one Flash file over the top of a second Flash file doing the artwork stuff.
Adninjastrator

Encoding with an Alpha Channel Using Quicktime Pro

I am pulling my hair out trying to encode a green screen video that will play on a website so the website shows through the transparent alpha channel. Problem is when I encode to .flv or .mp4 the alpha channel is never retained even when I check "encode alpha channel" in the .flv export setting window. I have downloaded a trial version of Sorenson Squeeze and even that couldn't retain the alpha channel.
The video I am using was exported out of Final Cut Pro 7 using Quicktime Conversion using the Animation Million of Colors PLUS codec and when I test that it does indeed have a transparent alpha channel so something is happening when Quicktime Pro is encoding it.
Can anyone recommend a way to export a .mp4 or .flv with the alpha channel?
Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give.
Benjamin Jones

You can also export a RGB video (without alfa) with any codec, and a second pass with obly alpha - it depends if you need that as a final export (then use codec than can export alfa) or intermediate format (then you can use image sequence or 2 pass video).

Graphics, ImageIO, and 32-bit PNG images with alpha-channels

I have a series of 32-bit PNG images, all with alpha channels. I'm using ImageIO.read(File) : BufferedImage to read the PNG image into memory.
When I call graphics.drawImage( image, 0, 0, null ); I see the image drawn, however all semi-transparent pixels have a black background, only 100% transparent pixels in the source image are transparent in the drawn image.
The Graphics2D instance I'm drawing to is obtained from a BufferStrategy instance (I'm painting onto an AWT Canvas).
Here's my code:
Loading the image:
public static BufferedImage getEntityImage(String nom, String state) {
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You may want to check on you system and see what ImageReaders are available, it could be ImageIO is just not picking the best one, if not, then you can use getImageReaders to get an iterator of image readers, then choose the more appropriate one.

SWF doesn't play with alpha channel

I have a 500Kb FLV file that plays as a progressive download through a 12Kb SWF. This FLV was encoded using On2 VP6 codec to maintain alpha data. This is a logo animation for a website so it is essential that the video plays with alpha channel intact. Just to make sure my animation had an alpha channel, I brought it into After Effects to test with a colored background behind it and sure enough, the alpha channel was there, perfect!
Now in Dreamweaver, when I tested, the FLV plays through the SWF, as it should. However, there is a white square around my video now and the alpha channel is lost.
I even made sure to select Wmode "transparent" and double-checked my code and saw that I had the correct tag <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/>
View my site at http://www.customchromefx.com
I have played many embedded SWF's with alpha's before. I think the FLV still has the alpha, and the problem is in the SWF that plays the FLV that is giving me the white box? Is there a way around this, perhaps a transparent SWF player or something? Thank you for viewing...

Okay, so I figured out a way to make my compressed FLV video play with alpha.
I imported into Flash. Checked the box to "Embed FLV in SWF" and clicked next, and Finish. I made sure the stage area and FPS was set to the same settings as the FLV video.
In publish settings I used Flash 9,then un-checked compress movie and Published. This new SWF maintained the same file size as the FLV, while also playing with the alpha channel.
I then imported the SWF into Dreamweaver, and set Wmode to "transparent."
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No Method of Batch Export for Clips with Alpha Channels?

Good morning,
As many a flustered editor has eventually discovered, in order for FCP to export sequences with alpha channels to a 32-bit format, the timeline has to be un-rendered at the time of export, or else the transparent parts will appear black in the outputted file. This sort-of makes sense if you know how FCP and render files work, but in a perfect world I think I'd have designed the export interface a bit differently. Now that I think about it, I'm actually working in an Animation (Millions of Colors +) sequence, so converting transparent areas to black makes no logical sense at all.
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Thanks, Andy, "Batch Export" eventually did the trick!
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Thanks again,
Zap

Question: Quick Look in Finder; problems with alpha channels

Hi
"Quick look" in Finder is great for quick presentations of a folders selected contents but it only works with images that contains no alpha channels or masks. Is there any way to work around this to display say PhotoShop documents with alpha channels? Or any plug-ins/applications that can help?
thanks.

This has been broken forever in OS X, and I don't know why, because it used to work just fine. I suspect the engineers did something to QuickTime that causes this problem, but it has been borked for so long I don't remember when the ability to correctly display files went wrong. I just remember that once upon a time all sorts of things from Apple worked correctly in displaying such files, but pretty much nothing does now. This includes the Finder, Preview, QuickLook, and various third-party image browsers that use Apple's own system level image handling abilities, such as VitaminSee or CocoaViewX. When I need to actually see what's there, I browse with Adobe's Bridge.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

How to render with alpha channel?

Hello,
I am trying to render a comp with alpha channel QT PNG. When i play the clip it's with black BG but if i imported in AE is with alpha channel. How to render in such way that i can play in Quicktime without the black BG? Am i missing something?
Thanks!

robert_ro wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to render a comp with alpha channel QT PNG. When i play the clip it's with black BG but if i imported in AE is with alpha channel. How to render in such way that i can play in Quicktime without the black BG? Am i missing something?
Thanks!
You've successfully rendered the alpha channel. Alpha information is not displayed as expected in some players. IN QT Player, your alpha is transparent but the player has no background so it defaults to black. Check the playback operations and settings/prefs for QT Player, there may be a way to tell it to show alpha information.
bogiesan

Saving out with Alpha channel intact to windows machine? (Motion v3)

I am working with someone who does video on his windows machine using Premier, but I use Motion to add effects to thier video.
They are sending me a wmv version of the video, which I convert into prorez to work on (keeping frame rate and video size intact) and send the video to Motion to add the effects. Once I'm done I turn off the layer with the original video and send back to FCP.
I want to save out a quicktime video from FCP with alpha channel intact so I can send the FX-only layer back to my workmate so he can drop it into his timeline on his machine and have everything align properly.
Any advice on how to do this?

If you have Compressor 4, check and see if you have the Animation codec. If you do, send the Motion project to Compressor and select the Animation codec with the setting 'Million Colors+'. The + (plus) is the transparent setting for the codec.
Open the Motion app and drop the Animation video on top of something to make sure you have the transparency.
Motion has ProRes 4444 that can contain a transparent background. Unfortunately, Windows computers do not support the ProRes codec.
BTW, a transparent background will look black (sometimes white).

DNxHD (.mxf) export with alpha channel

Hello!
I'm working with one Finnish children's feature film which will star end of this year as an DIT. Movie will include lot's of green screen and the production want's me to do chroma keyed DNxHD 36 renders with alpha channel for AVID editorial. So far I have found out that neither davinci desolve nor assimilate scratch can't do it. Is it possible to render DNxHD with alpha channel from AE? And can Avid import these files with alpha channel? All help is needed and appreciated.
Cheers
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Are you sure your alpha is there? (check by pressing "a" with the mouse over the view window).
Did you try telling FCP that there is an alpha channel? If you did "Send to Shake", Final Cut Pro doesn't expect that the QuickTime it's getting back will contain an alpha channel (It's meant to match your sequence settings). You might try dragging the output directly into the browser to re-import it and see if it recognizes the alpha...
As a matter of fact, maybe you can check in QT Player, load it into QuickTime Player, cmd-j, click on the video track and play with the transparency setting. Try Straight Alpha - that should lead to the background going white - then you'll know its coming out of Shake properly and concentrate on getting FCP to recognize it...
If all else fails (I did just try it here and it worked), maybe try a TIFF or TGA sequence?
post back,
Patrick

Can no longer import QT files with alpha channel

I have been using these client supplied QT with alpha channel files just fine for weeks, then all of a sudden, after a crash the other day, I was unable to open sequences with these files and exoprt them, the exporter would just freeze. the clips played in the timeline, but VERY sluggish.
On the reccomendation of a few posts around here, I removed the clips from the project, and now I cannot import them back in, I get a "the importer reported a generic error" message. I am able to open in QT pro and export to a new file that will import to PPro, but I lose the alpha channel.
As always, I'm up against a deadline and any help would be greatly appreciated.
I have installed QT 7.07, no help.
I'm on a windows 7 machine running CS master collection 5.0, Quad core AMD with 8 gig RAM.
These files worked fine just days ago!!!!
BTW, I just switched over to Premiere a few months ago and to honest I can't understand how anyone would stick with this buggy software, as a professional I've never used anything this bad before.

Welcome to the forum.
Try these. Attempt to re-import after each one:
Clean the media cache database via Edit | Preferences | Media
If step 2 doesn't work, then find all the .qtindex, .mpgindex, .cfa and .pek files associated with the media that's supposed to be in your project and delete them. Then clean the media cache database again.
Launch Pr and while it's launching, hold down the Alt + Shift keys until the Welcome screen appears. Alt resets your preferences and Shift resets the plug-in cache.
To address the other issues you say you've been having with Pr, you should start a different thread (or threads). Coming from other editors, there may be a difference in the way Pr does things that produce unexpected results that may be seen as bugs. More serious issues, such as crashes, can often be caused by 3rd-party hardware like AJA, Matrox or BlackMagic and the associated drivers. Outdated or incorrect drivers for audio and video cards can also cause problems. I recommend that you start troubleshooting those areas first.
Other issues may have workarounds. If you have serious, reproducible problems that have no workaround, then please file bug reports here:
Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form
-Jeff

ImageIO PNG Writing Slow With Alpha Channel

I'm writing a project that generates images with alpha channels, which I want to save in PNG format. Currently I'm using javax.ImageIO to do this, using statements such as:
ImageIO.write(image, "png", file);
I'm using JDK 1.5.0_06, on Windows XP.
The problem is that writing PNG files is very slow. It can take 9 or 10 seconds to write a 640x512 pixel image, ending up at around 300kb! I have read endless documentation and forum threads today, some of which detail similar problems. This would be an example:
[http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6215304|http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6215304]
This surely must be resolvable, but after much searching I've yet to find a solution. If it makes any difference, I ONLY want to write png image, and ONLY with an alpha channel (not ever without), in case there are optimisations that that makes possible.
If anyone can tell me how to address this problem, I'd be very grateful.
Many thanks, Robert Redwood.

This isn't a solution, but rather a refinement of the issue.
Some of the sources I was reading were implying that the long save time might be due to a CPU heavy conversion process that had to take place before the BufferedImage could be saved. I decided to investigate:
I loaded back in one of the (slowly) saved PNG images using ImageIO.read(file). Sure enough, the BufferedImage returned differed from the BufferedImage I had created. The biggest difference was the color model, which was DirectColorModel on the image I was generating, and was ComponentColorModel on the image I was loading back in.
So I decided to manually convert the image to be the same as how it seemed to end up anyway. I wrote the following code:
      * Takes a BufferedImage object, and if the color model is DirectColorModel,
      * converts it to be a ComponentColorModel suitable for fast PNG writing. If
      * the color model is any other color model than DirectColorModel, a
      * reference to the original image is simply returned.
      * @param source The source image.
      * @return The converted image.
     public static BufferedImage convertColorModelPNG(BufferedImage source)
          if (!(source.getColorModel() instanceof DirectColorModel))
               return source;
          ICC_Profile newProfile = ICC_Profile.getInstance(ColorSpace.CS_sRGB);
          ICC_ColorSpace newSpace = new ICC_ColorSpace(newProfile);
          ComponentColorModel newModel = new ComponentColorModel(newSpace, true, false, ComponentColorModel.TRANSLUCENT, DataBuffer.TYPE_BYTE);
          PixelInterleavedSampleModel newSampleModel = new PixelInterleavedSampleModel(DataBuffer.TYPE_BYTE, source.getWidth(), source.getHeight(), 4, source.getWidth() * 4, new int[] { 0, 1, 2, 3 });
          DataBufferByte newDataBuffer = new DataBufferByte(source.getWidth() * source.getHeight() * 4);
          ByteInterleavedRaster newRaster = new ByteInterleavedRaster(newSampleModel, newDataBuffer, new Point(0, 0));
          BufferedImage dest = new BufferedImage(newModel, newRaster, false, new Hashtable());
          int[] srcData = ((DataBufferInt)source.getRaster().getDataBuffer()).getData();
          byte[] destData = newDataBuffer.getData();
          int j = 0;
          byte argb = 0;
          for (int i = 0; i < srcData.length; i++)
               j = i * 4;
               argb = (byte)(srcData[i] >> 24);
               destData[j] = argb;
               destData[j + 1] = 0;
               destData[j + 2] = 0;
               destData[j + 3] = 0;
          //Graphics2D g2 = dest.createGraphics();
          //g2.drawImage(source, 0, 0, null);
          //g2.dispose();
          return dest;
     }My apologies if that doesn't display correctly in the post.
Basically, I create a BufferedImage the hard way, matching all the parameters of the image I get when I load in a PNG with alpha channel.
The last bit, (for simplicity), just makes sure I copy over the alpha channel of old image to the new image, and assumes the color was black. This doesn't make any real speed difference.
Now that runs lightning quick, but interestingly, see the bit I've commented out? The alternative to setting the ARGB values was to just draw the old image onto the new image. For a 640x512 image, this command (drawImage) took a whopping 36 SECONDS to complete! This may hint that the problem is to do with conversion.
Anyhow, I got rather excited. The conversion went quickly. Here's the rub though, the image took 9 seconds to save using ImageIO.write, just the same as if I had never converted it. :(
SOOOOOOOOOOOO... Why have I told you all this?
Well, I guess I think it narrows dow the problem, but eliminates some solutions (to save people suggesting them).
Bottom line, I still need to know why saving PNGs using ImageIO is so slow. Is there any other way to fix this, short of writing my own PNG writer, and indeed would THAT fix the issue?
For the record, I have a piece of C code that does this in well under a second, so it can't JUST be a case of 'too much number-crunching'.
I really would appreciate any help you can give on this. It's very frustrating.
Thanks again. Robert Redwood.

Adding logo with Alpha channel to Quicktime and exporting as .mp4

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