Alpha channel not be interpreted in FCP 7

Dropping in a .motn file into FCP 7's timeline - the alpha channel is not being recognized. If you render out a file and bring into FCP 7, then the alpha is recognized. Anyone else experience this?

You may need to right/ctrl-click on the .motn file in FCP and tell it to interpret the Alpha channel... (or it might be clicking on it and going under the Clip menu and setting the alpha channel)...
Patrick

Similar Messages

Export for DVD with Animation codec without alphas channels not working?

I'm using FCP 5 with DVDSP. My FCP projects consist of quicktime movies that are using the Animation compressor (for lossless quality), and the movies contain alpha channels (thus they were rendered at Millions + colors to preserve the alphas).
This is my problem. I want to now export a quicktime movie to use in DVDSP with animation compression, so it is again lossless quality (obviously to presever the quality through these steps). But I do NOT want to preserve the alpha channels, because what I've learned is that when made into a DVD, the alphas are not preserved and the image looks wrong (as if without the alphas).
So I basically want to "flatten" the video, if there was some way.
I would assume the solution would be to, in FCP, export a quicktime at animation compression, but set to Millions for colors, and not Millions + (I was taught that the Millions + will preserve the alpha info).
Well, what's happening is when I set it to that, it renders, but then I get info on the movie in Quicktime and it says it has Millions + still. And thus, it looks wrong in DVDSP.
What is going on? Is this a bug in FCP?
Does anyone have an idea as to how to get around this. The only thing that has worked for me is to export the Quicktime movie with "none" for compression, but that's making the movie SO large that I can't work with it and it doesn't play right when I make the DVD.
I really appreciate anyones help on the matter. Thanks!
Brian,.
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 30" Apple Cinema Display
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display

Thanks for the suggestions. I have not yet tried laying a solid black video track underneath to see what it does, but it seems like a good idea and I'll try it out to see what happens when I get back home.
I'll try to explain what I mean by the image looking wrong.
I'm picking up where another left off, so I'm not sure of how he cut the quicktime movie together; all I know is that they used alpha channels in Photoshop and After Effects to make the image looks the way they want it. This is a drawn character laid on a white background with a black frame around the entire image. It looks the way he wants it to in the quicktime movie, and this quicktime movie is 720x480, animation millions colors +, 24fps.
This movie, along with others of the like, need to be cut together in FCP and then put on a DVD with DVDSP. When I export it and it looks "wrong", what's happening is there is a black block behind the drawn character. The guy that made the movies in AE says that, that is what it looks like when the alpha channel is not working correctly.
To test things, I've changed the quicktime compression settings in the sequence settings. If I set it to anything that is not animation, I get that black block in the viewer. (Note though, that if I set it to animation, millions + or not +, it shows the alpha correctly both ways).
In FCP's user manual it says that if you're passing your movie on to a DVD, to use a high or lossless compression to keep the quality up, like animation or PhotoJPEG. For this reason, I haven't wanted to go to DV - especially with this type of image (graphic drawn shapes), it's easy to see a quality difference.
It really seems like there is a lot of voodoo involved with compression settings. As for now the best "fool-proof" solution I've found is to re-render the movie in After Effects at millions (not+) so that it won't contain the alpha channel info, and FCP seems to like that a lot more.
I just wish I could get FCP to work with the movies as they were because I'm having to re-edit everything to work with these new movies now.
Thanks again for the tips and insight.
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display

Splashy - alpha channel not working

Hi,
The alpha channel of the progress bar colours doesn't seem to work with Splashy on my system. I have set transparency in the theme XML but it's ingnored. The transparency does work for the text area, but not for the progress bar or its background.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? If anyone can help me identify if this is a problem with my set up or with Splashy itself I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
Fishonadish

When you don't get a response here it usually means one of several things:
· No one understood your post (not the case this time though - you articulated the problem very well)
· No one else has encountered the same problem
· No one was able to duplicate the problem on their system
· No one likes you (just kidding!)
I'm glad to hear you got it working ... and very good that you posted what fixed it so that others facing the same problem might benefit. Thanks for that!.
-DH

Cinema 4D Alpha Channel not Being Assigned to Text

So I just want to create a really simple scene. I just have to thing off text, a floor, and a sky light. Now I have checked the Alpha layer setting because I am going to import this into photoshop and just want to make the text and shadow the only thing there.
When I render it out and even when I save it, the alpha layer is just a black bar across the top of the layer, I want it to be the text.
Any help would be much appreciated.

So as I said, I am making a simple scene in cinema 4D with just some text. I am going to bring it in to photoshop so I will have 3D text in photoshop.
But when you render out the Cinema 4D image, it has a grey background. "Easy," I thought. I researched it and it said you just have to check "Alpha Channel" and Cinema 4D, if I save it as a tiff image, will cut out the background and leave the text as the alpha channel in photohshop.
But that is not what I am getting. Instead of my text in the alpha channel (in photoshop) I just get a black bar across the top of a white background.

Aperture, photoshop layers and Alpha channels - notes

In examining Aperture 2.0 to see if I could use it instead of Adobe bridge in my workflow (which makes intense use of Photoshop) I found that Aperture (and, apparently, OS X) cannot properly display a preview for a .psd file with either layers or an alpha channel. In some cases, the preview image is simply an error message, in others the alpha channel is displayed as black. These problems make Aperture a non-starter for me.
Searching this forum for information, solutions, and/or workarounds, I found some references, but nothing of high value. (Sorry, posters.) Started my own investigation, and discovered some things that might lead to a reasonable workaround. My notes are here:
http://homepage.mac.com/bbarlow641/webinfonotebook/
too long, I think, to put into a forum post. Sorry to link out to somewhere else, but if you're interested, it's worth a click. (Or the linked page may not have "high value" either. But it helped me to think through the problem.)
Ben

bbarlow641 wrote:
Saving the file as a layered TIFF file would preserve the layers - that might be a good idea since Aperture doesn't recognize psb files. But any "saving as" step - as a psb or as a TIFF - creates a second (large) file, so I don't think it's an ideal solution.
I don't know if that helps in your workflow, but the way I handle this is:
• import the raw file into Aperture
• open in external editor (i.e. PhotoShop; external editor format: tiff)
• edit in PhotoShop
• when saving I am asked if I want to save it as layered tiff (provided the preferences are set accordingly: File Handling / Ask before saving layered tiff files);
• here two things are to be considered:
_ the file extension used by PS is "tif", so it has to be changed to "tiff"
_ on my MacBook Pro the Save As-dialog opens showing the correct file location (i.e., the correct subfolder inside the Aperture library), on my Mac Pro the initial location is somewhere else (remembered from the last saving procedure); I have to work around this by first command-clicking in the image window's title bar to open the edited file's location in the Finder, so that I can then drag it onto the Save As-dialog. This is actually slightly annoying, but I did not find out the reason so far.
• Aperture automatically refreshes the saved file.
This way I end up with just this one extra file. The whole procedure would be a bit simpler using referenced files instead of storing them in the library.
My settings in PS do have the "Maximize Compatibility" option set (in the notebooked example, it's set to "ask", normally it's set to "always"). I'm using CS2. Maybe this setting works in CS3 to create the composite? I've heard several people here say that same thing, but it definitely doesn't do it for me...
For me this works, and as far as I remember also worked in CS2; do you see a difference in file size between files saved both ways? How does Preview.app display the file saved with "Maximize Compatibility"?
Since my first post, I've been trying to figure out how to add a PS action that would run an Applescript to tell GraphicConverter to open and close a file, creating a preview. But it seems that while an Applescript can trigger a Postscript action, the reverse (having a Postscript action trigger an Applescript) is not possible.
Might something like a hot folder with an automator scripts attached to it be a possible workaround?
Message was edited by: Bernhard Barkow

Alpha Channel Not Showing On Video Clips

I have imported several video clips that I know have Alpha Channels, but when I import them into the timeline/sequence, the ALPHA Channel is appearing as a black background. What am I doing wrong or what setting should I check??

There was a known issue that I noticed over a year ago that was discussed in this thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4831495#4831495
AFAIK it was never solved, but I haven't updated to the latest version of Premiere because of all of the bugs (cough cough)
Gerry

Flash FLV in iFrame Alpha Channel Not Working

Hi
I was trying to make one of those overlay videos where you see the webpage behind the video thats playing, there's a person talking to you in the foreground, usually shot on green screen
I processed the footage with alpha channel intact, (checked with Sorenson flv player), all the way to placing it in an iframe on a iWeb page and I think that is where the problem occurs, the transparency goes to a black background. I must be missing a piece of code somewhere. Any ideas as to fix will be appreciated. thnx

Hi
Thanks for info above...
I discovered that iframe is writing a line of html code that I had to change by hand, it was a background color call and the value was #010101 something like that, so I erased that entry and left it blank, save the html file, uploaded it, and BOOM the black background just disappeared... NOW I need to get it working in Internet Explorer, IE is adding a White background to the video. Any info appreciated

Alpha channel from photoshop changes on import to FCP

I'm new to alpha channels. I have an image, to which I added an alpha channel in Photoshop, which now gives me a cut-out of the image. I imported the psd of this into FCP 5.0.4 (I was not allowed by FCP to import a tiff with an alpha channel.) However, the alpha channel on the clip in FCP has now become the whole rectangle of the image area, not just the mask area as it was in Photoshop, so when selected, the whole image is masked. Changing the alpha type, or reversing it, does not make any improvement. Is there a solution to this?
Many thanks
John

David,
I just had a breakthrough with this. The original file was CMYK. Creating an alpha channel and importing it into FCP gave me the problem. Converting it to RGB first, then creating the alpha channel and importing it, solved the problem. Doh!
Your line "sounds like you didn't create one" gave me the clue. Many thanks.
John

Unexpected Alpha channel behavior in Premiere

Is there no way to interpret alphas as straight versus premultiplied in Premiere? Why do my transparent layers and clips with alpha channels display differently with a Black Video layer below them?
Background info:
I'm exporting my film to files with codecs that support alpha channels, not because I want an alpha in the result but because I need full RGB / 444 color coding for digital cinema theaters. I'm using ProRes444, Targa and PNG Image sequences to preserve as much quality as possible in my master exports.
I've discovered that there is no option to disable the alpha transparency in the Export Media step while preserving at least 10 bits per color channel (Trillions of colors in AE).
To solve this problem, I've had to add a "Black Video" clip to the first video track, underneath the film's content. When this is done, the pre-rendered text elements with alphas look different. They are movie trailer style text treatments that are light text over pure black. (I'm on my ipad right now and don't see a way to upload screen shots to show examples)
The result with the black video layer applied at the bottom is similar to the way QuickTime 7 displays straight alphas incorrectly. This problem occurs with both straight and premultiplied renders. The rendered text is from after effects and is stored using the animation codec.
I'm aware of how to work around this, by maintaining the alpha transparency in Premiere and then removing the alpha channel of my export by running it through After Effects, but that is a ridiculous, time consuming step.
I'm working with the GPU Mercury Engine on with a K5000 from NVIDIA. Can anyone explain this behavior? Is there no way to interpret alphas as straight versus premultiplied in Premiere? Why do my transparent layers display differently with a Black Video layer below them?
Here are the screen shots
UNDESIRED EFFECT using Black Video layer at bottom: Notice the fuzzy glow surrounding the text. This is happening with both straight and premultiplied renders.
INTENDED LOOK when composited over nothing: The glowing edges are displayed the same way in Premiere as in After Effects.

In my understanding, the reason 444 is indicated is because they are not RGB codecs. They simply sample the same amount of color as is possible in true RGB codecs. They still require a conversion from RGB to YUV for coding to a file, which almost always introduces a very slight shift in values, though usually imperceptible or acceptable. If the codec is truly RGB there is no need to indicate luminance vs color sampling.
...I think.
Again thank you for your awesome input! You've been a huge help here on my day off. :)

Exporting Targa Sequence and Alpha Channel

I have a couple of targa sequence containing graphics that I need to export. One has an opaque arrow which rolls out over the film underneath. The second has solid text which will be laid over the arrow as it animates. I have run the image sequences in Quicktime, the arrow sequence comes out as a block of black and the solid text comes out against a black background instead of an alpha channel and I can't seem to manipulate them. I have FCP 6 which i thought had Quick Time Pro to handle alpha channels. What am I doing wrong, can anyone help?

hi,
what exactly are you doing?
why are you exporting from quicktime? why dont you import the image sequence directly into motion/fcp? Not saying you;re wrong, just wondering that 's all.
Have you got the export settings correct. Not many codecs support alpha channels. Your best bet is Animation set to Millions of colours +. the + is the alpha channel.
However motion or fcp should be able to read the image files just fine.
adam

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.

Alpha Channel - can't export to psd after update?

Been doing this for years... from After effects CC
Composition, Save frame as, File, Photoshop, RGB+Alpha etc - and its worked fine exported with transparency like you'd expect.
Updated Photoshop CC this morning and suddenly alpha channel not being recognised...
Bug...or have I gone mad in the last 24 hours??

Maybe I misunderstand your question but Photoshop CC opens psd files with Alpha Channels just fine here, so it seems likely that the issue is with the files.
But you seem to be mixing Alpha Channels and Transparency – so what are you talking about exactly?
Could you post screenshots to illustrate what you are doing and what results you get?

Layered Photoshop files with alpha channels

I wondered if anyone had a work around for the problem of layered PSD files with alpha channels not previewing properly in Aperture 3.1.1. I know it's been an issue in previous versions of Aperture but I thought Apple would have sorted this by now, or am I asking too much?

I tested a file last night as follows:
Sent file via 'Edit with Photoshop CS5' (as PSD 8-bit, sRGB color space) > changed background to normal layer > created circular selection around subject and inverted to remove most of image leaving transparent area (about 70% of image) > saved file > closed Photoshop > file updated in Aperture with black filling in the transparent area.
Resent the PSD back to Photoshop (which opened correctly with transparent area) > created two new layers and sent one to background > filled new background layer with White and left top new layer transparent > saved again and closed Photoshop > file updated in Aperture with white showing in transparent areas (no black).
AFAIK, this is how it is designed to work.
My only other suggestion would be for you to create a new empty library (press Option while launching Aperture > Create New..) and then import one RAW or JPEG file and test.
Note - you can reset Photoshop by holding down 'Command + Option + Shift' immediately after launching Photoshop and clicking 'Yes', then set the 'Maximize Compatibility...' to 'Always' again. Doing this prior to sending the file from new library would probably be best.
Apologies in advance if you have already tried this and for outlining procedures that you are already familiar with (just not sure what level Photoshop user you are).

CS4 (XP-32bit) doesn't save alpha channel

When I use the "Save As..." command to save a picture with transparency as a Windows bitmap file (.BMP), the transparency information gets lost. I selected alpha-channels and chose 32-bit in the BMP options dialog.
In CS3 this works fine.
Any idea how I can get it to work in CS4? The target program can only read BMP-files, so my workflow depends on it.
Thanks.

The BMP format does not support transparency.
A few BMP variants do support an alpha channel (not transparency, but some games use it for transparency). I believe all of those variants are under the advanced options section when saving.

CS5.5 | ProRes 4444 - Interpret Footage does NOT see Alpha Channel

I thought this problem would have been taken care of by now.
Guess the bug fixes in CS5.5 are few if at all
1) Export any movie to ProRes 4444 and set to export alpha channel straight.
2) re-import to AE
3) Open Interpret Footage Dialog....
One gets REALLY disillusioned when discovering that ALL alpha options have been grayed out.
When is this ProRes MADNESS going to STOP !!!!!

Dan,
if you are ever in Hamburg, Germany. Let me know and the brews are on ME.
In my testing madness I exported a movie WITH NO ALPHA.... That is the reason why I was NOT seeing any alpha options on import.
I dup'ed the vid layer and moved it about and set the opacity to 50... Then exported. And imported. And THERE they were ....
LE ALPHA OPTIONS....
Best Regards
M.

Alpha channel not be interpreted in FCP 7

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for