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Grfx & Animations with Alpha not showing up with Alpha in SVP?
A few days ago, I took advantage of a videoblocks offer to download various grfx & animation elements to try out. Long-story short: several elements were animated “lower-3rds title bar-bkgrds” with alpha channel. Some were MP4 others were MOV.
Ok..so I’m laying these lower 3rds in but the alpha isn’t transparent..instead there’s a solid black bkgrd. No biggie I thought…just open the media properties and select Alpha Channel and choose Straight, premultiplied or premutliplied (dirty) and close.
Well..no go…there’s still a black bkgrd.Tried some Chromakey selection tool with eyedrop on blk bkgrd and adjusted thresholds, etc. On some this works ok but on others, not so much.
My big question is why the alpha’s aren’t showing up in the first place? I’m using SVP10 and have the updates.
Is there something I’m missing? BTW…back in my day we had chroma key and luminance key… FWIW.
Thanks,
Chas
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12 Replies
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UPDATE: Ok… so after I posted my original question. I went back in to my timeline and imported other downloads from the same batch. Here’s what I discovered: Some clips work just fine (select PROPERTIES>Alpha …etc. No problemo!
All I can figure is the clips I really want to use aren’t alpha’ed even though the website said they were. I’ve deleted the clips…re-imported them..did the select properties / alpha / etc. to no avail.
Guess someone didn’t do their job and just uploaded non-alpha clips for lower 3rd’s and well…the rest is history.
Hope they’re not the same folks who train Korean Airline Pilots.
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Lol….A lot of those video files from Videoblocks arent
done professionally. Therefore that’s why some of their
files says alpha channel but still are on a solid black
background, and some that does have a transparent background
the alpha channel is not clean.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956 -
They were free, weren’t they? You got what you paid for.
For static images, I have used Photoshop to remove the beckgrounds, but with animated overlays, I have to depend on chromakey or luma keying.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Speaking of Luminance keying… is there a more straight-forward method / filter in Vegas? I know of the “masking” but that seems a tad cumbersome. Isn’t there some plug-in fx to just key out the blk or wht and adjust the luminance / gain like we did with switchers back in the day?
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As previously mentioned, I’ve used the chroma keyer FX with great results.
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Sometimes switching the Compositing Mode on the video track
sometimes help.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956 -
I too have used the Chroma Keyer to great effect however some animated lower-3rds have certain black levels that bleed out and create noise… I’ve adjusted the threshold,blur, etc to no avail… I know I can go through a multi-step process to fix-it (i.e. Color Balance / Mask Filter..etc.) but it seems that a simpler adjustment panel on a one-stop key filter fx would make a lot more sense. A key’s a key… why not combine everthing in one simple panel?
OKAY..so here’s my beef / rant: Seems like video edit software has been co-opted by grfx folks who like to play with levels (thanks to their Adobe Photoshop bkgrd)… back in the mid-1990’s I fussed with some of the developers of Premiere to look at how video editors work and use the same lingo like DELETE instead of CLEAR, etc. Anyways… we hear sooo much about work-flows, etc. and yet here’s this clumsy/multi-step method to do something which took me 10 seconds to do with a twist on a couple switches and check the scope. Like a lot of things in Vegas… seems clumsy.
Ok I’m done!
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“Some were MP4 others were MOV.”
Only AVI uncompressed and Quicktime (Mov) supports alpha channel. MP4 don’t.
Maybe that is why some files work and some don’t.
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“certain black levels that bleed out and create noise…”
As Steve said, the Alpha Channel mode selected in Vegas must match the Alpha Channel mode the file was created with. Try Straight, Premultiplied or Premultiplied (dirty)
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You can get a similar effect to a luminance key by placing the video on a separate track and setting the track composite mode to Screen. This will get rid of the black but may look a bit washed out.
Boris FX Continuum Complete Unit Key and Blend has a Luma Key plug-in for Vegas Pro. I strongly recommend getting the entire Continuum Complete package. It takes Vegas Pro into the realm of After Effects.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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