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After effects alpha import problems with Final Cut 5
I’ve just upgraded to Final Cut 5 and have found some issues with alpha channels from PS and AE files where there used to be none before (thanks apple!). Exporting lossless quicktime files from After Effects is fine as always and the alpha channels work fine… but bring those same files into FCP5 and it just won’t read the alpha channel at all. Any suggestions as this is driving me mad. I’m having to work around it by exporting an alpha only version of the same file and comping it in FCP which takes twice as long. I’m having problems with photoshop text as well – it just looks crinkly now as soon as its laid on top of anything….
Playing around with the field dominance settings helps the PS problems but the alpha channel issue seems to be unsolvable. I may be being a total muppet but I just can’t get it to work!
Thanks for any help that comes
Robin
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10 Replies
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Robin,
Yesterday I finished my first major project using 5. (Woohoo!) I had a movie from AE in there with an alpha channel and it worked as always. Because my project was 8bit uncompressed I had to render the files, but they were very clean.
My render settings from AE were Animation, millions+ and I set the alpha channel to straight.
Check to see if yours are premultiplied, could be the problem.No problems in the same project with transparency on about 25 PS layers either.
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We have see that the alpha sensing in FCP5 is wonky, doesn’t always get it right. Did you try to manually set the alpha? Did you try to view the alpha in the Browser?
I’m using alpha movies from AE and LT and Motion without the any problems in FCP5/Tiger. but I do have to set the alpha interpretation manually sometimes.bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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You also have to be in Safe RT and in High Quality.
The PSD File will look fine if you monitor your work on a video monitor (many people wrongly do not do this). The Canvas will not show you the actual rendered quality.
You also must be in Safe RT
You also must have the dark greee FULL bar checked in the Sequence>Render menu
Your graphics must be on whole, even X,Y numbers
Sequence>Settings>Video Processing Tab set to Best for motion filtering quality.
Try these things.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
Actually the canvas shows you full uncompressed rgb rendered quality. If you’re working with DV, the broadcast monitor is going to show 5:1 compression.
If you don’t have your sequence set to full quality that’d be a different story.
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Thanks for all the messages guys…. sadly, as an experienced final cut user these are all things I’ve tried already. It really is a case of the software seeing the alpha channel when you look at it in the viewer…. it knows there is an alpha channel but as soon as you put it in a sequence it just ignores it completely. Very very frustrating….
Thanks again
Robin
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Sorry to kep banging on about this as I’m sure it’s a really simple problem but, having just tried all the files I’m working with in Final Cut 4.5 and finding them working perfectly I really need to try and get to the bottom of what’s going wrong…. So…. one final appeal to anyone using AE 6.5 on a G5 with Final Cut 5 if you’re having problems reading the alpha channels in your lossless animations and have managed to fix it, please let me know
Many thanks
Robin
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Hi Robin
sorry to be late in responding … only just spotted your thread
i can confirm the exact same problem. a clip’s alpha completely ignored in the canvas although clearly identified in the viewer …. bizarre.
heres the deal …. something is wrong with your FCP5 install (did you do an update or a fresh install? is that an issue or is that only with the tiger install??)
anyway, after wasting literally hours of valuable time trying to figure out what was wrong, i finally tried the exact same test clips on a different fcp installation …. everything worked perfectly first time. i was dumbfounded. i’d been doing everything ok all along. luckily, in my instance, i had only been testing some clips on my powerbook, and so the error was not critical.
although i haven’t got round to this myself, yet, my best advice is to do a complete fresh reinstall of fcp5, and then try again.
very best of luck
Andy -
I just did a test. Import with Alpha is working just fine. So something is probably wrong with your installation of FCP. Good Luck.
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
[Kevin Monahan] “I just did a test. Import with Alpha is working just fine. So something is probably wrong with your installation of FCP. Good Luck.”
I have no problem with alphas on my system but I don’t see how the installation of FCP5 could be at fault. Seems that something this fundamental would also mean lots of other stuff was severely busted; the app wouldn’t work at all.
Anyway, I can’t confirm a problem, soprry. I’ve got a pretty good installation of FCP5 on my old Quicksilver which seems to piss off lots of people.
Could we maybe get an update on this issue? Did robin reinstall?
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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is there different field dominance between your AE rendered clip and the sequence you are editing?
if so, FCP5 will apply the new “shift fields” filter to the clip at the moment you are editing the clip into the sequence.
but this filter does’nt respect existing alpha channel!
just try to deactivate this filter in the filter tab and every thing should be fine.kurt
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