• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  ProRes 4444 alpha channel stopped working

  Posted by Espen Moe on August 25, 2011 at 11:45 am

  Hi Creative Cow Users, I really hope you can help me.

  I encountered a really strange problem with the ProRes 4444 codec.
  From yesterday to today the alpha channel in the codec simply stopped working.

  No matter which (4444) settings I try to output in, the .mov only shows millions of colors with no alpha.
  I have been trying alot of workarounds e.g. exporting to Apple Animation with alpha,
  and then using QT7 to convert this to 4444, with the same result.

  The exports of the same unaltered AE CS5 project worked perfectly yesterday.
  And I haven’t made any updates of soft or hardware.

  I even tried this:
  https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/05/prores-4444-and-prores-422-in.html

  Hardware:
  MacPro 2×2.93 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon.
  Nvidia GeForce GT 120
  BlackMagic DeckLink HD Extreme

  Software:
  Mac OS X 10.5.8
  Adobe Production Premium CS5 (primarily After Effects)
  Final Cut Studio 7

  A solution or hint will be highly appreciated.

  Best regards

  Jeremy Garchow replied 14 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Jeremy Garchow

  August 25, 2011 at 3:30 pm

  [Espen Moe] “No matter which (4444) settings I try to output in, the .mov only shows millions of colors with no alpha.”

  What are you outputting from?
• 

  Espen Moe

  August 25, 2011 at 7:13 pm

  I use AfterEffects CS5

  Other codecs’ alpha channels work fine with output from AE…

  E.g. I tried rendering to Apple’s Animation codec, with no alpha problem.
  Then I used Quicktime 7 player to export this to ProRes(4444).
  The result was millions of colors and no alpha.

  Unfortunately I can’t use other codecs… needs to be ProRes.
  And LiveType which the video is to be used with, doesn’t support multiple mattes.
  So can’t use ProRes(422) either.
• 

  Jeremy Garchow

  August 25, 2011 at 7:16 pm

  [Espen Moe] “I use AfterEffects CS5”

  So in the output module you have chosen RGB + Alpha? Then millions of colors+?
• 

  Espen Moe

  August 25, 2011 at 10:36 pm

  exactly
• 

  Jeremy Garchow

  August 25, 2011 at 10:44 pm

  In the fcp browser, find the alpha column. If it’s not there, make it available by right clicking on the column head and choose show alpha. Try changing from none to black or straight.
• 

  Espen Moe

  August 29, 2011 at 2:35 pm

  First I would like to say thanks a lot for helping me out here !

  I tried the FCP cheat you said, and it works fine… great trick btw!
  But my problem is that it doesn’t work in LiveType where I’m making a toolkit for use in FCP … And FCP won’t recognize the alpha data through the LiveType files.

  I’m going to go through every element in my projects, reinstalling codecs, and so forth.

  I’ll let you know if I come up with something.
• 

  Jeremy Garchow

  August 29, 2011 at 3:28 pm

  [Espen Moe] “But my problem is that it doesn’t work in LiveType where I’m making a toolkit for use in FCP … And FCP won’t recognize the alpha data through the LiveType files.”

  Hmm. I have no experience with livetype. Sorry I can’t be of much more help there.

  Jeremy

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