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Rendering lower 3rds from AE into Vegas
Hi folks,
I’m having real trouble rendering a lower third with a moving text effect in After Effects CS4 so that it can be used in a video being edited in Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.
When I render the composition in AE, it has a black background, no matter which alpha setting I use in Render settings/Output modules (I think I tried them all!) In the Composition window, my lower third appears to have a transparent background. For the record, I imported the original .psd file from Photoshop (at which point the background was transparent and video could be seen in the Vegas layer underneath.
I’m a relative newbie when it comes to AE, but having read through the forums posts, I can’t figure out where I’m going wrong.
Thanks,
Marcus
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3 Replies
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Well, if the background is black, you could just key out the black color. Drop your backgound on the top track, key out the black, and put your video on the second video track (under).
My understanding (i could be wrong!) is that you need a 32 bit AVI file in order to have the Alpha channel on export.
You could also check how the AVI file is interpreted by Vegas on import. Check the video file property to see if the Alpha Channel is set properly. Try Pre-multiplied or Straight. Not sure if you have those options in Vegas Studio though…
One last option would be to export from AE as a TIFF or PNG sequence. Those files would keep the transparency and should be accepted by Vegas (the Pro version does.)
Hope this helps!
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Thanks Sebastien,
I had convinced myself the problem was something I’d done when rendering in After Effects. In fact, after importing into Vegas I had to tell that app the new import was to be used as an alpha channel.
For anyone else in a similar situation: render in AE with RGB+Alpha and then after importing into Vegas right click on the imported file > Properties > Media tab > Set Alpha Channel to Straight (unmatted).
Where it gets confusing is that .psd files imported with an alpha channel from Photoshop don’t need to be flagged in this way.
Cheers,
Marcus
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I would highly recommend that you render to the Quicktime Animation codec with the “Millions+” setting (full quality + alpha) using the “Straight” mode. These files will look strange in Quicktime Player but should import exactly as expected in any editing app that recognizes alpha channels.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com
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