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Alpha Problem
Hi,
I know a lot of people have been having problems with Alpha channel processing and i’ve tried searching the forums but haven’t found any answers specifically for my problem.
Just to make it clear, this is a FCP6 issue as i have been using the same media, problem free for over a year until last week when i upgraded from 5 to 6.
The first problem i fixed by reading a previous post (where the alpha mode wasn’t set right, changed it from straight to black…..etc although i never had this problem before with FCP5)
So if i open my animation clip (that has an alpha embedded) in the viewer, everything looks fine and alpha works great. When i drop it into the timeline its still ok (although it took a bit of fiddling to get this to work) then if i move/distort the file (is i commonly do) bam…alpha gone and filled with black, I have no idea why it does this and i’ve tried changing alpha to black,white,straight,ignore and they all produce the same result.
The second problem is even more worrying, if i don’t transform/move the clip and just leave it how it is and overlay it on top of my video everything looks fine in the canvas but my external monitor is only showing the animation clip on top where it should be superimposed over the top with the alpha allowing the video underneath to show through. I thought this might be a rendering issue so i rendered the timeline and still get the same result.
Heres what i’m working with.
The animation clips are quicktimes rendered with the animation codec with alpha included (these were made by an animation studio else where)
I’m working in a 10bit uncompressed timeline but i have tried a ProRes and DV timeline just to make sure thats not the problem.
The video footage is DVCPROHD captured from a FS-100
And a Blackmagic HD card
***These are the same settings that were working last week with FCP5***Hopefully you are able to understand the problem i’m having and offer some help.
I’ll try to get some screen grabs of whats going on when i have some spare time.
Thanks,
Scott Moore
Editor,
Spitfire TV -
4 Replies
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Ok, I have found out that if i open one of the clips in the viewer and export it creating a new file then import that new file…. it works fine.
So i have a work around in the mean time….. would still appreciate any help because i don’t want to have to go through and convert all 80 files this way 🙁
Scott Moore
Editor,
Spitfire TV -
Hi Scott,
If you change the “Alpha’ kind once the clip is set in the time-line, that doesn’t works. You must set the clip again in the time-line to to make the change effective.
BTW, if you are working with 10b Unc, why do you use Animation? Animation (apart of being RGB) provides you an 8b Alpha channel. I use Sheer that allows to work with a 10b Alpha channel in RGB or YCbCr. Rendering your graphics in 16 or 32b and exporting an 8b Alpha is a pity.
Cheers,
rafael -
Hi rafael,
Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately i already know about re-adding the clip to the timeline after changing the alpha type. I’ve tried all of them and the they all generate the same result. I have figured out a work around though – if i import the clips in to AE and re-export them as RGB+A animations they work fine, so i still have no idea why they stopped working in the first place.
As far as the animation codec goes, I wasn’t the one who created the animation files….they were done by a 3D animation studio, because i have to re-encode these clips to get them to work anyway i guess i could use sheer (i’ll have ti look for that, hope its a free download) but i don’t know if there will be any added benefit as the original files are animation codec encoded.
Scott Moore
Editor,
Spitfire TV -
Hi Scott,
The Sheer codec is not free. Is around 150US, but I think is really worth the money. You get 8/10b Unc, YCrCb and RGB, 4224 and 4444. And the files are half the size of the Apple codecs.
I
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