Creating animated lower thirds in AE 6.5

[Jonathan Pitzer]

you might have to be more specific in your explanation. “I can only get a solid background”. Are you making the file a PDS file so that it has the alpha? What is your image sixe in comaprison to the screen size?

Yes! You can make the lower thirds in Photoshop but I usually make them completely in After Effects. These days, if you can do it in photoshop, you can probably do it in AE. Also, After effects has lots of cool plugins that just can’t be duplicated in photoshop without lots and lots of work.

[Steve Morris]

I think he means that he can not export the lower third in an animated form to import into something like Premiere. I have been trying to figure out how to export something other than a video with a colored background. I want to create full motion graphics similar to what they use during TV football games. The only way I have been able to do it, is to make the background some odd color, and then key it out in Premiere. However, this does not work well with any graphic that is semi-transparent. It seems that there should be a way to export a motion layer that can import in Premiere as an alpha layer.

[Jonathan Pitzer]

You should be able to render the animation as a quicktime with alpha. This will leave a transparent channel where you have not put anything. Another possibility is that you could do a PICT sequence. This also supports alpha channels. When you import the file you will likely have to tell premiere to look for the alpha.

[Steve Morris]

Thanks. I knew there had to be a way. I did not know that Quicktime could export with an alpha layer. I also did not know that AE could not have a background. It always opens up with a background. I will have to see how to get rid of the background.

[Enzo Tedeschi]

There seems to be a little confusion here, Steve.

After Effects will always open up a comp with a default colour (which you can change) as a background. This background, however, is “transparent” if you don’t place anything over it. To get transparency in the rendered output, the trick is to tell AE to render an Alpha Channel (RGBA, Millions of Colours +) in your render settings for your NLE software to read, otherwise you will be left with the default colour background which you will need to key out to get transparency.

I hope that helps…?

Enzo Tedeschi
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Editor
Sydney, Australia

[Steve Morris]

I found another source of my problem. I was using FILE > EXPORT > QUICKTIME, instead of COMPOSITION > MAKE MOVIE > RENDER. I was not aware of this other way to render. It took me a while to find the “straight alpha” and other settings discussed above by others. I think I have it figured out now.

[Enzo Tedeschi]

Sounds like you’re on your way :o)

Enzo Tedeschi
____________________________
Editor
Sydney, Australia