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Creating logo & preserving transparent background
Hey all:
I am fairly new to Zaxwerks so I am assuming this question has an easy answer. I’ve used Illustrator to create my logo. Everything looks fine. I’m essentially trying to render it out of After Effects with a transparent background. (So I can lay it over video in Final Cut Pro.) It seems like it should be simple but I’m not sure how to do this.
When I am creating the logo, I create a new solid layer in After Effects and apply the Zaxwerks filter to the solid layer. Perhaps that is part of my problem? If anyone has any insight, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Jay
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3 Replies
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In the render settings are you choosing a format that supports alpha channels for example TGA? You need to render out to one of these formats and choose 32 bit (millions of colors +). The extra 8 bits of information is for the alpha channel.
JD
John Dickinson
Motionworks
https://www.motionworks.com.au -
Hey John:
Hmmm… I managed to get it to work by rendering out as lossless with alpha. Is that an optimum quality to export to? It needs to be broadcast quality and usable in final cut pro. Would I be better off outputting to a targa file? That is one file format I know nothing about. Thanks for your input.
Jay
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Hi Jay,
You’re on the right track using a lossless format to create your intermediate movie. If you used a file format that compressed the video using a lossy codec, you would introduce artifacts that may affect the final output. These artifacts can be especially problematic in keying situations. (Try keying mini-dv video if you want a headache. It’s highly compressed.)
I typically use the Animation+ codec for my animation work movies. It creates very large Quicktime files with alpha channels, and they work great with Final Cut.
One other thought, be sure your file import settings are correct in whatever editing application you use. After Effects, for example, allows you to control how alpha channels are interpreted for each clip.
Jon
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