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Drop Shadow from AE Rendered in Final Cut
I’m trying to export an animation with drop-shadows from AE to Final Cut. Everything is working fine except that the shadows created by the animation, instead of being a transparent black (as it appears in AE), is converted to a transparent white in Final Cut. I am exporting to a Quicktime movie compressed as an animation with the alpha turned on.
Any advice?
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4 Replies
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in the output module settings, try setting the ‘color’ to ‘straight (unmatted)’ rather than premultiplied…
it sounds like the shadow is getting rendered over a white background (check the bg color for the comp), rendering as straight/unmatted should eliminated that problem.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks Kevin, it worked like a charm!
I’m now wondering what the difference is between “straight (unmatted)” and “premultiplied (matted).” What do they do and in the future how will I know which to choose?
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Only use premultiplied if you want the clip to look normal on it’s own. Otherwise, I’ve used straight for the last 13 years and the results have always been as expected. But it looks pretty scary on it’s own. Depending on the playback app.
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i agree, the vast majority of the time, if you are rendering with an alpha channel, you’ll want to render as straight/unmatted.
the only exception i’ve encountered is when my render is for a specific piece of broadcast hardware that we have (a dekocast). it wants all keyed elements to be rendered with shaped fills (or premultiplied over black), other wise it won’t key properly.
here’s a tutorial about straight vs premultiplied
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
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