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Exporting Lower Third to Final Cut, Alpha Channel and Mask
This is a lame brained question for most, and will reveal me to be way too much a beginner for some tastes, but here goes.
I have a sweet overall background that is animated. I’m now making it into a lower third. I made a solid layer, then put a mask on it. Within that mask, I’ve got my text. You can see it now with a screen shot. But now, how do I get that lower third all by itself without the grey “solid” that is there too?
What setting or remaking do I need to do to bring in that lower third just by itself, without the grey solid?
Shaun K.
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“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the engagement of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” — Albert Einstien
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4 Replies
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Perhaps another screen shot would be helpful
I want only that lower third where the yellow box (my mask) is. Looks like I need to learn about “mattes” which I really don’t yet know much about.
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there are several ways to get the transparency. since your shape seems to be pretty simple and you’re at a later stage in the project, the easiest way may be to create a new solid that is the size you want the lower 3rd to be. you can use a mask, or even copy/paste the yellow mask you already have onto the new solid.
with that new solid at the top of your comp, set the blending mode for the layer from ‘normal’ to ‘stencil alpha’ from the mode dropdown. this should knock out everything bellow that layer.
if you toggle the transparency grid (checkerboard looking icon at the bottom of the preview window) you should see the background toggle between the comp’s background color and the transparency grid.
when you render you will need to render with an alpha channel. check out this tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/straight_vs_premult.php
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Oh sweet, thank for that. I began to just export and was going to “key” out the grey, which did work in a trial render of a few frames, then checked back here, implemented your advice. Thanks a ton for that.
Looks like I had to render out in a codec other than ProRes, which doesn’t allow for RGB+Alpha, so just went with the native default Animation codec. Keying this thing with the ProRes codec is almost tempting because of file size and FCP making it have to render when brought into the timeline.
Regardless, thanks a ton for the tip. I’m implementing it now. Here is the screen shot of the alpha you helped me knock out.
Shaun K.
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“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the engagement of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” — Albert Einstien
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There are a zillion other ways to do it too. You could precomp everything and mask it, for one.
As you are just starting out in AE, may I recommend this wonderful (free!) resource? It should help you a lot as you start along your way.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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