Exporting Quicktime Movies with Alpha channel IS possible!

[Eli Mavros]

I don’t believe this will work with all codecs, such as Black Magic’s or Apple’s 10bit codec, you must use a codec that can carry an alpha, such as Animation.

Eli Mavros

[Todd Reid]

I tried this and it did not work.

I put a band wipe on a lower third, just to test it.
I exported “quicktime conversion”, tried animation & million +…no alpha, came across as black.

What am I missing?

[Martin Baker]

One thing is that if you render the sequence then the alpha channel will not export correctly. You must break the link to the render files by disabling then enabling the clips.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps
NEW! BigTIme – resizable timecode display for FCP

[Chris Borjis]

I keep hearing that the alpha channel with ANIMATION doesn’t work so well in FCP if you have to do any cutting or trimming of the file. You get a 2 pixel shaved off the alpha which looks really bad.

the NONE or PNG should not be a problem.

[David Bogie]

> I keep hearing that the alpha channel with ANIMATION doesn’t work so well in FCP if you have to do any cutting or trimming of the file. You get a 2 pixel shaved off the alpha which looks really bad.
< "Shaved" off of what? Never seen this myself and I run alphas in and out of FCP to and from AE often. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen on your system, I just don't see how a media handler can make such a decision. bogiesan This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

I don’t mean to jump all over your post but this is not really an issue.

It’s always been possible to export with an alpha from FCP, it’s just never been intuitive compared to other editing or compositing apps. The tricks are in knowing what codecs support alphas (not many do) and how to make sure you’re exporting the timeline instead of rendered media that might have already flattened out the alpha.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Chris Borjis]

The alpha channel itself shrinks about 1 to 2 pixels.
This is if you do any kind of cutting on the animation, if you don’t cut it at all its fine.

we had to retime some stuff and found it much quicker to just make the adjustment in final cut, but each time we did, the graphics would shrink just a little (1 to 2 pixels)

someone mentioned the animation codec can cause this in fcp 5.x