Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Footage with alpha channel but no luma matte

  • Footage with alpha channel but no luma matte

    Posted by Martin Mchugh on February 13, 2019 at 10:57 am

    Please help before I go crazy. I bought some footage from shutterstock which said it had alpha channel. So I presumed bg was transparent and I could just drop into ae.
    But it just sits there with black bg. I can’t see image underneath. It didn’t have a luma matte with it and I can’t use any colour clipping as footage has lots of black too.
    I’m sure there is just magic secret button I am missing? Pls help!

    Martin Mchugh replied 6 years ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Bouke Vahl

    February 13, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    what do the properties say?
    It can have an alpha that is a solid, so it is there, but does nothing.

    Bouke
    http://www.videotoolshed.com

  • Tomas Bumbulevičius

    February 13, 2019 at 1:32 pm

    Martin,

    once footage is imported, in the project panel:
    1. Right click and select Interpret Footage > Main…
    2. See if its set to Straight.

    Hopefully its not yet and you will be able to recover it easily (:

    Find out more:
    After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.

  • Martin Mchugh

    February 13, 2019 at 5:57 pm

    Thanks guys for taking time to reply.
    Under interpret – main all the top section to do with alpha is greyed out. ?? You can’t select any of it?

  • Martin Mchugh

    February 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm

    Yeh been through the clip loads of times there’s nothing there apart from black bg one.

  • Daniel Waldron

    February 14, 2019 at 2:16 pm

    What is the clip of? Sometime stock sellers will say it has an alpha channel, when really they expect the editor to change the transfer mode to Screen or Add. I’ve seen this with dust, fire, etc. It sounds like that may not be an option for you, so you may want to contact Shutterstock and request a refund.

  • Damien Ivan

    February 14, 2019 at 8:07 pm

    That’s pretty lame if it doesn’t have an actual alpha, but as a workaround, maybe Unmult will work?

    https://support.redgiant.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010345194-Where-can-I-get-Unmult-

    Damien Ivan
    Animation + Video
    Just a dude tryin to be awesome.
    damienivan.com

  • Martin Mchugh

    February 14, 2019 at 8:14 pm

    Thanks so much for your replies. I tried screen and add but they effect the footage too much. Also no joy with demult. Shutterstock have now said alpha is only be available on hd footage not the sd? It doesn’t tell you that anywhere and it sounds odd to me as what is the point of the sd then??
    I’m sure I’m just doing something really dumb.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy