Lens flare won’t export with an Alpha with ProRes 4444

[Andreas Kiel]

Have you set the project to 4444?

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Dave Jenkins]

Yes Render format is PR4444

Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
Mac Pro 3.5MHz 6-Core Late 2013
FCP X

[Andreas Kiel]

Not only the render format has to be set to 4444 also the sequence/project settings must be set to 4444. Otherwise the canvas behaves like a black slate below all clips.

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Dave Jenkins]

Where talking about FCP X right? Where in the project setting would you set this?
FYI, the project – timeline exports with a alpha channel when I remove the Lens Flare.

Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
Mac Pro 3.5MHz 6-Core Late 2013
FCP X

[Andreas Kiel]

What do you guess where to set it? It’s in the project settings. 😉

Select the project, go to Inspector, select the Properties part, then the settings and set the renderformat to 4444.

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

[Dave Jenkins]

Yeah, you mean like I said in my post at 1:29pm today when I first replied to you.

Thanks for your help, but that’s not it!

Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
Mac Pro 3.5MHz 6-Core Late 2013
FCP X

[Bret Williams]

You can’t export something with an add (or any) composite mode with an alpha channel. Adding does not create a transparent area. It tells how to blend two pixels together. As well, even if an alpha were created, there’s no way to incorporate the “add” mode into a media file.

[Bret Williams]

If you want to double check transparency, you can always switch playback to checkerboard in prefs. There is no need to set the sequence to 4444 to export as 4444 either. It was true with legacy, but legacy had a sequence codec. X does not. You can have a fully rendered 422 sequence with transparent elements and export as 4444 with alpha and you’ll get an alpha.

[Dave Jenkins]

Thanks Bret, I’m shocked I’ve never run into this before. Motion won’t do this either. I’ll have to find a Lens flare built as a movie with an Alpha.

Dajen Productions, Santa Barbara, CA
Mac Pro 3.5MHz 6-Core Late 2013
FCP X

[Andreas Kiel]

Dave I was assuming that you already converted the lensflare filter in PS to to something with alpha. So my bad, sorry.
Starting with 10.1.2 there were several people having trouble exporting to 4444, changing the project to 4444 always helped.

So how to make a PS lensflare transparent.
In PS create the lensflare you want on a black background. Select all and copy. Go you channels and create a new Alpha channel and paste. (you may apply auto-levels). Save the file.
Open this file in Motion and publish as generator.
In FCP X apply the generator where needed.

There is also a good plugin from sugarFX https://www.sugarfx.tv/info/xflare_SUGARfx.html

– Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil