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Motion project with alpha doesn’t look right in Final Cut
Hi all,
Did not see any posts by searching that exactly relate to this problem. I’m making a round trip from FCP to Motion and back again to make some simple titles to be composited over the FCP footage. In Motion, the text sits on top of a gradient rectangle with 2 colors. There are several ways to make a gradient in Motion; I chose the linear gradient generator in the Image Units category (in case this makes a difference). I added a guassian blur to soften the edges and I turned the alpha down to zero on the second color to make a gradient ramp that feathers down to total transparency on the right side of this rectangle. Because of the way I blended the colors, the left side is semi-transparent rather than opaque. Pretty simple and it looks correct in Motion itself. Back in FCP, the right side is solidly opaque with the color #1 of the gradient. It’s as though FCP wants to see the first color that had been blended out into the second color now that the second color is invisible. Anyway, it’s pretty disappointing to not be able to make use of the FCP/Motion integration. I can export a quicktime with alpha from Motion, import it into FCP and it looks as expected once I modify the alpha from straight to premultiplied with black. Anybody have any ideas on why this happens and how to correct it, work around it (other than exporting)?
I’m working in Final Cut Studio 2.
Richard Fomo Video
3 Edge Hill St., unit 1
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 -
2 Replies
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What kind of sequence are you working in?
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Hi Matt,
The sequence settings are 720×480 anamorphic, 29.97 with Prores HQ compressor settings. The original footage is DVcam but I have a lot of After Effects clips rendered in Prores HQ and Motion clips set in 16-bit float. The dvcam gets re-rendered in 10-bit at output.
What I’m seeing in Final Cut is what I would call an “error in translation” from Motion in the use of this one specific generator, Image Units linear gradient. Over in the Motion forum, Stephen Smith suggested the workaround of making my background gradient ramp for the text using the shape tool and setting the fill to gradient. I made both colors of the gradient the same and then adjusted the alpha. That method looks correct in Final Cut. Nothing I did with adjusting the alpha in the Image Units gradient generator would look right back in FCP.
I’m guessing that this is an undocumented bug?
Thanks,
RichardRichard Fomo Video
3 Edge Hill St., unit 1
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
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