Transparency lost when importing PNG into FCP

[Chris Hunziker]

Two and a half years later I have to thank Brandon. I would never have found the solution and I still don’t know why that modify option seems to have changed after months if not years of working “normally”.

Thank you, Brandon and Creative COW!

[Adam Scott]

DITTO! Thank you so much, Brandon!!! Love having these archives available!

[Jan Pechbrenner]

Two years later, and this fixed it for me. I was stumped, thanks!!!

[Aaron Duprey]

This issue caused unbelievable render issues for me for the better part of 4 years. I had a big stack of text and graphics with a .png on top, and I’d always get the infamous ‘out of memory’ error when rendering. It got to the point where I’d render, let it go for 2 or 3%, cancel and save. I was pretty much frankensteining my render files. I’d repeat this until FCP wouldn’t render any more, then I’d have to quit and relaunch, and try again.

I changed the alpha of the .png to straight, and the entire thing renders flawlessley. THANK YOU!!!

[Amit Yadav]

Really it matters….exact right answer.

[Heidi Schrodinger]

Arrrrgh…. I’m trying to do the same thing- I was impressed to find the answer so quickly, HOWEVER its not quite right for me….
Under the “Modify” list on the menu bar I have no listing for Alpha type…. let alone making Alpha “straight”…
I am on FCPX.
I am clicking on the imported png still file which I have dumped on the timeline.
Help anyone?

[Jacopo Francia]

Hi,for FCPX it’s on the Inspector – Info – Alpha Handling – Straight

[Nicolas Gauthier]

Wow! I spent so many hours yesterday trying everything possible to find a solution. Now I try this and it works perfectly. Thanks a lot!! You saved my day 🙂

Nicolas

[Twelve Scissors]

this is amazingly strange.i was recently cutting a TVC in fcp x for the first time and I faced this issue.Initially I thought the codec dsnt support .png file but then how does it shows up?
Later on recollecting FCP 7 interface I was reminded about the Show channels option.
When I changed it the .png came up transparent eventually turning all others things into full white frame.
I was so pissed then I changed the .png to .tiff and .jpg but then I lost the transparent effect i.e I got a white box apart from my Logo.
I lost my cool and restarted and then even did a proper shut down of my i mac still no solution.
Next morning when I sat on the setup I had forgotten about last night and I just happened to drag the .png file over the clip and to my surprise it was DONE……BINGO !!!!

Conclusion – Ideally the .png file does work after multiple re starts and shut downs :p

[Rikki Blow]

I was sent a logo to use as a bug for an FCPX project and I came across this issue for the first time.
Weirdly, changing Alpha to ‘straight’ in the Inspector still gave me a black screen, but when I choose ‘premultiply’, it’s working as it should. (The logo was yellow on black in the png file, and it’s the yellow bit I needed). When the clip was black screening I tried a luma keyer, and every variant of blend mode to no avail, but ‘premultiply’ has sorted it. Go figure!

EDIT: I spoke too soon. Although I thought I’d sorted it, when playing the project, it jumped back to black. I tried fiddling with other settings in the inspector, and messed with ‘Color Space override’, which had been set to none. Changing this to Rec709, and I got my transparent logo back, even when playing, and it didn’t seem to matter whether alpha handling was straight OR premultiply any more.