[John Hudson]

Monica,

You may be dealing with the difference between a straight alpha and Premultiplied alpha. Especially if your composition’s background color is set to yellow. In the render que under the Output Module setting go to Video Output > Color > Straight (unmatted) or Premultiplied (Matted) to make this change. In most cases you would want to use Straight but since your dealing with just white (snow) you might be better to choose premultiplied. See the link below from our friend Aharon Rabinowitz. He does a great job explaining the difference.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/straight_vs_premult/video-tutorial

[John Hudson]

I have had this issue before and had to dig into the FCP application’s package contents. If you haven’t done this before just…

– right click the application icon in the application folder.
– choose “show package contents”
– Select the contents folder and you will see 2 plug in folders. See if your files are there.
*They might be named something other than the plugin name. Like the company name or something.

****Be careful deleting. Make a copy of the FCP application first***

[John Hudson]

I am currently working on a spot that needs several parts in the scene to retain their original colors and the rest of the scene to be black and white. I started this process with the “leave color” filter but found it hard to do several colors at once. Then I switched gears and started to use the new RotoBrush tool in CS 5.5. It’s amazing. It can be a little slow at times and I still had to go frame by frame but having done frame by frame masking in the past I find RotoBrush is much faster and more precise. Also, if your shot is a “lock down” it will be even easier. Just do a search on rotobrush tutorials and watch a couple. You’ll be off and running in no time.

Good luck

[John Hudson]

Although I do agree it is a good idea to give an new file name you can do this.

Just select the comp in the render queue from the last time you rendered and hit command/shift/D (This is the keyboard selections for Mac. Probably Alt/Shift/D on a PC). This will duplicate the render, the settings and the name you used. Caution… It will not ask you to if you want to overwrite once you hit render.