Yes, thank you. I knew that AE adds an opaque alpha channel in. I was curious if there was some magic switch that would add a pre-multiplied layer with a range of transparency (from opaque to completely transparent)to footage that didn’t already have an alpha layer. I assumed I could mask it or render it, but I was just curious if there was some magic switch that took the luma information from the color channels and then converted that info into an appropriate grayscale transparency that could rest in the alpha channel, and then be used for other purposes. Thank you very much for your advice! It confirms what I suspected. And thank you for the Cineform Neoscene advice for H 264 transcoding. It really helped my footage a lot!