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Steve5D7C
Inspiring
October 6, 2021
Question

Replacing footage constantly changes alpha interpretation

  • October 6, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 225 views

I don't know if this has always happened, but with the version of Ae I'm currently using every time I replace footage the alpha interpretation gets reset to premult.

 

I've never even noticed the "remember interpretation" option in the RMB context menu before anyway, but choosing this prior to replacing the footage doesn't do diddly squat. So every time I have to replace footage I have to reset the alpha interpretation. I'm working in 3D animation and variously have incoming renders set to to all three alpha interpretation options, so this is incredibly annoying and time consuming and is introducing potential for mistakes every time. This simply shouldn't be happening.

 

Is there a way to force Ae to COMPLETELY retain alpha and other settings on footage when doing a replace footage?

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2 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
October 6, 2021

This is normal. The settings reset with EXR files. It's been doing that forever, even though the order and type of the first four channels should be consistent. Something with how AE accesses the extended data if I remember correctly. AE was never designed for this stuff and uses some strange mix of layer, fottage and effects APIs to even make it work. If it realyl bothers you, it might make more sense to render your RGBA beauty pass separately which generally may not be a bad idea, either, given how terrible AE's performance is with EXR files overall.

 

Mylenium

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    Steve5D7CAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 6, 2021

    OK, well thanks at least for confirming this is "normal" behavior (Read: Another way that Ae sucks and evidence that Adobe has never, ever bothered to cater to the 3D animation community despite it making up a sizeable chunk of its user base).

     

    Rendering a completely vanilla beauty pass is rarely efficient, as it usually means rendering and paying for the full render twice -- once with and once without passes

     

    I really should just use Nuke.

     

    On another note: Even this forum is rubbish -- must be the single only forum on the web that when it emails you a reply notification doesn't provide a link back to the thread.

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    October 6, 2021

    Without any info about teh actual footage files we can't realyl tell you much. Could just as well be an issue with your renderer tagging images wrongly or creating unnecessary custom channels that throw things off. You need to be more specific.

     

    Mylenium

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    Steve5D7CAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 6, 2021

    These are 16-bit multichannel EXR files and absolutely have a lot of other custom channels in them.

     

    However, these channels are remaining consistent across versions. And the alpha is always the alpha so it's hard to imagine why/how Ae needs to reset its interpretation every time.

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