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If you're doing custom sizes up to 3840-by-2160, you don't need Compressor. The advantage of Compressor are features like a progress bar while processing, a Viewer to preview the movie prior to encoding, adding markers, and anything else that Compressor supports prior to starting the encode.
Instead of Compressor, we can right-click the Apple ProRes4444 with Alpha video file in the Finder and choose Encode Selected Video Files.
When the options dialog box appears, set the pop-up to HEVC2160p and enable Preserve Transparency.
The "Resolution: up to 3840x2160" really should read something like "Target Bitrate: optimized for frame sizes up to 3840x3160". If your source ProRes4444 with Alpha video is 4320-by-4320, your HEVC H265 file will also be 4320-by4320. It's just using a bit rate that's optimized for smaller frame sizes.
If you're not using Compressor for anything else, you might reach out to Apple for a refund.
I know, this just makes Adobe's lack of support for this even more disappointing. Apple achieved this via AV Foundation Frameworks (what replaced QuickTime as a system driver for time-based media back in 2013) and as such is available in applications that make use of that on the macOS side. From what I've read on the Apple Developer Pages, this is not out-of-spec for HEVC, but it is custom.
@yovern
In Shutter Encoder, we have to enable "Hardware acceleration" under "Advanced features" in order for "Enable alpha channel" to be available farther down the list of advanced features. This requires that our hardware supports hardware acceleration for H265 encoding, otherwise this option is not available.
I can confirm that encoding via finder works but there are limitted options:
- Resolution can't be manual, must be FHD or UHD
- Can't control quality
- No progress bar or queue
- No controls for frame rate or audio
You can follow along in activity monitor but all it really tells you is that the encoding process is active and it only uses the CPU, which is a damn shame.
If you select multiple videos and right click to encode, it will convert all of them - but one at a time, and you cannot track progress at all.
For my test I did a 20 second video, conversion from APR4444+A. The video was just animation of a grid in AE. It took 2 minuts to render, To convert it took 6 minutes for that same file. So it's VERY slow. The codec extension is .mov.
The size of the file went from 250 MB to 2 MB and the frame rate defaults to the target video. So that's great.
After Effects and Premiere does not recognize the alpha channel, so this codec really only works as a delivery codec - not a storage codec or editable codec. Though, I suspect Final Cut X does support it - I just haven't used it in 5 years. It's attached to an old apple ID so I need track down that p/w so I can test it.
I also wante to check to see what programs that I regularly use support the codec with Alpha in playback:
- Quicktime YES
- Finder YES
- MadMapper 3.7.5 YES
- VLC YES (but can't check for transparency)
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