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Answered

how to render Alpha + RGB with H.264 format

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
June 30, 2015
5 replies
229887 views

How can I render out an mp4 / H.264 with an alpha channel? I want to make an animated overlay for my twitch broadcasts and hopefully for other people but I can't even get it to be transparent.

Correct answer Nexxiaa

Ok, after 6 hours of messing with this I FINALLY have a solution! (I deal primarily with Twitch graphics and OBS) This confirmed works on OBS

**If you don't have Quicktime, download and install it**

1) Make the animated overlay as you normally would

2) On the Render Screen from the drop down select Photoshop Image Sequence, then select PNG

*make sure you make a separate folder and designate it, a 10 sec animation = 240 still images*

3) Open Premiere Pro

4) Select all of the PNGs that were created, drop them into the project window then drag them all onto the timeline

*timing may be off, if it is select all images, right click, Speed / Duration and mine looked fine at 00;00;00;02*

5) File>Export>Media

6) Format: Quicktime Preset: GoProCineForm RGB 12-bit with alpha, change output destination to preferred folder, under video settings, up it to max

6) Click Queue, this will open Encoder

7) Click the Play Button

8) Open the generated .mov file in OBS to make sure it works

It's definitely not the most direct or easy method, but it's the only way I could get it to work even after reading forums. Hope this helps

A

AnnaHeart

New Participant

For Twitch stream overlays, I recommend the WebM container since it provides RGB+A. You can download the codec here for use in Adobe Media Encoder (AME). Install it and it will appear in your list of encoding options in AME. Just remember to check "Include Alpha Channel".

RockMotionLC

Participating Frequently

Aftercodecs. Aftercodecs. Aftercodecs.

https://www.autokroma.com/AfterCodecs

J

johnnymabie

New Participant

Does the standard RGB+Alpha MOV from AE not work in OBS?

NexxiaaCorrect answer

New Participant

Ok, after 6 hours of messing with this I FINALLY have a solution! (I deal primarily with Twitch graphics and OBS) This confirmed works on OBS

**If you don't have Quicktime, download and install it**

1) Make the animated overlay as you normally would

2) On the Render Screen from the drop down select Photoshop Image Sequence, then select PNG

*make sure you make a separate folder and designate it, a 10 sec animation = 240 still images*

3) Open Premiere Pro

4) Select all of the PNGs that were created, drop them into the project window then drag them all onto the timeline

*timing may be off, if it is select all images, right click, Speed / Duration and mine looked fine at 00;00;00;02*

5) File>Export>Media

6) Format: Quicktime Preset: GoProCineForm RGB 12-bit with alpha, change output destination to preferred folder, under video settings, up it to max

6) Click Queue, this will open Encoder

7) Click the Play Button

8) Open the generated .mov file in OBS to make sure it works

It's definitely not the most direct or easy method, but it's the only way I could get it to work even after reading forums. Hope this helps

P

patrickplaggenborg

Participating Frequently

I like this, thanks!

Settings in Adobe Media Encoder:

- Quicktime (.mov)

- GoPro CineForm RGB 12-bit with alpha at Maximum Bit Depth

Interestingly QuickTime is unable to play this movie.

However, I was able to use these settings to convert a .GIF to a .MOV and use this in the Adobe Photoshop Video Timeline to have animated video layers when creating your animation. Pretty awesome.

S

Swinster

Participating Frequently

Isn't MOV depcrecated now as a format as QuickTime is now no longer supported by Apple?

K7S

Inspiring

Honestly, i'm still looking for a clean answer to this myself. For a long time I thought it was possible to make H.264's with transparency.

I use .avi codec, it seems to work pretty well.

What I do is take my existing video file and put it into AE, then re-render through media encoder with AE's render options.

Open AE, and make a comp with exactly the same dimensions (px) and timeline (00:00:00) of the video you will be converting
Paste your file into the timeline and align to edges, make sure you have the time exact
Send to Render Queue with Ctrl + Alt + /
Open the Output Module in the Current Render window below
Under the Main Options tab under Video Output > Channels, change the the channel from RGB to RGB + Alpha
Select your Output then send to Media Encoder. Avoid rendering in AE.

I have strained myself looking for a way to do this in Media Encoder only.

S

Snotneus2000

Participating Frequently

You can render your RGB and alpha (matte) channel separate from each other, that way you can get away with pretty small file sizes. H264 does not support integrated alpha channels, even prores only does that in 4444 quality.

imeilfx

Inspiring

h264 is unnable to export aplha channel (transparency) so you have to use something else to render it. I'm not familiar with Twitch channel settings but mae there is some other file format that can give you alpha channel f.eg. swf

gmangavin1Author

New Participant

What formats do support it?

imeilfx

Inspiring

I've already said .eg. SWF. There also other formats but not all are suitable for something like overlays on live footage so it would be much easier if you could tell us what video/animation formats are supported by Twitch/broadcast system.

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