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Participant
October 24, 2024
Question

Need Help Exporting Transparent Background Video from After Effects

  • October 24, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 6011 views

Hi everyone,

I’m facing an issue while trying to export a video with a transparent background from After Effects. I’ve tried multiple solutions but nothing seems to work. My goal is to create a video with a transparent background that I can then embed onto a website.

Here’s what I’ve attempted so far:

• Exporting as QuickTime with the “RGB+Alpha” channel.
• Using various formats like PNG sequence, WebM, and others.
• Toggling “Render with Alpha” settings in the export panel.

No matter what I try, the background keeps showing up solid rather than transparent. If anyone has experience with exporting transparent background videos specifically for web use, I’d really appreciate any advice or step-by-step guidance!

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

Community Expert
October 27, 2024

Standard Media Players do not support alpha channels. Open your High Quality or RGB + Alpha rendered file in After Effects and drop it on the top layer of a comp, and you will see the transparency. 

 

If you need transparency for a video on a web page, you will need to use a third-party solution to render the movie and play it on the page. WEBM and FFMPEG are two such solutions. However, you can still get fouled up if you do not embed the right player on the web page. To be safe, they must be compatible with all browsers.

Warren Heaton
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 26, 2024

Export from After Effects using one of the following Output Module templates:

  • High Quality with Alpha (recommended)
  • Lossless with Alpha

 

Convert that to WebM with transparency in an application that supports it.

 

jefubbudu
Inspiring
October 25, 2024

Most likely, you are exporting correctly, but the player being used or the webpage element is not coded in a way which supports transparency. I've come across this a lot on sites like Wix and Weebly. If all else fails, .GIF files are fery well supported and support transparency, though they are quite heavy and low quality.

thepixelsmith
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 25, 2024

One thing to keep in mind is that different browsers support transparent video in different ways/formats.

webM video works in Chromium browsers and Firefox, while MOV works in Safari, and some browsers may not support it at all.

Legend
October 24, 2024

Try converting your MOV file to WebM using this ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i [output_file_path].webm -c:v libvpx -pix_fmt yuva420p -auto-alt-ref 0 [input_file_path].mov

 but make sure that your MOV file has an alpha channel.

Open it in After Effects to check

 

Or try to remove the background using this method:

Transparent Video Demo 

 

 

Participant
October 25, 2024

I’m sorry, but where do I put this code, and in which software?

Legend
October 25, 2024