New comp background is transparent even though I chose black

Question

I just got back on After Effects after being off for awhile. When I start a new comp and choose black background, it gives me a transparent background. Did I accidentally change a preference or setting? Has anybody else had this happen?

Thanks for any help I can get.

Mike_Abbott · Accepted Answer

The marked switch is probably on (blue) at the bottom of your Composition window. Click it to turn it off (grey).

Rick Gerard · Answer

The comp background is always transparent. You can choose any background color you want but if you don't put some pixels there the bg will be black when played on most media players with most professional codecs. If you are seeing a checkerboard then you have a switch thrown in the Comp Panel. If the problem pops up when you render then you have to either put a colored background at the bottom of the timeline or render without an alpha, which will give you a black background with most codecs no matter what background color you set for the composition.

The only real reason to choose a different background color for the comp when rendering a project with transparency is to effect the antialiased edge pixel color when you choose Premultiply with Alpha in the render settings.

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