Opacity not exported

[garethi55139778]

Hello

I have been wrangling this software for a few days as I am admitadly a noob to it. I wont lie its brought me to tears at some points.

However I have got what I want out of it, or at least I have in after effect, when I send it to media encoder, all the opacity settings I made are stripped out.

They play just fine in After Effects.

These fades are crtical to this project, can someone please explain why it does not work?

Also can I just say how dissapointing it is to search this problem in google or indeed any issue only to find that this new website just brings you to the home screen.

[@mj]

Hi,

Need some clarity please.

1. Are you wanting a video render with transparent background areas?
2. What format are you rendering to?
3. How do you intend to use the video? eg Youtube.

[garethi55139778]

Hi there.

[garethi55139778]

This new forum software stinks lol!

[Rick Gerard]

To help we need workflow details and screenshots. Have you spent any time at all going through the tutorials Adobe provides on the AE Product page? Learn & Support or even easier, check out the Home screen in AE.

It also sounds a bit like you are using After Effects to edit a movie. It's the wrong tool for that. AE was never intended to be used to edit. After Effects is a motion graphics application designed to produce visual effects and motion graphics that cannot be produced in an NLE. Short sequences are ok, but editing in AE is a real time-waster. 

Give us some details and we can probably help. I will tell you that if you use the standard templates for comp size and frame rate and choose the standard templates for rendering with either the Render Cue or the Adobe Media Encoder, everything you see in the composition panel's Active Camera view will show up in your final render unless you have added guide layers or expect the composition background color (remember what I said about custom settings). Don't crop your screenshots and show us everything you modified in the layers that are giving you problems by selecting them and pressing the "u" key twice, then PrintScreen and paste to the forum.

[garethi55139778]

Hi Rick. Sorry I am wrangling this forum software when I hit enter my post goes in like some kids messaging service how do I do a full response?

Do I have to go into edit reply each time thats just awful?

Well anyhow, I cannot really share the file its for work. Its I think reasonably straight forward and indeed if I render from within after effects with RGB and ALPHA I get what I need, but the 1 mintue viedo becomes like 1.2gigs lol.

In effect I have a 3d fly through I did in twin motion, I just want to overlay text, when the text overlays I want the video to fade to white this is all happening and indeed on the inbuilt renderer however in encoder it ignores the opicity (using H246)

Apaarently the quicktime will do it, but windows moans it does not recoginse the file.

I want a good qualitu 1080 video at the end with opacity, which hopefully wont weigh 1.2gigs. I have not tried but I am guewssing I can simply reduce this video file size now as the alhpa stuff has been done?

[garethi55139778]

actually its 14 gigs. opps haha

[garethi55139778]

Tried to re-output and the alpha is stripped out. Sigh This new forum software as well, geeeees its horrible whats up with Adobe.

[Martin_Ritter]

From the way you write, the new forum should be just what you want ("like some kids messaging service").

Back to topic.

The issue is not opacity, but alpha. You rendered the comp in H264 codec which doesn't supprt alpha. Render your comp as image sequence, DNxHD, ProRes or any other codec which supports alpha.

*Martin

[garethi55139778]

I'll try the other formats but thus far windows has not been happy to play anything from the 'quicktime' camp. Sorry if my writing is not up to scratch and I dont know if its a bug with Chrome but the only option for reply I have here is this single line messaging thing, no other options exist

[Martin_Ritter]

No, this is not a bug - this is the new forum and we all hope they make it as useable as the old one was soon. ----- If Windows can't playback the video, you might have to install the codec before. *Martin

[garethi55139778]

As is so often the case time is against me so I have taken a different approach the text I am overlaying I have put an opacity back on, and am having these slide in on the video. Its not as elegant but it works. I need to learn more, in my mind I must be able to 'flatten' the video much like a jpeg, i.e. in photoshop I can give the illusion of tranparency etc then flatten the image and it looks fine. It must be doable in video otherwise marvel films would be a million gb haha

[Martin_Ritter]

When you are familiar with PS, you should easily get into AE. You have layers, groups (we call it "compositions"), can apply effects on everything... it's like PS with for video. And just like you can't export transparency to jpeg (it becomes white), you have to take care about the codec you are rendering in. *Martin

[Dave Merchant]

The (slightly handwaving) explanation:

All video encodes the pixel colors in each frame using channels, either red-green-blue (RGB) or luminance-chrominance (YUV). Those 3 channels only define the color, not the transparency; for that you need a fourth 'alpha' channel. Since it's impossible to record alpha with a video camera, nor display it on a TV, all the 'consumer' video formats like H.264 stick with 3 color channels to make the files smaller and the processing easier. Video codecs that have the 4th alpha channel are either designed for a very niche application (such as Quicktime Animation, an ancient format created for doing graphic overlays like the lower thirds on TV news) or they are designed as high-end "mezzanine" formats for post production (such as ProRes 4444, or EXR image sequences) that have massive data rates to preserve every ounce of quality. You have to choose either a rarely-suported codec, or a monumentally huge file.

But, since you can't play a transparent video to an audience, whatever you want this for it's eventually going to be composited over something else then encoded to a delivery format, like H.264. Now all the transparent pixels are full of background, there's no alpha channel any more. A huge file that never leaves your computer is no problem.

If you are sending the video to someone else for compositing (e.g. selling lower third animations to a TV station) then ask them what they want, and supply it. If that means posting hard drives instead of uploading a link, so be it. They're paying.

[garethi55139778]

Thank you I have a terrific amount to learn it would appear. But I can click on practically any youtube link and it will have all sorts of graphical overlay and what have you and these videos are a couple of meg. That being said I am getting something similar by making my overlays transparent PNGs, which I do understand is different to making the video transparent. Thanks for everyones help

[Warren Heaton]

Have you tried using the After Effects Render Queue instead of Adobe Media Encoder?  The file will be very large and may not play smoothly, but try "Best Settings" for the Output Module and "Lossless" for the Render Setttings ("Lossless with Alpha" for the Render Settings if an Alpha is required).  Assuming that each frame appears as expected in the resulting file (opacity changes included), add that movie to Adobe Media Encoder. 

If you rendered with an alpha, you may need to render two passes (one RGB and one Alpha only) if the format being used in AME doens't support an alpha.