output not compatible with quicktime player

[jamieB82A]

hello i am trying to export Scene's from Adobe Character Animator - I would like to make the background invisible but everything i do puts out a file that says:  " this file contains some media that is not compatible with quicktime player"   what preset or something else am i missing?

[Erica Schisler]

what are you using for Export? Adobe Media Encoder? PNG Sequence? Dynamic Link? 

[jamieB82A]

hi thanks Erica, Adobe media encoder

[alank99101739]

Transparency in video file formats is a murky area of frequent incompatibility. Many tools do not support transparency, or only a specific form of it. Adobe Media Encoder supports a few formats with transparency - "alpha" channels to be precise. E.g "GoPro Cineform RGB with Alpha" is the one I use on Windows, but I think you have to use a different one on Mac - "Apple ProRes 4444 with alpha"?

Mind you it has been a while since I have checked. I use "alpha" as a filter term in Media encoder to see what is available. They might have added some more over the years. (I wanted WebM support, the only one that seemed to also work with Unity. There was an open source encoder, but it was broken for alpha channel support and last time I asked the response was "this is open source - if its broken, feel free to fix it yourself". Umm, I have no idea how to fix a media encoder!!!)

But just because you can generate it does not mean the other tool will understand it. Most video file formats are more "container" formats. You then have different encoders that compress the data inside the format. So just because a tool can read a "quicktime file", it does not mean it will support the particular encoder used. That sounds like the error message you are getting. I normally do lots of Google searches at that stage on the destination tool, trying to find out if it supports transparency at all. (Most tools do not.)

[jamieB82A]

Thank yuo so much, it always feel better to hear that something is a challenge for everyone.  I will give this all a try.   The workaround i might go with is josu putting a solid green background under the puppet so it can be easily isolated in Premier pro.  Have an awesome night!

[alank99101739]

Premier Pro I think supports the same formats that CH does. CH has in the menus an "Export / Video with Alpha via Adobe Media Encoder" menu item to make it easier. I thought you were trying to use use a non-Adobe tool with the file. If just PremPro, just use the export option in CH and it should work fine (that is normally what I do). If you want a 3rd party tool to work, that is when you will have problems.

[alank99101739]

I dislike using green screen if possible - it might be fine with CH, but when there is antialiasing, it can use partial transparency around the edge of the character and the chroma-key support does not work reliably. This can result in a green tinge to the edge of the character. Sometimes it is necessary, but if just CH to PP, then it is not necessary.

Note you can also export an image sequence (e.g. PNG files) which support transparency too. PP can load a sequence as a single clip. I find using a single video file is faster though (on my computer anyway).

Dynamic Link is another approach - you can drag a scene from CH into PP or AE and it renders the scene directly in the other software. It is good for getting immediate updates, but I find it sluggish on my weak laptop. So I normally export video files with alpha channel like you are trying to do.

[jamieB82A]

by the way, this totally worked "Apple ProRes 4444 with alpha"