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Answered

Transparent MP4

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 22, 2025
2 replies
1540 views

I cannot for the life of me generate a transparent MP4. I am taking an MP4 generated in Adobe Express, pulling it into Premiere Pro, and exporting it with either:

Quicktime
Animation

8 bit + alpha

or:

Quicktime

Apple ProRes 444

8 bit + alpha

and get the exact same MP4 back. I have tried this on two different machines (Mac Mini m4 and MacBook Air M4) with the same result. I have tried it with

MP4s with an animated background
MP4s that come from a transparent PNG and renders as an MP4 with a black background
MP4s with black backgrounds
MP4s with white backgrounds

I am at a loss. Anyone with any insight on this? Thank you!

WoVO_Circle-1-Animated_Logo.zip

WoVO_Circle-4-WoVO_Circle_Transparent_Logo.zip

Correct answer Sumeet Kumar Choubey

Hi GWIIIVoice,

Welcome to the community! As Ann Bens suggested, the mp4 format doesn't support alpha. You may try Luma Key effect to key out the black areas and create a transparent video in Premiere Pro. Here is a video that shows how to use Luma Key. Once you have the transparent video in the timeline, you can export it in QuickTime > Apple ProrRes 4444. We Hope it helps. Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Sumeet

S

Sumeet Kumar Choubey

Correct answer

Community Manager

Hi GWIIIVoice,

Welcome to the community! As Ann Bens suggested, the mp4 format doesn't support alpha. You may try Luma Key effect to key out the black areas and create a transparent video in Premiere Pro. Here is a video that shows how to use Luma Key. Once you have the transparent video in the timeline, you can export it in QuickTime > Apple ProrRes 4444. We Hope it helps. Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Sumeet

G

GWIIIVoiceAuthor

Participant

That was it. Thank you!

Ann Bens

Community Expert

Don't think the Luma effect will give you a satisfactory result.

Tends to lose all the crispiness.

Hence, the reason I did not mention it.

I suggest you make your animated logo's in Ae which can give you transparancy.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

In short, mp4 does not carry transparency.

This is really an Adobe Express issue, as it cannot generate files with transparency.

Ann Bens

Community Expert

Might want to head over to the Adobe Express forum to ask how to get a file with transparency.

G

GWIIIVoiceAuthor

Participant

I understand that MP4s do not have an alpha channel. That is why I am bringing them into Premiere to create them with an alpha. And my mistake, they are being output as .MOV Quicktime files from Premiere, and still not transparent. Is the problem that the original file as an MP4 cannot be given an alpha channel during a conversion process?

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