After Effects: Why does my background revert to black when I export?

[tornadofeet]

For a recent project, I chose a deep red background, but when I exported it, it was black!

Thanks for any help.

[Todd_Kopriva · Accepted solution]

If you want a background of a specific color, create a solid-color layer of that color and make it your bottom-most layer.

[yancowles]

That answers a question I also had regarding the background that is white in the AE file becoming black in ME.

It also begs the question, why is it set up this way?
Why doesn't ME simply honour the background colour of my composition without needing this extra step?

[lornaimw]

The composition colour is just what you use to work with, it has no reality to it. It enables you to do things like turn transparency on and off, which you can't do with an actual background.

[yancowles]

Except that if you render directly out of AE, it does use the background colour of the comp.

[Todd_Kopriva]

If you want this to be handled differently by AME, submit a feature request for Adobe Media Encoder:

http://adobe.ly/feature_request

[Tim Kurkoski]

yancowles wrote:

Except that if you render directly out of AE, it does use the background colour of the comp.

The difference is that AME renders After Effects comps via the Dynamic Link protocol, which always assumes that an alpha channel is present (background is transparent) when it renders the After Effects comp. (This does not necessarily reflect whether or not the exported file has an alpha channel. You choose that in the export settings.)

As Todd says:

1) Best practice in After Effects is to use a colored solid layer if you want a colored background; it provides more control when compositing layers.

2) Please file a feature request if you'd like to see AME behave differently.

[AdrienneMASmith]

I used a white background, AME made it black.

I used a green for video effects, AME made it black.

I finally put a white rectangle behind my cartoon/animation — okay, it showed the white BUT the attempt to make a simple logo with motion was destroyed.

I do NOT want a rectangle shape, a random shape is needed.

How the 7734 can I get this to work!!

Oh & in AE, PS, PP "NO BACKGROUND" should be a video option.

(I know that no background is force-ably available in PS, have gone through the backdoor to do that for years.

It should be an initial option NOT an open, new layer, delete base layer, annoying system.)

[manojlovicmilan89]

Didnt help. Still black.

[scottanthonybarker]

Just had the same problem. I created a white background comp and it exported black.

All you need to do is, go down to the lower left panel where your comp is, right click, create a new solid, make this white (or the colour you want) and hit ok. Make sure this is on the bottom of your layers and you are right to go.

[bkuhn17]

Hi everyone,

I'm also running into this problem. I have an AE project and I'm rendering it in AME. When it plays back, shows a black background for some parts. I went back to my AE project, added a white rectangle where needed, and it still rendered black. I went back a third time and added a solid layer filled with white, which is at the very bottom of all my layers, and it's still black.

Any thoughts/help? I'm somewhat new to AE/AME and could use your advice!

[design_winter]

This worked for me too.

[wandam8591]

I know this is a really old post, but what worked for me was putting the file in the AE queue first, and selecting the H.264 codec. Then when you go to render out in AME, it will render with the color you see in your original file, even if you haven't added a colored layer for the background. I have no clue as to why.

[PGH4LYF]

It's ridiculous. I'm sick of having to work with a solid at the bottom of every comp. You can't just select all of the layers in your comp and perform operations on them, you always have to select all, then scroll down, and deselect this extra layer. Either they should commit to the stupidity and remove the background color selection in AE, or have AME honor AE's background color, or allow AE to render with AME presets.

[BrentBillock]

Even worse, I kept using a white solid in the bottom layer, and for some reason it wouldn't show up with full opacity. I selected FFFFFF in the menubar, where there is no alpha selector, made sure the layer itself was 100% opaque, and still my export would go to AME and render grey instead of white. 

Finally had to (and I'm almost getting an aneurysm just typing this) create a white PNG file and import it into the bottom layer. 😡 

[bearfly]

Sooooo Weird !!!

[judyl50412176]

I ran into the same problem, and this is what I found - 

If exported via the 'Add to Render Que' command (which usually outputs in .AVI format in the 2019 or later versions), the output will show the preset background color.

If exported via Media Encoder (i.e., using 'Add to Adobe Media Encoder Que'),  which gives us more render setting options, the output will not include the background color. In this case, we will unfortunately need to create a separate solid color as the bottom layer in order to show the color. 

[jeffTheValveGuy]

Make sure you increase the opacity to 100.... I was going crazy with a white background then I added a white layer with no change... then I changed my background color to expose the fact that the new shape layer was set to 0% opacity. I guess that's the default... changed that to 100% and it worked fine. still curious as to why it doesn't just honor what you have set in Ae... just make transparent an OPTION for those who want it.

[erica5CE2]

thanksss omg

[YannisWS]

Almost 10 years later and it seems like nothing has changed ... Situations like this really makes me wonder how this program is industry standard. And this is just one of the 10+ problems I ran into for 1 simple project. Such terrible UX and so many backwards unexplained little surprises for me to discover. Wonderful

Also, why am I unable to post this reply? When trying to post I get this ridiculous message about spam??? Haven't said a word on here in ages and you want me to wait 10h before I can post something? What?

[inaha72208859]

Just going to update everyone that it hasn't been fixed (: 

Been rendering to AME and 25 renders later, it's still black, the BG. Welp

[design@getboldmarketing]

Same...what's weird is that it rendered my background yesterday, but won't do it today. Is it my render settings? I just want a draft...This is so frustrating. I could be done with this project except for the fact that it take a bajillion hours to render one time...and then when it's finished you find out it's wrong. Waste of my life.

[christinaa1343794]

Update: Sept 2021:

Adding a rectangle (not a solid) at the bottom of the layer stack set to whatever color, then Export>Add to Adobe Media Encoder -- solves the problem. Adobe should fix this. 

[styn1587]

Same problem, i had a clip where i used a Simple choker and fast box blur so couldn't just put a background rectangle or something like that. Rendered out the clip with Alpha Channel and then imported that into new poroject with same BG color i wanted for the project, it worked.

Please fix the problem Adobe...

[Tyrosine25]

If you want solid background color, export as png sequence, and set like this. The most important to do "Channels: RGB; Color: Matted" to keep comp background color and don't need any solids to create. After exported just render sequence as video in AME