Using Motion Alpha Channels

Hello,

I am fairly new to Motion 2. I have several clients and projects which require alpha channels for lower 3rd logo, outside of FCP and Mac platforms. I create the required logo, then export out to DV/ NTSC using Lossless + Alpha movie. Project settings under the General tab / background color setting ---> set to zero (Black).

When I play the short quick time movie / logo on either Mac or PC desktop, they look wonderful. Clients are happy with what they see. However, on the PC, if said clients try to import these custom logos into Premiere Pro for use on the timeline, they only can see about 10 percent of the actual frames in the logo. For instance, 300 framed open logo, will only play about 30 frames and continue on as if 10 percent of said frames were only available.

I tried to export these out to Animation, jpeg, sorenson 3.... nothing works. I even tried to convert using VirtualDub to both Panasonic and Sony DV formats, only to realize the desired alpha channel is not preserved as needed.

Please help, I am at a total loss and feeling a bit embarassed, even after reading your great forums and tutorials, help files and my books.

Sincerely,

Col. Aärtz
US Army Airborne

I'd be willing to try to help you, but I don't understand the problem. Lower 3rds on a MAC look great; on a PC with Premier Pro don't??

What are you trying to get Motion to do? Create a lower 3rd for titling? If you are trying to use it for Premier Pro, I'd imagine After Effects may be more applicable on a PC?

Why would it be more applicable on a PC? A Quicktime file is a Quicktime file, regardless of which application created it And for the record, After Effects is a Mac application, was born as a Mac application, took about 7 years for its' first Windows version to come out (3.1) and still works best on Macintosh

"then export out to DV/ NTSC using Lossless + Alpha movie"

Nope. DV uses a 24 bit color space, so you can choose either RGB or Alpha, but you can't have both. You can use the Animation codec for that.

I never seen the behaviour you mention, an application only recognizing the first few frames of a movie. I know Premiere Pro got Quicktime compatibility only recently (despite the fact that the former Premiere was Quicktime based!), so maybe there's an issue with that.



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

How fast is the PC they are using, and what video card. Might be the problem.



Lloyd Adair

Is this realtime playback or rendered in Premiere Pro? Sounds to me like perhaps only the first part is playable in RT, so they should render the clip if they haven't already.

Martin Baker
www.digital-heaven.co.uk