Well this will be my second Chyron question in a row on the COW boards, but as they say, "The last 10 percent of anything causes 90 percent of the problems"
I have my OTS animation exported from After Effects as a MOV. I used an Animation Codec with "millions of colors+". From there, I converted the MOV file to a PNG sequence with "Millions+" as well so it will preserve the alpha. Then, I recorded the image sequence in the Chyron with the eFX panel so it would combine these images and make an LTV file.
Only problem is... somewhere along the line, my alpha channel disappeared. It just shows up as black now.
Any suggestions here? I'm thinking I exported it wrong, or maybe something happened in the Chyron... any thoughts?
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"I've always found it's better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it..."
Re: Alpha on LTV by kurt murphy on Apr 8, 2009 at 12:31:42 am
Seeing how it's an OTS, can you just keep it as a movie file? This way you'll have more flexibility in using it for Effects Ins and Update Ins. I ONLY use LTV files for full screen animations.
I'm on a Mac so I export from AE with millions of colors+ (straight alpha) on any movies that need a key. I create everything in its correct place at 720 x 540. I then drop that into a D1 comp (720 x 486 rect. pixel); THEN I use the crop (ROI box) to crop what I need as small as i need it. This is what I animate out with millions of colors+. I've loaded Quicktime onto our offline PC and Lyric so that it recognizes these movies.
Well - no. We use ParkerVision as you remember, and the ots animation is just meant to sit and keep spinning in the background of FB1 while PVTV auto loads the stills over the top. We dont have a dedicated graphics operator during our broadcasts since we are mainly a student run program - very bare bones, not a lot of people are extensively trained on the Chyron.
Actually, earlier today I figured out and solved my problem. Something *must* have gone wrong in between AE and Chyron... I re-exported the animation as a TGA sequence and built the LTV file that way... which kept the alpha just fine. Thanks for the help though!
-Bryant
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"I've always found it's better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it..."
Re: Alpha on LTV by kurt murphy on Apr 8, 2009 at 1:21:32 pm
Bryant,
We are ParkerVision also - and I have to say, I think our ParkerVision guys have exploited it to run Chyron pretty well using a ton of TME's. Also, do you have FolderWatcher (off of the Chyron site)? This converts QT movies (also with alpha channels) to LTV files. I use this all the time. After an initial struggle on getting it set up correctly (as with all things chyron), it runs well now.
That's pretty interesting - there's a local news station in Indy that used to use PVTV, now they use Ignite. They seemed to have a pretty good lockdown on using Chyron and PVTV as well. As much as I'd like to mess with effect in and outs, we don't have a lot of time left with PVTV - this summer we are switching to HD, and a whole new setup with actual studio crew members running audio, switcher, directing etc.
I use Leitch Media Converter. I downloaded (and briefly used) FolderWatcher, but I didn't like it as much as Media Converter. Granted, Leitch only converts AVIs, but so far there haven't been too many problems. I ended up not having to use either Folder Watcher or Media Converter for my OTS - I simply recorded an LTV clip directly from an image sequence using Chyron. And since it was a TIFF, it saved my alpha channel.
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"I've always found it's better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it..."
