More Matte issues
by Nate Whited
on
Nov 4, 2009 at 5:24:14 pm
I have searched and read all kinds of posts on creating a matte from an AE project. In my case it's one of the aAE projects from Digital Juice's Motion Designer Toolkit. I grabbed their project, pulled it into AE and changed it to the length I needed and exported. Then I have done exactly what is listed on this form and in the avid manual:
Background on V1
Foreground on V2
Black image with alpha on V3 then nest the Matte Key effect on top.
The images come through, but everything has a washed out look to it. The alpha looks good until I apply the key effect. It's almost as if the key effect put down an extra white background over everything.
I have tried numerous import settings within avid and export setting withing AE, all with essentially the same results. Help.
Re: More Matte issues by Jon Zanone on Nov 6, 2009 at 2:09:03 am
Are you importing something with an alpha? Have you checked your options in the import dialog box? You need to 'invert' the alpha. I'm not sure why you're nesting, though. I must be missing something...
Re: More Matte issues by John Cuevas on Nov 6, 2009 at 2:56:20 pm
It may be that you are importing your alpha with the wrong input settings. Open the import dialogue, open options and see if you are importing with RGB or 601/701 color space. Whatever setting you are using, change it to the other.
Re: More Matte issues by Nate Whited on Nov 6, 2009 at 8:18:25 pm
Okay I learned two things. First of all to pull in a file to use as a matte key it just needs to be "high contrast". So I went back into AE, placed a plain white background as the bottom layer, exported without alpha, followed the manual and it worked fine.
Then by the suggestion by another user, I took one of my earlier AE exports (one with an alpha) set it on V2 over my intended background, stepped into the effect and replaced the graphic fill with my originally from the Effect editor into my bin and use it elsewhere in my timeline--which is even better.
Re: More Matte issues by Phil Lowe on Nov 18, 2009 at 5:50:04 am
First of all to pull in a file to use as a matte key it just needs to be "high contrast". So I went back into AE, placed a plain white background as the bottom layer, exported without alpha, followed the manual and it worked fine.
Wow. Sounds like you went to a lot of trouble for nothing. unless I'm misunderstanding something here, all you have to do is render out of AE as either a QT Animation with RGB + Alpha, or as a TIF or TGA sequence with alpha.
Import into Avid with Alpha inverted and as 601/709 color space (if NTSC video original) or RGB color space (if RGB original) and voila: Avid imports as a Matte Key.
If your animation is importing into Avid "washed out", make sure the opacity of your AE composition is 100%: anything less and it will start to "key out" as the alpha channel controls transparency.
