Thanks for response, John. I guess I'm missing something, but can't get it to work. No problem sizing, but when I apply video effects/chroma key/alpha, no go. I've tried adjusting the thresholds & video level to no avail. I'd like to email you the lower third to see if you can make it work. Do you have MEP 2015?

Jerry D

Hmm - replied earlier but it seems to have vanished into Internet limbo. Reconstructing...

Hi Jerry,

Did you try without any Chroma? MEP doesn't support alpha channel video, unfortunately, only images.

If you can upload to Dropbox, Vimeo, or similar host we can try it. Or PM me to arrange email.

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi

@ jdycus

. . . . I'd like to email you the lower third to see if you can make it work. Do you have MEP 2015? . . . .

I agree with Terry can you upload a sample of the lower third you want to use for us to test, and yes I do have MEP 2015.  Emailing video is not a good idea, many ISP's have attachment size limitations on email.

I have tried MEP 2015 with some video with Alpha channel and by applying Chroma key, Alpha or Black I can get it to work, however after further testing, this may be due to the fact that the video loops I have with alpha channel have a black area which is made transparent by the alpha channel mask.

The question is, when MEP imports a video object which has an alpha channel does it ignore the alpha channel or combine it with the RGB colours. 

I suspect it drops the alpha channel, however we can only be sure if we have the video you are trying to use.

HTH

John EB

Hmm - replied earlier but it seems to have vanished into Internet limbo. Reconstructing...

Hi Jerry,

Did you try without any Chroma? MEP doesn't support alpha channel video, unfortunately, only images.

If you can upload to Dropbox, Vimeo, or similar host we can try it. Or PM me to arrange email.

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

 

Find it here on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/133741133. Thanks for your help.

Hi Jerry,

Put it on a higher numbered track, select it, go to Effects, Video effects, Chroma key, and click on Black.

The only problem is that the black part around the glow is black instead of transparent. See below.

This can be improved, if you want, by lowering the video level slider a little bit. But it makes the blue or coloured part transparent as well. Playing with the threshold and fading range are also possibilities.

Maybe the other guys have different solutions.

Hi Jerry,

To add to my previous answer, I looked at how Magix does the lower thirds. They use a B&W alpha mask, which is what your lower third would need. See below.

The mask allows the white light around the globe to shine with a yellowish tinge.

Hi Jerry,

I downloaded your file from Vimeo and it plays OK in MEP 2014 Premium. So far I've merely placed a series of titles in the top two thirds. I'll take another look in the morning, but it looks like John CB and John EB have covered everything now.

@Terry and John EB,

Did you find any other way than what I described? Any way to remove the black halo around the moving bright light other than using an alpha mask?

I tried making my first lower third.I've been saving this for quite a while. Great fun, but long learning curve.....for my computer.

I did up an animation in Xara P&GD11 (trial version), once in colour and once in B&W for the alpha. The background was a black rectangle, 1920x1080. It took a while to master (ok start learning) about what can be done in Xara animations. Export to AVI. Import into MEP. AVI looked ok in WMP but looked terrible in MEP. Managed to get mxv of each avi by opening a clean version of VPX6 and creating one at a time. I think that there is a memory problem or I should try a different Codec.

I imported these into MEP, added a background, a Knoll Light Factory effect to both the main animation and to the alpha B&W. Then I added some text coming in with a moving B&W mask on each line.

Here is my first result (that worked).

@Terry and John EB,

Did you find any other way than what I described? Any way to remove the black halo around the moving bright light other than using an alpha mask?

Hi John,

No, I got same result that you and John EB described after setting chroma black.

Hi

@ jdycus

Apologies for being pedantic however in posting the lower thirds video file to Vimeo it has been converted and the Alpha channel lost so we are not testing like for like.

Fortunately in this case the background, as I suspected and mentioned in my previous post re the alpha channel videos I have, is black..

. . . . Any way to remove the black halo around the moving bright light other than using an alpha mask? . . . .

Yes and no - I can get rid of the black halo but it also introduces two unexpected side effects - there is a colour change surrounding the lower half of the bright light and part of the moving bar becomes transparent

Will do some more experimenting later.

John EB

Yes, I was afraid that Vimeo would convert & lose the alpha channel. If you are interested in further testing, I can send to you via "We Transfer".

Hi All

MEP doesn't support alpha channel video, unfortunately, only images.

Not so! MEP has always worked with a 32bit RGBA (A=Alpha channel) AVI dropped on the track below the video, without having to apply any further Alpha or Chroma key effects. This includes MEP2015.

Peter

Hi

@jdycus

It can be done with the clip you supplied - the mask you need is actually towards the end of the clip ie the section with the white moving bar - proceed as follows

1. Place the lower third clip onto the timeline, below the background track, twice on seperate tracks
    
2. Select the upper one of the two lower thirds you added - cut out all the coloured lower thirds to leave the black / white one only and position as you require - this will become the mask
    
3. Select the lower of the two lower thirds and remove all the coloured versions except the one you want to use
    
4. Select the upper lower third again and apply Chroma key, Alpha to the mask - you may have to reverse the arrow to get the effect correct.

Your timeline should look something like this

The result in my case is this

Note you can do this with any lower third that provides a black / white version in the clip.

If you want to use several different colour sections of the clip,  copy the mask you created and paste at the appropriate points on the timeline.

HTH

John EB

@John EB,

Well spotted! Thanks for figuring this out, and the answer was right in front of us.

@John EB and Peter

As for what Peter mentioned, I am still confused about alpha channels in videos. I made up this quick video using avi animations created in Xara. They are all the same, just some objects tweening from beginning to end, but I added some transparency at the right and along the blue line. The first example is simply the objects exported with a transparent background. This is what I assume to be a video with an alpha channel. Is this correct? Peter, is this what you mean by an avi with an alpha channel?

The other 2 avi's have a black object as the background and they were exported as non-transparent. For the mask, I changed the colours to white, except for the black background. The B&W mask is given chromakey Alpha.

In the third example, it is simply the second avi (black background) but I gave it a chromakey Black just to see what it does.

Given these tests, I can see that doing a lower third or most other animations that have some transparency does not give a good result if the animation/video is exported with a transparent background. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Thus, I imagine that this is why Magix uses the same method that you describe, John, i.e. like my second example.

Finally, I would like to see further discussion about Chromakey and Alpha channel in the context of the 2 posts indicated in my answer (the main post and the link to one in VPX Forum). This can be as an answer to the VPX forum message or a new posting, as I am getting OT here.

Thanks,

John EB, you did it! It works. Thanks bunches.

Hi

@jdycus

It can be done with the clip you supplied - the mask you need is actually towards the end of the clip ie the section with the white moving bar - proceed as follows

1. Place the lower third clip onto the timeline, below the background track, twice on seperate tracks
    
2. Select the upper one of the two lower thirds you added - cut out all the coloured lower thirds to leave the black / white one only and position as you require - this will become the mask
    
3. Select the lower of the two lower thirds and remove all the coloured versions except the one you want to use
    
4. Select the upper lower third again and apply Chroma key, Alpha to the mask - you may have to reverse the arrow to get the effect correct.

Your timeline should look something like this

 

The result in my case is this

 

Note you can do this with any lower third that provides a black / white version in the clip.

If you want to use several different colour sections of the clip,  copy the mask you created and paste at the appropriate points on the timeline.

HTH

John EB

 

Hi All

MEP doesn't support alpha channel video, unfortunately, only images.

Not so! MEP has always worked with a 32bit RGBA (A=Alpha channel) AVI dropped on the track below the video, without having to apply any further Alpha or Chroma key effects. This includes MEP2015.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Happy to defer!

I was basing my comment on this reply below from Ralf two years ago, in reponse to my saying that saving from MEP 2013 with an emebedded alpha channel eluded me. Am I right that MEP still doesn't support that? If so, I should have been clearer about the distinction between exporting and playing, sorry Jerry.

I'll include Ralf's reply in full as it may help this and subsequent discussions, or anyone searching on 'alpha channel'.

--------------------

Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2013

Hi Terry,

I'm afraid this isn't something that has eluded you. It's simply
something that isn't possibly with our video software to the degree that
you would require here.

What you are essentially looking for is alpha channel support. It's
basically transparency for motion video material and does, of course,
play a role in the realm of stock video material and compositing. It is
supported by certain video types/containers, some of which we support on
export, but unfortunately we don't support the encoding of material with
a defined alpha channel, which would e.g. entail that you define a
"colour" value or layer in the material as transparent. Well, no such
functionality in our software. As you have discovered, we do support the
import of it, but even that isn't documented very well and doesn't work
well and consistently across all formats. (I had problem reports for
this before, I believe. At the same time I was positive it has worked
and does work for certain formats/sources, which you have confirmed.)

So yes, chroma-keying is the only way out, which is of course note as
good and not as suitable for all situations as a truly transparent
background.

My opinion is that a software that claims to be pro-level should fully
and consistently support the import of alpha channels on various
formats, which I have fed back to development before. In practice, I
guess not many people are using this (or at least not having problems
with it) and I can't really say this is something that comes up in
support often. As far as export is concerned, I'm not sure that would
ever be a focus, as our program is not an animation/compositing program.
There would be very few users who would probably every use that.
However, I can see how more users would want to import stock
footage/animations with transparency.

The only other things that come to mind if you wish to create home-made
animations and integrate them into MAGIX Movie Edit Pro projects:

1.) Create the animation in a suitable program and opt for animated GIF
as your intermediate format, as we do support transparency on GIFs.

2.) The native integration of the Xara file format (starting in
generation MX of MEP) is something you could leverage, if you have the
suitable software. It's not
primarily an animation program but has some animation capabilities. I
have created animations for MEP projects this way before. You can then
directly bring in the XAR files, which would fully support their
transparency. Designing a neat little clock face animation should very
well be within the realm of possibilities for the eager and creative
user like yourself, even if they are relatively new to animation
software and don't have artistic training or special artistic talent -
which you very well might have for all I know.  :-)  If I had more spare
time at the moment, I would probably sit down now and create a clock
face animation in Xara, just to confirm that it can be done.

Hope this all answers your question, though.

Cheers, Ralf

@Terry,

Thanks for the information. This answers some of my questions and confirms that MEP can handle alpha channel transparency on the import side but not on the export side.

You should have gone for the Xara offer. It is truly amazing. If you can find a cheap copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9, I highly recommend it. Now if Magix could just get Xara 11 to work properly with MEP, it would make my day. As it is, it is great, but the animation link doesn't work properly.

I would still like to know what the user in the link in my last post would like to see as improvements to chromakeying.

@Terry,

Thanks for the information. This answers some of my questions and confirms that MEP can handle alpha channel transparency on the import side but not on the export side.

You should have gone for the Xara offer. It is truly amazing. If you can find a cheap copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9, I highly recommend it. Now if Magix could just get Xara 11 to work properly with MEP, it would make my day. As it is, it is great, but the animation link doesn't work properly.

I would still like to know what the user in the link in my last post would like to see as improvements to chromakeying.

Hi John,

I do like Xara, but ...

1. It works so sweetly within MEP 2014 (Version 7.0.0.540 (ENG) - 16/07/2012)

2. Even so I rarely use it, and there are still features/effects I've not explored.

3. Ditto that for several other add-ons / plug-ins / extra programs outside MEP.

4. The video section of my To Do list is getting longer not shorter.

How do you find time to use all your additional video-related software and still get your holiday DVDs made?!

How do you find time to use all your additional video-related software and still get your holiday DVDs made?!

@Terry,

My wife keeps asking me the same thing.

I'm making a spoof on our little one-day tour outside of London. It's taking more time than the entire holiday video. Yesterday, Xara got a workout as I recreated a half dozen masks for one scene, because I re-filmed the background yesterday. Then I had to key frame some of them to follow the movement (to hide hands and arms that pass in front of an inserted object - couldn't do the animation/movement and reshaping of the masks within Xara 11 for reasons that I mentioned. I hope to finish this 3 minute video sometime this decade. Too much to do, so little time!

Glad to see that you did get Xara.

Regards,

Hi John C.B.

The first example is simply the objects exported with a transparent background. This is what I assume to be a video with an alpha channel. Is this correct? Peter, is this what you mean by an avi with an alpha channel?

Maybe, maybe not.....The AVI needs to be exported as an RGBA video animation sequence and must be 32Bit so that R=8bits Gr=8bits Bl=8bits + 8bits for the Alpha channel. This is in fact a series of Windows Bitmaps with an included Alpha channel and no background with 25 or 24 or whatever frames per second. This is usually a RAW uncompressed format and files can be rather large.

There are usually options under "configuration" in the export sttings of the graphics / title program where you can choose more compressed codecs and different quality settings. A good place to play around is to make a title in Prodad Heroglyph and use the "export video > as animation sequence and experiment with different settings and codecs - the default is a Prodad codec which can produce a much smaller file with the transparency. Anything with 24bit does not seem to work even though the setting says 24Bit + Alpha.

Your fuzzy faint test result may mean that a quality setting was not at "Best Quality" in Xara. Interestingly if I just play the RGBA Output file in Windows Media player it looks weird and blurry but looks perfect once composited with an object on the timeline but apparently this is normal with Alpha channel objects.

Terry

It would seem logical that you could not export an Alpha channel video with MEP because it is designed as a finishing program as Ralf points out. In a way you were right that MEP only handles photos with transparency in light of my above explanation, as the sequence is really just a string of stills in an AVI container.

Cheers

Peter