1 Reply Latest reply: Sep 4, 2012 11:46 AM by Tim Kurkoski RSS

    AME and After Effects

    Jack Banatoni Community Member

      I've been making good use of rendering After Effects files in Adobe Media Encoder lately (CS6).  When it comes to needing alpha channels, it doesn't seem to get the job done.

       

      In the AE encoder, I can do a Quicktime, Animation, RGB+Alpha, Straight (unmatted) color.  If I try to do this through AME, I can make it a Quicktime Animation but can't seem to set my RGB+Alpha and Straight (unmatted) settings.  Is there another workaround?

       

      When rendering out 50 comps from a project, it's helpful to have it render in the background using AME so I can keep working in After Effects.

        • 1. Re: AME and After Effects
          Tim Kurkoski Adobe Employee

          Jack,

           

          To set whether or not AME encodes an alpha channel, you need to set the bit depth appropriately. See the first part of my response here for how to navigate the difference in terminology:

          http://forums.adobe.com/message/4652418#4652418

           

          AME encodes alpha channels in QuickTime only as straight, there is no control over premul vs. straight. That's a limitation in AME, it just doesn't have that level of control. (There's a further complication that when After Effects feeds the comp to AME, it does not provide the comp background color as part of the composite. So even if there was a premul option, AME would premul only against black.)

           

          Please submit a feature request for AME if you'd like to see this changed:

          http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

           

          If alpha channel control is an important part of your workflow then you may want to investigate Lloyd Alvarez's Background Renderer script, which will allow you to render your AE comps using a background instance of AE (instead of AME) while you keep working:

          http://aescripts.com/bg-renderer/