BG color control

[tessygirl]

Hi all, just trying to add a color control to my background (black being default) so I can easily change the background color rather than going up to composition - composition settings - background color all the time, but not sure how to go about it. Maybe New - solid layer or even an adjustment layer?

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

The comp background is not really black, it's transparent. If you want color you have to add a solid or a shape layer at the bottom of your comp. Even if you change the Comp Background Color to something like red and render it your final movie will have a black background.

[tessygirl]

Hi Rick, thanks for the reply. Not long after I posted the question, I found the answer. Thanks for your help. Greatly appreciated.

[A.I.1]

Even if you change the Comp Background Color to something like red and render it your final movie will have a black background.

I tried setting the comp background to green and the rendered movie had a green background - as I expected, not black - in AE CS5.5 (and why would they allow you to change the background colour of the composition if it ignored it and set it to black ?). Surely it will only be transparent if you render it to a format that has an alpha channel.

[Rick Gerard]

AE renders the pixel values visible under the selection tool (v) as displayed by the Info Panel. Comp BG set to red, mouse over the center of the comp and you get this:

Setting the background color of a comp does not change the color of the rendered background. If you discovered a way to render the background color of a comp then you are not using any kind of normal production workflow. I've never seen it happen. Try this, create a new comp, set the background color to Green, add a text layer and type it the word BOO. Now select the text layer and from the character panel use the eyedropper to select the background color. This is what you get:

Here's a screenshot of the AME preview for a comp with a red background and Red text saying BOO. Carefully check the color values and position of the selection tool in the Info panel. Carefully look at the preview from the AME:

[A.I.1]

Setting the background color of a comp does not change the color of the rendered background. If you discovered a way to render the background color of a comp then you are not using any kind of normal production workflow. I've never seen it happen.

I rendered it from within AE CS5.5, not by going to the Media Encoder program.

The video as shown in VLC media player, after rendering in AE CS5.5.

Maybe it's different in latest version of AE.