Rotoscoping over a music video

[haponskih]

I'm new to teaching animation.

I had my students rotoscope over a music video, each student was assigned certain frames and we then shared our artwork to make it a collaborate project.

I am having trouble exporting the video along with the rotoscoped artwork. I want my video to show and play with the artwork because the whole area is not filled with artwork.

I read somewhere to combine the video and rotoscoping in After Effects but am not sure how to do that.

Any suggestions on how to save this project that has already been completed.

[robdillon]

Did you create this project in Animate or AfterEffects? If it was created in Animate then read through this help file, exporting to video is the last section: Export graphics and videos with Animate CC

[haponskih]

I created it in Animate CC. Whenever I export, only the artwork exports, the music video does not.

[robdillon]

Is the video in its own layer in the timeline?

[haponskih]

Yes the music video itself is on its own layer, then we have multiple other layers with rotoscoped artwork on them.

I think one of my biggest issues is knowing what type of file to make the video for it to both play in animate CC and export properly. I imported the video as an H.264 file and it says that I cannot export that type of video. After doing research I saw that FLV, F4V, and MPEG files would work but those file types are not an option in Encoder.

[Colin Holgate]

The best quality approach is to import H.264 into the timeline, where the video can have any level of quality (no need to give your students 20mbps, 1 or 2 would do). They do the rotoscoping and export the animation, with the option checked to set an alpha channel instead of the stage color.

Then, you put their animations onto a timeline in After Effects, on top of the original high quality video, and render out the full thing.

You could use FLV as a way to export their animation on top of video, but that would mean giving up a lot of quality.

Having no video in the export of a timeline that uses H.264 is normal, and intended. Maybe some day that will change, but for now I would do the combining in AE.

[haponskih]

Thank you so much, I'll try your suggestion of exporting the rotoscope with the option checked to set an alpha channel instead of the stage color tomorrow and put into After Effects.

I tried it putting both their rotoscoped animation and the music video into After Effects but I could only see one or the other. The only way I could see the animation on top of the video was if I lowered the opacity but your suggestion of exporting with the alpha channel instead of stage color may be my fix to that!

I'll try it tomorrow!

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

One thing to watch for, which I'm not sure applies to AE, but it might, is that you have to tell it to interpret the footage as having an alpha channel. In some video editing programs it defaults to ignoring the alpha. So, if your first attempt looks opaque, look around for an option like that.

I went ahead and tested that. AE does have interpret footage, and there are some alpha channel options you might need to try. I often suspect Animate of exporting with premultiplied alpha, and that's what AE defaults to, so it might work out ok. But if you see a fringe, try either the straight alpha option, or change the premultiply color to match the stage color. You get this by right-clicking on the movie in the project panel, and choosing Interpret Footage/Main:

I have more suggestions!

Have your students use an ActionScript 3.0 FLA, not an HTML5 Canvas one. The AS3 one allows more filter options.

Add this line to the Actions panel, for frame 1 of the timeline, it will significantly improve the quality of the exported video:

stage.quality = "16x16";

In the export video panel, don't send it to Adobe Media Encoder. You will still get an MOV file, and it will be larger than if AME had compressed it to MP4, but at least the quality stays good, and the alpha channel will survive the ordeal.

[Colin Holgate]

I tried that Guess button. It seems to guess that it is premultiplied. If I change the color to the stage color, and use Guess again, it changes back to black. So, start off by trusting AE, then do other tests if something's not right.

[haponskih]

It worked! Thank you so much!!