How To Export Transparent Backgrounds In Premiere Pro CC / Export Alpha Channels
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How To Export Transparent Backgrounds In Premiere Pro CC / Export Alpha Channels
In this video, Will teaches you how to export transparent backgrounds known as alpha channels in the video editing program Adobe Premiere Pro CC. It’s fairly easy to do, but you must make sure that you actually do have some transparency in the background before exporting. If you have regular footage that hasn’t been altered in any way, it likely will not have any transparency, and therefore even if you export with an alpha channel, it won’t give you any transparent background. Let’s get started:
Alpha channels are used to create a transparent background around the subject you want to highlight. They're ideal for motion graphics projects. They can be useful when doing compositing in Premiere Pro. We are going to show you how you can export alpha channels from within Premiere Pro.
Okay, I'm in Premiere Pro right now, and I've got a background-clip and this AlliandWill lower thirds title. This one already has a transparent background. But for the purposes of this tutorial, let's pretend I just made this graphic and haven't yet exported it with an alpha channel. Only a few codecs support the export of alpha channels. So let me walk you through a few of my favorites:
Go to File Export or press command M or ctrl M on the keyboard to open our export settings window.
Then, under Format, select QuickTime to drill down into the video codec.
We'll go with Apple ProRes 4444. If we go lower, you'll notice there's an area that says the depth is currently set to eight.
We can get an alpha channel by setting it to 8-bpc + alpha or 16-bpc + alpha. So, with 8-bpc + alpha selected, you could export, and then you'd have an alpha channel with the file that gets exported, or you could export only the alpha channel and make a sort of stencil around it at the bottom. Also, keep in mind that exporting with an alpha channel will result in much larger files than exporting with a standard codec. So, unless you're working with something that requires a transparent background, I wouldn't recommend exporting anything with alpha channels.
The video codec animation is another codec that can be used within the QuickTime format. This one has 8-bpc + alpha, so make sure that one is chosen, and those two will give you the .mov file format. If you'd rather work in a different format, such as mxf, you could use the Apple ProRes mxf format. And then you'll see under the video codec; you can select from a variety of options here, but we'll stick with the xq4444. Then, at the bottom, you'll notice that you can also choose the same as ProRes in QuickTime format. The same thing, except you, get a wrapper with a different format called .mxf.
So those are the three methods for exporting an alpha channel. I should also mention that there are other options available here, such as TIFF, that will allow you to export an alpha channel. However, keep in mind that the. TIFF format will export individual frames. So when you export your video, it will be saved in a folder, and when you open that folder, there will be hundreds of frames because it exported each frame. That's what you want some of the time. Assume you're working on a time-lapse raw photo. In most cases, however, you would not want to export individual frames and would instead compile everything into a single finished video. So that's the end of this quick video on exporting alpha channels in Premiere Pro. Thank you for reading and we'll see you next time.
Repurposed by MUNCH
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