Resolved Alpha channel missing in Compressor exports

[juanmaroy]

Hi,

I have to convert a lot of PNG sequences to Quicktime. These PNG have an Alpha channel and I need to keep it. When I use Compressor, the Alpha Channel is missing. I have tried most of the codecs, and changed other options in search of the magic combination. "Million colors+" of course. Nor the Animation codec nor the ProRes 4444 (or any ProRes) do it right.
I have read in the Apple support forum some similar problems. Does anyone know if this issue is solved or any trick to make it work?
I can do it in After Effects, and it works there (it is saving my day), I know it, but the machine in which it is running in my office is very slow, and I prefer my Mac.

Thank you

 

[ytk]

Yeah, Compressor doesn't seem to preserve the Alpha channel with an image sequence, unfortunately.

The workaround is to use Quicktime Player 7 to open your image sequence, then either export a Quicktime directly in the correct format, or save it as a reference movie then process it in Compressor. Processing in Compressor will be faster if they're large movies and you have a virtual cluster set up with Qmaster.

If you have a lot of sequences to do, you might be able to use AppleScript to have Quicktime Player 7 batch process them into reference Quicktimes, then throw all of them in Compressor.

 

[juanmaroy]

It works

Hi,

Thank you very much. It works fine. Now I have to deal with the AppleScript part.

Bye!

 

[nateo200]

This seams rather ridiculous...the ProRes 4444 spec is for the Alpha channel basically. I don't do image sequences allot but recently I was working on 2 different 16bit TIFF sequences and Compressor had a box that said something like "Include Alpha channel?" or something of that nature....if it wouldn't include it that would just be weird...maybe its exclusive to PNG's? Strange...even with PNG's I've always seen with Apple the option for including an Alpha channel.