Problem with Alpha channel on Quicktime credits video file

Hi everyone,

Our titles guy sent over a Quicktime file of our opening credits. It's a ProRes 4444 video file at 4K resolution. I imported it into Final Cut X and dropped it into my timeline in "video track 2." But it shows up black over my footage.

Now, I know I have to tell FCX not to read the alpha channel, but I've tried everything, and it won't work. Attached is a screenshot of how I have the settings of the video file on my timeline.

Alpha Handling: Premultiply
Field Dominance Override: None Set
Deinterlace: Not checked

I then tried every preset in of Blend Mode in the 'Composting' section of the Video settings in FCX. No dice.

Can someone tell me what I'm maybe doing wrong with this? Thank you.

Are you working in proxy media? Proxy doesn't carry transparency.

Hi Tom,

I am indeed working with proxies. So I deleted the file from the project and then reimported it. Only this time, I didn't transcode it. But now it shows up with the big red 'Missing Proxy' icon. So what's the workaround here, if my entire project is working off proxies? Do I have to turn Proxies off for the entire project in order to see the credits correctly? Or is there a way to leave proxies intact for everything else, except the credits?

Thank you.

Hi, I dealt with this issue recently. You can see the thread here:

www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/...channel?limitstart=0

In short, you have to work around it until they add an option to preserve an alpha-enabled codec when creating proxies. There is an experimental app that someone made to automate the workaround, but essentially what you have to do is let FCPX create the proxy, and then just overwrite that proxy file in the library with the original file that has the alpha. They should have identical names.

Or work on that section of the project in a separate project without proxies.

Thanks, guys. That seems to have done the trick. Much appreciated!