Working with After Effects animation exports. Ok at first, then disappears...

Hey guys!

So I currently work with other editors and I'm the only fcpx editor here. Well sometimes we have to share files and the most we share are animations alpha video files that were made and rendered in After Effects.

Now Pre 10.3 everything was fine. Fcpx work well with the files and there were no issues.

Now with the update (10.3 and 10.3.1) the files seem to be fine and then all of a sudden. the content would disappear but the file would still be there. everything would be invisible. Ive tried to restart or re render out the the animation, no luck.

Anybody else run into this problem or dealt with this issue?

Sorry if this sounds confusing. Its hard to explain this through text.

what codec are your coworkers using for their AE output?

It is the animation codec in after effects. Its the only codec (in my experience) where you can do RGB + Alpha. The animations are title overlays for the company or product.

Hi Mikey,

The Animation codec has been working on and off with FCP X for a long time now. I remember it used to crash the application when we were at version 10.1. Then it worked again for awhile, and now it seems to have issues once again. I think it's becoming clear that this old codec will probably not survive the next updates anymore.

Animation is not the only codec that delivers RGB+Alpha. Actually, ProRes 4444 does exactly the same. If your source color space is RGB, exporting to ProRes 4444 will retain the RGB color information. If your source color space is YUV, ProRes 4444 will retain the YUV color information. And you can always have an alpha channel in any ProRes 4444 file. So just render out your AE titles in ProRes 4444+Alpha, and all will be good.

- Ronny

YES! Thank you SO MUCH!!! It's been racking my brain so much and its hard when theres no one to talk to about these issues cause theres no othe fcpx editors around! Thanks again and I love being part of this community!

You are welcome, Mikey.

Happy holidays!

- Ronny

Just make sure you checked "with Alpha" in AAE. Not so sure about the differentiation, thought the 4th "4" meant alpha anyway, but obviously not.

The fourth "4" does in fact refer to the alpha channel support, it is not forced on you. In AE, Motion, etc, you can choose to encode with or without the alpha channel. Just like in Pixelmator, I can create an image, and save it out as a PNG file, either with or without an alpha channel. PNG supports it, in you chose to use it.