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There was a time when Motion allowed you to choose Premultiplied or Straight alpha on export. No longer. Anything I export out of Motion seems to be premultiplied, but Adobe Premiere thinks it's straight alpha, so of course I get the gray in semitransparent areas. Is Motion tagging the export footage incorrectly or is Premiere reading the file wrong? Anyone know? Is there a fix or workaround?
Thanks!
Thanks for your reply.
You are correct that setting the alpha for imported objects doesn't have any effect on export. I'm creating moving text within Motion so no media is being imported anyway.
I understand that motion is designed to work with FCP. I'm not sure I buy your assertion that Motion wasn't created to export video. I understand that I cannot import a Motion template into Premiere.
The choice to use Premiere is not entirely mine. I create these 4444 videos and send them to someone else who brings them into Premiere on their system. I much prefer Motion in terms of getting things done quickly. The decision to use Premiere for editing is the result of Apple's decision at the transition of FCP7 to FCP-X to make collaborative work difficult.
There is no green screen, keying or spill suppression going on. I tried doing some "matte magic" cleanup in Premiere and it helps somewhat, but I'm not going to send files to someone and say "by the way, you'll have to do some tweaky spill suppression in order for my files to look acceptable". Also, this is really just trying to minimize the symptoms rather than solve the problem.
The bottom line for me is that this used to work just fine, but Apple took away the option on export to choose Straight or Premultiplied Alpha. I assume there's something in the file header that indicates that information about the alpha channel but either Apple isn't tagging it correctly or Adobe isn't recognizing it correctly. My research indicates that Motion is exporting premultiplied alpha (in terms of video channel content, not necessarily file header) but when I examine the clip in Premiere it says it is straight alpha and I haven't found a way to over-ride that.
I would really hate to have to abandon Motion and relearn everything in After Effects just because of this one problem.
Here are a couple screenshots to help explain the problem. I created moving text in Motion with some motion blur. I've got it against a blue background to help make the issue visible, but the 4444 video was exported without the blue background. I then created the same blue background in Premiere and import the 4444 clip into the timeline.
Here's how it looks in Motion:
and here's how it looks in Premiere:
Thanks for sticking with me on this.
OK, let's get away from motion blur because it's only one case where this comes up. Anytime there are pixels that are not either 0% or 100% opaque the problem appears.
I created the background solid as a visual assist (in both applications).
When I can export with the background I do and then there are no problems, of course. In this particular case the actual background has a texture and has some motion to it and the timing of this clip was variable depending on the voice over, which wasn't recorded yet. So, I couldn't include the final background because I couldn't predict the timing of this clip against the background footage.
So, here's an example of text fading in instead of using motion blur.
The first example is a bit of text at mid fade in shown in Motion:
Now here's the same thing imported into Premiere as a 4444 with just the text. The background is a color solid created in Premiere:
Okay - well you should not be using a background solid for export. You should set up the Canvas as:
It won't export the color, but it is the color of the project canvas while you're working on it. No need for extra added layers.
It's obvious that premiere isn't reading the ProRes accurately. It looks like you should have the opacity no less than 95% in Motion. But try setting up the canvas first.
I seem to keep coming back to this topic. I probably account for 75% of the views.
I was going to blame Premiere, but I've never used it and that's likely not fair.
I was going to point out that you can set the alpha blending for media imported into Motion... but I suppose that really wouldn't have much to do with the export.
Which finally brings me around to the point that Motion wasn't created for Adobe Premiere. Motion actually wasn't really created to export video. Motion is for making templates for Final Cut Pro. The *best use* of Motion is to create any kind of project and save it as a Template. No having to deal with ProRes 4444 files — just an XML file that will load external media if required. This is where setting the alpha blending of imported media comes into play. And within this workflow, Motion has absolutely nothing to do with any Adobe products because it just doesn't work in that environment (except for exported video). You really ought to stick with After Effects if you want compatibility with Premiere. (IMO, you'd be better off with Final Cut — but what do I know?)
If there is a gray fringe around the alpha edges, that implies that spill suppression has been applied to remove any color information (usually a "green screen"). If spill suppression is automatic, is there a way to turn it off in Premeire?
As for a workaround? Like I said, I know nothing of Premiere, but if it has a Levels control that can handle Alpha, you might try to trim the fringe with that — or if there is some kind of "matte magic" feature. Most of these apps have similar features.
Oh I really do not like Motion blur. I don't really see blur - more like a string of repetitive shapes and Motion's execution of the blur drives me a little nuts... there's like a fade in - solid - fade out over the length of the blur... I expect Solid on the leading edge of animation and fade out over length of time.
Motion is **supposed to** automatically determine the type of alpha in use... but that is *determine* within its own environment, not where it is going.
Supposedly, if you need to blend the alpha with color, you need to set the Background color of the Canvas in the Project pane with the Background setting set to Transparent. Upon export, the color background is not saved, but the premultiply info is supposed to be (as I understand it... which doesn't count for much and the documentation somewhat blows.)
You say you have your animated text against a color background, but is it the Canvas Background you have colored, or a color solid used as a temporary visual assist?
You may have to export your project with an actual color background. You should be able to mask the color in Premiere which should leave any blended color/alpha available as your premultiply choice... if color masking is possible.
I know how the canvas works and how to change the color of the canvas. If I use something as a background (color solid, still image, footage) while working I then turn that layer off before exporting. In the end it has no relevance to the issue I'm having since it's off at the time of export.
You say it's obvious that Premiere is not reading the ProRes properly, but it is just as possible that Motion isn't tagging the file correctly. There are other problems with Motion's export function as well. Try exporting from a project with fields ON in the properties but have the check box for fields OFF in the export dialog. The output file will still be interlaced. I only bring that up to show that Motion's export system is not flawless.
I'm also trying to get information on this from the Adobe community board but so far no responses.
Thanks again for your posts. It seems that once Apple removed the ability to choose straight or premultiplied alpha on export I have lost functionality that I depended on and no amount of wrangling inside of Motion is going to change that.
Hey Kurt. You are correct, Motion no longer has the option to choose straight or Premultiplied alpha, everything is pre-multiplied on export now. IMO, it's generally best to assume this from most software that exports movies with an alpha. I did a check of a ProRes 4444 file looking for metadata tags for Premult/straight alpha using the command line "mlds" command (mlds <file path to movie>) and did not see any tags for the alpha type. I think on the FCP/Motion side, it's always assumed the image is premultiplied when you import so you would have to change the media setting in either app if you did have a straight alpha.
I don't think this is an issue of it being "tagged wrong", or either app doing someone incorrect. It may just be there is not a tag and/or each app has it's own way of approaching the issue. Many apps make assumptions on things when they don't have the data (missing color profiles are a good example), so that may be is happening in Premiere when you import the movie. I remember that After Effects has a file that you can edit to establish your own import rules, I don't know if Premiere does this?
I think you have two choices if you are sending exports from Motion to Premiere. First if Premiere does have import rules, try to set up a special rule for your exports. If that's not an option, just know that any time you export from Motion for use in Premiere you will need to check the alpha setting for imported media and set it to Premultiplied (black). Once you do that, Premiere "should" know how to handle the alpha and you shouldn't see the darkening. I don't think this is a matter of not being able to use Motion, it's a matter of communication in the working pipeline between you and the editor you are sending things to.
I would disagree with Fox on one point, while Motion is optimized for FCP, but it was not designed only for that and it has always supported exporting (rendering) to video and image sequences that can be used in other applications. There was actually a point in the early days where you could import Motion projects into After Effects and they worked like movies (long gone). Lots of users integrate Apple's software with Adobe. It was when FCP X come out the the publishing and template building was introduced. There's no reason to exclusively use Premiere and AE vs. FCP and Motion. Whatever works for you and gets the job done in the way you need is fine.
Hope this helps! Cheers
Thanks for your reply and your thoughts.
Update... I got some help on the Adobe community. If anyone else has this issue the answer is:
In Premiere select the pertinent clip in the Project pane (not the Timeline). Right Click and choose Modify -> Interpret Footage. In the dialog box that comes up Choose "Conform Alpha Premultiplication to (x) Premultiplied Alpha". Click OK.
Thanks for updating Kurt, glad you found your answer. Yeah, this is basically the same as the "Alpha Type" setting in Motion when you import a clip and look at it in the Media tab. I did a little more google searching and it seems like Adobe has a scripting API called "ExtendScript". If this comes up a lot, you may want to look into creating a script to handle making this change when importing Motion renders into Premiere.
BTW, I tried a work-around suggested in this community posted in 2017 about reimporting the export, choosing "Straight" in the media controls and re-exporting. This did not work.
Premultiplied vs Straight Alpha
