Results tagged “transparency” from Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

When you're working with Motion, you'll often be using alpha channels (that is, transparency).  For example, if you want a lower third to animate onto screen, you'll need for Final Cut to know which parts of the lower third are "see-through."

By default, Motion is set up to handle such a workflow: the black background that you see in your Canvas actually renders transparent. If you need a true colored background -- or if you just want to work on a background color other than black -- you'll need to adjust your background settings in Project Settings (Cmd+J).

Masks vs. Alphas

Alpha channels are our most sophisticated way to handle transparency, but they're by no means the only way.  We commonly use the term "Mask" to refer to something similar to the alpha channel above - that is to say, a full range of "see-through-ness" for each point.  Photoshop, for example, uses the term "Mask" to mean just that.  But more primitive incarnations of "image masks" in applications like DVDs and some still image files like GIFs use a different approach.