Fringe when exporting with Alpha.

[NealF2]

Hi.

I'm on a Mac, so my exporting is ProRes Alpha. As far as I can tell, it's the only export for high quality and alpha channel.

Most of the time I don't need the alpha channel, but Moho Pro 14 doesn't have the ProRes 422 that's much smaller and doesn't have the alpha. (They did have it in version 12. Wish it was back.)

Unfortunately, when I do a separate export for the background and character, I import them into FCP and the character has a fringe around it. As though the edges are no longer transparent.

Is there a way to fix this?
Thanks.

[Greenlaw]

I almost never export a movie file from Moho, or any animation program (2D or 3D), for that matter. I prefer to export a PNG Image Sequence.

Typically, I render from Moho for composting, so having a clean alpha channel is critical. I do this using Layer Comps and Moho Exporter, even when I'm only exporting a single pass with an alpha. (I made a tutorial about this workflow here: Moho for Compositors)

After compositing the footage, I'll export the movie file from my compositing program. For Moho, this is usually After Effects (with Media Encoder) or Fusion. (When I was with DreamWorks, it was AE or Nuke.) Then I'll bring this file into my video editor.

Partly, this is because Moho's movie support is limited and Adobe Media Encoder offers more robust ProRes support, but mostly it's because, in my experience, processor-intensive animation programs are more stable and efficient when rendering image sequences than when rendering a movie file.

Additional tip: For Moho animations from Ae, I typically use ProRes in my edits, but ProRes files with an alpha can be extra-heavy. When I'm just rendering chyrons or other graphics with limited color, I'll use the free Grass Valley codec instead. It's smaller and more efficient, and the alpha channel looks good. (I also use Grass Valley for the chatty avatar character in the corner of my tutorial videos.)

[slowtiger]

Apple's handling of their very own ProRes codec leaves a lot to desire.

Yes, export from Moho on transparent nearly always leaves a thin border, which is dreadfully visible when put on anything dark. If you have a choice during import (like in AFX), try "import with pre-multiply alpha".

(TVPaint offers this option during export, so I can have pre-multiplied and non-pre-multiplied exports.)

[NealF2]

Thanks guys.

I'm going to try the image sequence method. I've used it several times but don't remember if it had the fringing or not. In my setup using it is an extra step, but if it stops the fringing it's got to be done.

Thanks.