Importing Video With Alpha or Locking Layers

kenmead · Post by **kenmead** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:04 am

I'm doing the cutout trick like Conan O'Brian used to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger's face...only I'm adding a bit more. I've got an image of the face of Einstein with the mouth cut out. I'm compositing the image over the top of a video of lips moving to the words. I'd like to export the video from Final Cut Pro and import it into Anime Studio Pro where I will then add a rigged body to animate. This will allow me to easily move the head and background lips together within AS as one layer. However, when I export from Final Cut, I get a solid black background...not a transparent background as I would like. Is there a way to either get AS to get rid of the black background or to export from Final Cut and import into AS with an alpha channel? If not, I have found that I can export the moving lips as a PNG from Final Cut. Then import the image and lips separately. However, with this method, I would need to lock the image layer and the lips layer together in AS so that they would move as one "head." How would I do that? Any assistance with these two approaches or ideas for other approaches would be greatly appreciated.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:13 am

Well I don't know about Final Cut, but you can easily 'lock' these two layers by putting them both in a group or bone layer. Then anything you do to this group/bone layer will apply to both of its sublayers.

kenmead · Post by **kenmead** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:19 am

Thanks for the advice. Man, that was a quick answer. Much appreciated. Good to know. I also just discovered that I simply needed to export the quicktime from Final Cut using the Animation codec, which includes the Alpha channel. The whole thing imports with a transparent background into AS. Now all I need to do is rig a bone to this "head", and I'll be moving the cutout image with the lips, and everything should work perfectly.