Editor's Toolkit: Alpha Channel Settings for Juicer 2

When you look in your Editor's Toolkit, you'll see that there are two kinds of overlays. The first are attractively colored and animated lower thirds, transitions, elements and frames. It is obvious how to use these: just drop them on your timeline above some video and you are done. The second type of overlays are the black and white mattes. These do not have automatic alpha channel transparency of the other clips and are slightly harder to understand and use.

NOTE: While most intermediate to advanced editing applications support standard alpha channel transparency in movie files, most entry level applications do not, primarily because they do not have enough overlay tracks to support both the overlay and an additional track above that for titles. The more advanced compositing tools necessary to work with the variable transparency overlay mattes and transitions are nearly universally absent in entry-level video editing tools.

Alpha Channel Transparency

In order to use the automatic alpha channel transparency of the Full-Screen Wipes, we need to make sure that the alpha channel is embedded in our media file. The raw files that are on the source DVDs all have alpha channels and can be used by simply copying the file from the DVD to your project's media folder on your hard disk. They will work as-is without any modifications in most advanced editing software applications for details. You can also use the Juicer processing software to convert the animations into any format that is compatible with your editing software. We would recommend you use the QuickTime® file format with an Embedded alpha channel, using the Animation video codec (this is all configured on the Output tab in the Juicer's Batch window - Figure 1).


Figure 1 - The most commonly compatible settings for automatic transparency in the Juicer.

While these settings are compatible with most software applications, not all editing software is compatible with embedded QuickTime® alpha channels.