Playing transparent video layers

vienastadas

Hey everyone,

I have a problem with Isadora video playback. I have prepared some still animation, which was rendered out from

.png files to a .mov file with an alpha channel. Isadora does not seem to understand that the layers should only

contain a figure data and no background. Changing the blending modes does not help neither, additive and transparent

modes just create transparent figures and opaque just brings in a black background.

Any help appreciated

Tadas

vanakaru

Try different render options. I am sure there is something that in not right.

I use transparencies a lot. Usually I render into PNG or ProRes or HAP with alpha(millions colors+). The most effective way to layer transparencies in Isadora is to set each Projector to different layer (0;1;2;3....0 being the bottom one). and blending to T.

vienastadas

So in the case of three layers (background, figure 1 and figure 2) you would use three movie players and three projectors?

mark

Dear @vienastadas

What codec did you use when exporting the movie files? Choose **Window > Show Movie Inspector** to see what codec it says there -- it will be next to the word "Format"

Best,

Mark

vienastadas

Hey Mark, I am running Isadora on Win, and I do not think there is a way to check codecs.

vanakaru

@vienastadas

Yes, several movie players and projector pairs are one way to do this(I thought you are using this method). I recommend to try to re-encode the movies using PNG+ codec and see how this plays out. It should work on windows as well as on mac.

There is very good codec for both platforms that Resolume developed - DXV that supports alpha as well.

https://resolume.com/software/codec

mark

Dear @vienastadas

Are they WMV or AVI files? If so, here's a tool to do it: http://www.moviecodec.com/solutions/how-to-identify-the-codec-of-a-video-file-61931/

Otherwise, if they are QuickTime movies, the same command I listed previously is in the Windows version of QuickTime player.

Best,

Mark