From the course: Premiere Pro Guru: Compositing and Masks (2015)

Alpha channels: How color and transparency work in video - Premiere Pro Tutorial

From the course: Premiere Pro Guru: Compositing and Masks (2015)

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Alpha channels: How color and transparency work in video

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- We cannot start talking about compositing, transparency, and masks without understanding Alpha channels. Well, Alpha channels are a common occurrence in video and graphics work. We really need to understand how they behave in order to truly use them to our advantage. An Alpha channel is an additional channel that defines areas of transparency in the clip or image. We are used to the red, green, and blue channels in our images. This is an extra one that will determine what parts of the clip are transparent or semi-transparent. There are some clips that we can easily use in Premiere Pro that contain an Alpha channel. Examples of this are text animation templates from After Effects, or some Photoshop files, or even video files that may have been created already with an Alpha channel. You can edit clips that have Alpha channels into your sequence as you would any other clip, but you must make sure that a clip with an Alpha channel is on a higher track than any clips that are supposed to be beneath it. Let's go ahead and open Sequence 1.1 and place your playhead on top of clip 1. And you will see that this particular clip, the one on top, is just the text. So this is a clip with an Alpha channel and I can just play it and pause it. The second one is also a clip with an Alpha channel. I can play it and pause it. And if I make the top track invisible by clicking on the eye icon, then only the bottom track will show and you can clearly see that the top track only contain the text.

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