Exporting with Transparency/ Video to Animate

Note: you only need to add video to Animate if you need to follow motion that is happening in your shot. If you just have an animated creature, a bird, or a symbol and no camera motion to follow, then you can just create your character in Animate, export it (unclick convert video with Media Encoder), and layer it over your video in Final Cut.

Exporting with a transparent background:

File > Export > Export Video

When the export dialog comes up, be sure to click "Ignore stage color (generate alpha channel) and unclick "Convert video in Adobe Media Encoder. You want your video to be a plain old .mov file because h.264 does not have transparency (alpha channel).

Adding video to Animate:

Before you add a video into Animate you should edit the video to only be the portion you will use. Animate does not work well with videos over 10 seconds long.

Find the clip you wish to use, Start a new project in Final Cut, and drop only the one clip into the timeline. Then export that clip.

To export it as movie file, use File > Share > Master File.

When the dialog window opens, select the Settings tab and make sure h.264 is selected as the codec.

Click next and save the movie into a new folder created for this project.

Start a new file in Animate and select ActionScript 3.0 as the type.

Change the size and framerate to be the same as your video (1920x1080 30fps).

File > Import > Import Video.

Select to Embed H.264 Video in timeline. Then click the Browse button and go find the video clip you exported from Final Cut.

Select "Embedded Video" as the method for importing the video and click all the other things.

Click Finish and your video is now on the timeline! You can now animate on a layer above the video.

The video cannot be exported along with the animation though.

Turn off or delete the video layer before you export. You will have to export the animation and put it together in Final Cut.

File > Export > Export Video

When the export dialog comes up, be sure to click "Ignore stage color (generate alpha channel) and unclick "Convert video in Adobe Media Encoder. You want your video to be a plain old .mov file because h.264 does not have transparency (alpha channel).

If you are importing some other type of video that is not the right Codec, follow these directions to convert it.

When you try to import your video and it's the wrong format, you will instantly get this error. Just click OK.

Click the Convert Video button that is next to the Browse button.

If you have not saved your project yet, you will be asked to save it. Be sure to save it in a new folder inside your Animation folder inside your Documents folder.

The converted video will be put into the same place that you save your file.

Adobe Media Encoder will now open. Press the little green play symbol to start it converting your movie to the right format. When it's done you will have a movie file in your folder that can be imported into Animate.

You will have the following window pop up after you close the Media Encoder. Click OK and then click the Browse Button and go find your encoded movie.

Select "Embedded Video" as the method for importing the video and click all the other things.

Click Finish and your video is now on the timeline!