Macromedia has released the second of a series of articles from us Flash developers at gskinner. This article entitled âTrue Alpha Video in Flash 8â gives you the knowledge and skills to create your first alpha video, and how to use that video in Flash. I learned a lot about the new Flash 8 video in researching this article, and I really hope you take away some good knowledge about creating and using alpha video from reading this. You can read my article here. While researching this article we had tons of fun filming Guirellmo the hamster for the goofy demo below. Guirellmoâs whole purpose was to eat, and run across the screen (easier said then done). Just click to drop food in his feeding area and watch him do his thing.
This sample requires the Flash 8 player.
Needless to say, filming hamsters is harder than we expected, and requires better video equipment than we had easy access to.
Pretty sweet, I’m playing around with Flash 8 right now and all I can say is that there are so many possibilities. Its gonna be interesting to see what people will come up with now…
I definately love the new possibilities this brings. What I have been struggling with is the halo around the subjects fringe. Until I figure out hhow to get rid of that, it is still not useable to me.
Really nice idea. 🙂
Sadly, the result is pretty ugly. If that it what people can expect from video with alpha channel… good night. Sorry, but the final result is the only thing that counts, and it’s quite poor.
Anyway, thank you for sharing.
As alluded to in the last sentence – yes, we know it is ugly. That’s why we never used it for the article. The idea seemed neat though, so we thought it would be fun to post it here anyway.
The problem is not as much in Flash 8 as it is in the keying. If you cut out an object in Photoshop and put it in to After Effects, The alpha video looks pretty good. Iâve tested with blurs and different opacities and worked well. The one thing Macromedia needs to add is a pick matte color option to reduce color being picked up on the edge. I donât know any software (Premier, Avid, etc.) that got this right on the first shot. Be careful how you light the blue screen and practice keying, it will go a long way.
Hey,
I’ve just finished my first Alpha Channel Video base site
http://son.ofabit.ch
have a look, feed back is greatly appreciated!