That is very discouraging news. There is nothing that would indicate that the ability to import video into CTA is so limited. The fact that alpha information in video's prepared by your own product does work correctly casts an unflattering shadow on this limitation. It is understandable that you would be excited by the opportunity to talk about the popVideo product. Please consider your customers who already have video, tools, workflow, or needs beyond the focus of popVideo.

If I knew I had to buy every product in your inventory to get basic things done, my pre-purchase evaluation of CTA would have been much different.

Hopefully the transparency limitation for videos coming from non-Reallusion products will be removed in the next minor update.

Your product manager needs to re evaluate this decision. By refusing transparent assets this drastically limits CTA's role in creating a basic video, or even a scene.

CTA is relegated to rendering content to be used in another app. CTA can't even import my titling.

Your product descriptions really ought to be corrected to reflect this basic limitation.

I really don't think this is a deliberately imposed limitation as you suggest. I'm sure the development team will be looking to add further support for video formats with alpha in the future.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

I'm glad to hear this. I haven't been following the user feedback on CTA very closely, but I think gordo has made a good case for the need for CTA to behave like the other video tools he is used to using.

In iClone, this functionality is provided by an opacity channel for an object, where it works well. What's the chance this opacity channel functionality could be ported over quite literally?

General Picture - animating now to life itself(tm)
Member of Content Wizards

Just to add that while the video formats you have mentioned are not currently supported with alpha channel you do have another option which is to use SWF if you are able to work in this format. This is another option if you don't want to use popVideos.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

My version (1.1.1516) doesn't seem to want to accept any video codecs except WMV . Have been trying to get output from Particle Illusion into CTA. I am surprised it won't even accept an uncompressed avi with alpha. Read the post about "power of 2" and encoded videos to suit, even re installed CT. but to no avail. I would have thought this was an important part of video creation.
So just to be clear about your post you require me to buy another of your programs to enable transparent video import into CTA and add another layer to the workflow?
Perhaps you should mention this before people press the buy button.or at the very least take the "PRO" off the name.
Regards
Paul

Sorry to hear of your frustration. Since the improvements made in the v1.1 upgrade you do have the option to use .swf or .popVideo format with transparent background. Using .avi files with alpha isn't supported unfortunately.

And just to clarify, the "Power of 2" error message is only an issue with certain older graphics cards. If you have not recieved this error message then you my advice regarding this will not affect you.

You certainly don't have to purchase popVideo Converter and can use .swf if you wish as an alternative. Personally I would recommend using popVideos for video use because they are so easy to use and shouldn't cause any compatibility issues.

I don't believe there has been any advertising claiming that video with transparency such as avi can be used in CTA but I can understand you are unhappy about this not being possible. Please let us know if you have seen anything misleading regarding using video with alpha channel and it will be corrected. Video formats supported (without alpha) are avi, wmv, mpg, mpeg, mpe, mov, swf.

Hope this helps a little.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Hi Peter,
It's been a while. Does Animator support video formats (other than popvideo) with alpha yet?

Unfortunately there have been no further updates to CTA since your original request. Currently CrazyTalk Animator 2 is in development and we should have more information to share soon on this.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

In one of the early questions on this thread it asks if you can start and stop an imported video.  I have a problem where it just wants to run in a loop and not stop.  Anyone know how to start and stop an imported video?

By default videos will always loop.

If you just want the video to play through once, open the timeline and select the Visible track for the video. Move to the end of the video and then use the Show/Hide button from the top toolbar.

Hope this helps.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com