Using Rotato videos with alpha transparency in After Effects

Preserve the alpha channel in your Rotato video and work with your background-less Rotato renders in After Effects

This tutorial has been updated the to latest design of Rotato
Screenshot of After Effects showing a composition with a video with transparent background
Enabling Transparency Grid in Adobe After Effects is a convenient way to check if your ProRes4444 video has transparency

Rotato is a great shortcut for working with 3D mockups in After Effects. Most often, you'll want to add your device mockups on top of other elements in your video, so exporting from Rotato with an alpha channel is the way to go. But since After Effects still doesn't support HEVC With Alpha, it's not as smooth as you might think.

How to do it

  1. First, export your 3D rendering from Rotato as ProRes4444.
  2. Drag it into your After Effects composition

Tip: You can enable After Effect's transparency grid if you want to confirm that the video does indeed have a transparent background.

Importing a video with alpha transparency

If you're on macOS 12.1

In macOS 12.1 however, there's a bug that causes a weird error message, and this method won't work. As a workaround, you can export a HEVC With Alpha and do this in Terminal:

This will convert the HEVC file to a ProRes4444 format that Adobe After Effects understands. You can now drag in the resulting ProRes file to After Effects and enjoy the alpha channel

If you're on 12.4 or newer

No problem. Apple fixed the bugs.

Related Tutorials

Saving your animation as a video