Why aren’t there easy to use formats of video that support an alpha channel (similar to a PNG)
In: Technology
There are, they’re just not that common.
[WebM](http://containerchan.org/tb/demo/res/192.html) has been able to do it with VP8/VP9 for years, though annoyingly it regressed with VP1. On the production/pro space, you’re likely to find ProRes 4444. Another option is to distribute the video as two files, the color data and a separate monochrome alpha mask.
For videos, color keying tend to be used instead of alpha (So you just replace a specific color like green).
[You can find a ton of videos with green screen elements you can replace on the web](https://www.shutterstock.com/video/featured/Green-Screen-Showcase-Stock-Footage-63679200/?kw=green%20screen%20videos&gclid=CjwKCAiAhJTyBRAvEiwAln2qB3WeiTxQHm8jURIKeTs3NghLLDG9_4X2oMZkDxz4sDsP4g92syIa8hoCOXAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds).
I think the reason why it is done this way is that you can film green screens, but you can’t film alpha. You could replace the green by alpha, but that’s just an extra step.
Can someone ELI5 this question?
Proress is the standard for creating video with transparency.
But since video never really needs to be transparent for the viewer, it is mostly used for graphic overlays. And even that I haven’t been doing for a long time since premiere pro now has direct AE and asset integration and there’s no need to export assets to a video file before using them anymore.
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