Graphics

Right - so in the package I have been building, we have some flares being used with Continuous Animation to make a 'Living Hold'. Now, in all of our local tests using the virtual buffer, these elements looked exactly as they should. I would notice that when I would export an image, I would see long black boxes depicting the premultiplied alpha of these elements, but I had figured it was just an export issue as - again - the issue was never present in either layout or sequencer.

Now that the package has been put through it's first show, we are getting screen caps from the broadcast back that are showing that issue. I need to understand why, and how to fix it, and also point out there is a parity issue which makes these things sort of hard to prevent.

Here is a said screen shot, you can see the black bars to which I refer. There is another issue there with some logic that seems to have broken or been disabled, as the L3rd should be shorter, but that's a separate issue I ned t ogo into their scene-files remotely and dissect:

Willie - Regarding the flares, have you tried setting the alpha to 99.9% (rather than 100%) on these objects? I have had success eliminating black bars around alpha objects in the past by using this trick to render an alpha, but this was for objects that showed black bars on preview and all outputs (virtual and actual outputs) AND were not included in a layer object...so not sure if it would apply to what you are seeing.
#XPression

It's worth a shot, though it's difficult to test since it all looks right over here, I was hoping there's be a "That's a known issue, you need to enable X" kind of thing. I'll have to coordinate with the guys in Baltimore when they are back from their road trip and try some stuff out.
#XPression

It might be because their switcher is doing a linear key instead of a shaped key, or vice versa.
But it would be easiest if we had a copy of the scene to test.
Have you looked at the key channel in the viewport to see what the key channel looks like?
#XPression

I just did - and I do see the boxes in the key, though that's not surprising since the the source has a pre-multiplied alpha. I can't recall when or from whom I heard it, but I was under the impression that straight alphas were to be avoided in XPression. Is there a setting on their switch that can be adjusted, or do I need to render out and integrate new textures? It seems like it should be able to be done switch side, since XPression is clearly capable of displaying these correctly
#XPression

Yes, the switcher will have a setting to switch between linear and shaped per input.
I'm just throwing ideas out there though.
#XPression