• Wirecast™ Introduction
• Good presentations
• Usage Patterns
• Hardware
• Media Capabilities
•   Overview
•   Images / Opacity
•   Movies
•   Keynote Movies
•   MPEG-1 Audio
•   AVI
•   Windows Media
•   Real Media
• Titling Capabilities
• Logo Capabilities
• Broadcasting
• Editing Encoder Presets
• Desktop Presenter
• Media Management
• Menus
• Preferences
• Main Window
• Shot Editing
• Shot Element Panels
• Edit: Scene
• Edit: Title
• Edit: Media
• Edit: Effects
• Edit: Playback
• Edit: Motion
• Edit: Filter
• Edit: Chroma Key
• Acknowledgments

Images / Opacity

Wirecast supports a wide variety of still images types (TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc).

Some of these formats (TIFF, GIF, PNG, etc) offer some form of Opacity or Transparency. This is often called an "Alpha" channel.

Wirecast will work seamlessly with these formats and is the preferred method for using graphics such as Logo's which have transparency.

GIF and Transparency

However, GIF files are a special case because they only offer Transparency, not true Opacity. (the GIF format allows you to say that part of the image is transparent (completely invisible), but does not allow you to say that part of the image is "partially transparent").

Some GIF images use Transparency for much of the image. However, near the edges of the visible data, Transparency cannot be used. Often this happens when there is a shadow near the edges of the visible data. The author of the GIF often assumes a certain background color (white, for example) and that color becomes embedded in the actual image.

When Wirecast displays these types of images, the edges of the visible data will show the "background" that was saved in the GIF. This is not a defect in Wirecast; Wirecast is properly representing the data as it was saved in the GIF.

The solution to this is to obtain the original image (for example, the original Photoshop file), and re-save the image as either TIFF or PNG. Both of these formats offer full Opacity.