About Channels

When you start a new branch, color channels and an alpha channel are created automatically.

Color channels show the amount of the corresponding color present in the clip using a grayscale image with a certain bit depth (for example, 8 bits). For more information, see Bit Depth Basics. Each branch has three color channels, one each for red, green, and blue.

The alpha channel uses another grayscale image (with the same bit depth) to determine which pixels are opaque and which are transparent for each frame. It is represented by a grayscale image embedded in the file. The grayscale value determines the opacity: white pixels are opaque (100% opacity); black pixels are transparent (0% opacity); and gray pixels represent varying degrees of opacity.