Prototyping with transparent videos

Also add me to the list of wanting and needing this

3 years and not fixed yet 😕

Yep, still not working. C’mon guys, it’s been years and I would argue transparent video is pretty fundamental. Do better.

maybe in 2025… …? lol

Hello. I’ve come to the same conclusion as other users in this thread - the transparent webm file works the first time it’s uploaded for a brief moment. Then Figma decides “wait a minute this is transparent webm video, add black background at once and never be transparent again!”

Would it be possible to fix this so the video is transparent forever? It’s obvious Figma can handle it because of my several successful tests right before the site forcefuly added black background.

It is 2025 and this issue makes my usecase impossible to solve in Figma and have to resort to other software. Why should I keep paying for a broken feature? But the AI hype is more important…

I’m beginning to think that figma is causing more setbacks than improvements on the transition over to AI design systems. It might be easier to feed illustrator files into gemini to code and then feed those into cursor for a prototype. Transparent video is pretty critical for prototypes and makes me question my over-reliance on this platform. 

It’s kind of tale old as time. A company builds an incredible tool, then they get a taste of money, then they become complacent and continue working on things that will make them money instead of continuing to build upon the things that actually made them big to begin with and then another player comes out who cares about their customers and the circle begins again.

transparent videos have been supported by browsers for years. Their whole platform is basically running in a browser. Why WebM and HEVC formats with alpha are not supported is beyond me. Let’s even say they don’t use HEVC because of licensing or something, webm supports it just fine. 

Extremely frustrating that Figma still doesn’t support transparent videos. Having said that, here’s a neat workaround for those with the compositing chops to do so in something like After Effects.

1. Export a compatible video with no Alpha, such as h264.
2. Create a black & white luma matte based on the alpha of your main footage. In AE for example, drag your main comp onto the new comp button; make a new white solid and use your main comp as the track matte layer (alpha); and then create a black solid for the background layer. Again, export this new comp with no Alpha, using h264.
3. Drag both videos into Figma and align them on top of each other, with the Luma matte on the bottom. With both selected, right-click and “use as mask”.
4. Go into the Mask group, select the luma matte video layer and set the Mask option on the right to “Luminance”.

   

Hope this helps some folks in the meantime.

You, sir… are a gentleman and a scholar for figuring out this bit of a hack. Thank you.