Stencil alpha text is not working

Sorry.

I tried this with "Basic Title", and it all works as expected; but you are using "Text" and with this title I can reproduce your experience; furthermore, I can tell you why it is happening.

The "Text" title has the "Title background" layer active, so it acts much like an adjustment layer.

If you use a title that does not include this background layer, it will work as you expect.

You can easily confirm what I am saying, for example, by applying some Transform to the title - if you scale it, the background video scales as well.

Solution: either use a different title, like "Basic Title", or if you want to use this one: open a copy in Motion, and remove or deactivate the Title Background.

Sorry if I am wrong, but I think this is a case of user error.

You are supposed to set the Blend Mode of the Title to Stencil Alpha.

Leave the Blend Mode of the video behind it as Normal.

It seems that you made both the title and video use Stencil Alpha, and that produces a black screen, as it should.

Just to complement my previous post, and perhaps clarify: for any title that includes the "Title Background" layer from Motion, any effect that you apply to the title applies also to every clip below it in the timeline (hence this why an Adjustment Layer works - it is just a Title with nothing else but the Title Background).

In particular, since "Text" acts this way, applying a blend mode to it also affects the clip below - so, in a way you were (not deliberately, not knowingly, but via the "Text" title) also applying the Stencil Alpha to the video clip below.

What’s the title that you’re using? Does it have an alpha channel?