Another Newbie question

[Gary Randall]

I am starting to get the hang of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. My question is what is the purpose of having more then one video track if you can only show one at a time. If I insert another video clip in another track, it does not play the clip. It stills shows the other. I hope that was not to confusing.

Gary

[Mike Kujbida]

The other tracks are used for things such as titles (placed on a track above the video clip) or doing PIP (Picture In Picture).
There's a lot more that can be done with multiple tracks but those are 2 common examples.

[Rick Diaz]

You can also change the opacity of a track and have it show through as a sort of double exposure effect.

[Michael Chenoweth]

Originally Posted by Gary Randall

I am starting to get the hang of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. My question is what is the purpose of having more then one video track if you can only show one at a time. If I insert another video clip in another track, it does not play the clip. It stills shows the other. I hope that was not to confusing.

Gary

Gary,

The examples Mike pointed out work in the case of there being smaller sized pieces of media placed on top of your video track, such as a sized down piece of video as in Picture in Picture (PIP) or a text title or even a logo graphic. Anything placed on top of the bottom most track will appear on top of that track. So an example of using all 4 video tracks in VMS Plat is a talking head (interview) on the bottom track, lower third graphic (animated or still) on the track above that and then logo above that, and text above that, maybe not all in that order depending on the look you want.

Four tracks may not seem like a lot at the beginning but they can easily get used up depending on your project. Although I've taught users that will only ever use one or maybe two tracks - rough cutting for Associated Press and everything else is added by someone else.

Hope that helps.

cheno

[Harold Brown]

I almost always have 7 to 8 video tracks. I do a lot of chroma key 2 camera shoots. So I have a title track, Transition wipe track, Logo track, overlay track, camera 1 and camera 2 track, a background track and sometimes another layer track mixed in there some where. I some times have up to 3 title tracks depending on what I need to do. It isn't unusual to have 4 to 7 audio tracks as well. It's all about layers!!

[Gary Randall]

Thanks for the Info guys, but could someone tell me how to use both video tracks? What I mean is, when I lay down a clip below my other clip in the timeline, how do I get the bottom track to show and not the top one?

[Jarrod Whaley]

Originally Posted by Gary Randall

Thanks for the Info guys, but could someone tell me how to use both video tracks? What I mean is, when I lay down a clip below my other clip in the timeline, how do I get the bottom track to show and not the top one?

The simple answer is that if you want the clip on the lower track to be displayed, simply don't put anything on a higher track. :)

If, however, you're trying to figure out how to achieve one of the effects the other posters have discussed, perhaps you could be a bit more specific regarding what it is you're trying to do.

[Gary Randall]

My Fault guys, what I want to do is switch between my 2-3 cams that I use. Right now I am only using one Audio track during the wedding. I need to be able to show clips from each cam using the same Audio feed from one of my cam's which has my senn ew112g2 plugged into it. So I would be trying to match up the tracks using only one Audio feed. I have been using Ulead software in post and it allowed me to put a clip in the lower video track and then I could click on it and the bottom clip would override the top.

[Terry Esslinger]

I don't believe the studio versions allow the use of scripts (one of the big advantages of the full version). And I don't know if the PLat has the multicam feature as I believe that it is based on scripting.

But generally if you have your two cameras on two different timelines and have them sync'd up then you could just use the 'S'plit function to cut away sections of the top video to allow the lower video to show where you want it. There are MANY different ways of doing this, this is probably the most basic. Vegas sees from the top down so if you remove a section of the top video the lower track video will show. Its not quite the same with audio.

If you are just trying to add an occasional B or C roll shot into your master then just place the B roll shot where you want it on a track ABOVE the master track.

[Paul Kellett]

Gary.
On the right end of the track controls,(audio and video),there's alittle icon like !,hover the mouse over it and it says solo,press it and the preview will be locked to that track,you can lock and unlock as you see fit.
The top video track always has priority unless you select the solo ! icon.
The same applies for the top audio track.
Note,,if you press the solo ! icon on the top tracks then they'll keep priority even if you select the solo ! icon on other track.
Hope this helps.

Paul.

[Edward Troxel]

Vol 1 #9 of my newsletters shows many ways of doing multi-cam in Vegas (same should work in Vegas Movie Studio) without scripts. But remember you're limited to 4 tracks!