Step 1 : The Principle
Perez found that Studio 10 Plus accepted a video on the third track, as long as you removed the audio track from this video. It was then possible to make multiple views with 3 videos without using Hollywood FX and without an intermediate rendering. What is true for Studio 10 Plus is also true for Studio 11 Plus with which this tutorial was made, and even with Studio 12, on which the tutorial was also tested.
Step 2 : The Method
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| The setup of the first video track is not critical ... |
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| On the overlay track I used the same clip three times with a green background (it's not necessary to use a clip with a green background, any other clip will work as well - nevertheless, you will see that the final result is better). To be sure that the 3 clips are continuous (touching together), I didn't drop the same clip on the timeline 3 times. If done that way, it's possible that the clips won't touch each other and you'll have a flash at each point after rendering. To prevent this, after the first clip is dropped on the overlay track, select it and press "CTRL" + C to copy and "CTRL" + V to paste the copy without touching the cursor. Repeat this a second time and your three clips will be perfectly joined on the overlay track. |
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| To see the two tracks, the "Chroma Key" effect is applied simultaneously on the 3 clips by selecting all three before applying the video effect. You will notice that in the preview, two video clips are now visible. All you have to do is cut the excess piece at the end of the Overlay track. |
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Now we will deal with the third track, the title track... We couldn't do it before because the trick only works if the Video track and Overlay track already have videos on them!
The first step is to put our last clip (intended for the title track) on Overlay track. |
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| Now lock the Overlay track by clicking on the small padlock icon at the far right of the image above. This operation is necessary to remove the sound from the video clip without deleting the entire clip. All the video on the Overlay track is locked and you can now select the sound separately from the video clip. |
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| The audio track of the selected clip can now be removed by right-clicking on the audio clip (delete). |
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| The audio for the Title track is now gone. You could also use the "Delete" button or click on the "trash can" while the soundtrack was selected. |
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| Now that the audio is removed, you can unlock the Overlay track again by clicking on the small padlock icon at the far right of the image above. |
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| This lets you drag the clip to the Title track. But be careful ... You are fooling Studio into thinking that you're dragging a title and not a video onto its Title track. Studio is aware of this and... |
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| ...if you try to move the clip to the left or right to adjust its relative position to the Video track and Overlay track, Studio will realize the problem and not allow this movement by displaying a warning message that you can only put title, pictures and/or transitions on this track. |
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| But Perez found a workaround ... Instead of moving the clip on the Title track, he moved the clips on the other two tracks and added black titles on the track to adjust his video display. These black titles (and their duration) can be moved around quite easily, allowing you to adjust the relative position of each clip placed on the Video track. This process, however, required an additionnal rendering most of the time. Here is another solution: just move the clip from the Title track to the Overlay track and move it down immediately on the Title track but to the right place this time ... and it works. |
Step 3 : From Theory to Practical Use
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| From now on, as long as you don't exceed three videos, you can create many variations on this idea, without the use of Hollywood FX or even the montage themes supplied with Studio 12. By applying a video effect like "Picture-in-picture" to each of the 3 tracks, you can now configure your multiple windows like this ... |
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| Or, by using a custom setting, you can do this ... |
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| Unless you prefer it this way ?... |
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| You can even use the "Pan and zoom" video effect as I did here. The screen is split in two horizontally but in fact you see the 3 videos simultaneously. |
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| Finally, you can finish your customized editing by adding a fade to black before and after the clip on the Title track. |
Step 4 : The Final Results
And here is the final results of this tutorial. Please note, this is not state of the art work. But I know that plenty of you have enough imagination to do a much better video than this one. I am certain that you will know how to take advantage of these tips and that this time it will not fade from our collective memories. (Also note that we used one green screen clip to take advantage of the chroma key function, which allowed us to have the third track behind the second one - it looks much better!).
However, I must admit that 3 tracks that did not always cover the screen ... So, Mr Pinnacle, if you can not give us a minimum of four tracks, at least give us a second Title track, which we will try to get by with ... 
BONUS
In addition, if you use with Pinnacle Studio 12 the Montage Theme on one video track, or the three video tracks, you can have MULTIPLE video track....
We are waiting for your movies, the best one will be published, as usual, on our dedicated page.
{Thanks to Loosecannon for the fine tuning}
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| Comments |  By # Gert Reitner @ Friday, January 16, 2009 5:33 PM | | Just for your information Joop Woldman has also a Tutorial on the Subject matter in his excellent Tutorials listed as EFFECTS item #10 |
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 By # oldman1 @ Friday, January 16, 2009 9:17 PM | | I am glad you etched this in stone ! Great work..of course now I will be up all night playing with it. If you do the overlay AND the title track in chroma key you can get some amazing results. Thank you Perez ! |
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 By # OKFJ @ Saturday, January 17, 2009 5:49 AM | | Many thanks Le Papy. I like to make special little videos for my grandkids' birthdays and such, often overlaying several videos and effects. This will save me lots of time and fussing. Sharing is caring. Cheers. OKFJ |
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 By # Déclic Vidéo FX @ Saturday, January 17, 2009 6:00 AM | @ Gert: you are right and I know this. But I had an agreement with perez who was the first one to find this trick in March 2007, and he asked me to etch it in stone. You can note that we add some informations to obtain more than 3 video tracks, by using Pinnacle Montage Theme (in such case, you can have several video tracks, 4, 5 and much more).
@ oldman1 : we are waiting your video results with overlay AND chroma key... ;-)
DV FX |
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