Hello Forum,

As there’s been some discussion in the forum about maintaining the same size and placement of multiple video clips and images in a PIP, here is (for what it’s worth), a tip for one way to accomplish just that.
Some of you probably already employ this or a similar method, but perhaps it will be useful for those of you who may be new to Power Director or video editing.

The Scenario
Let’s say you have some video footage that you shot where we see (from a camera angle of behind and to the side), someone sitting in a chair, who is watching a TV program. And let’s say you want to replace what is playing on the TV screen, with some other footage that you have, that’s in the form of 5 separate video files that are saved on your computer. (e,g, home movies, or son’s baseball game, or your fishing trip, a birthday party, etc.)
The logical work flow to accomplish this, is to put your “Guy in Chair Watching TV” footage in the Master track, and then one by one, drag one of your five replacement clips into a PIP track, and then trim the clip for length and size to fill the TV screen. Thus replacing what is playing on the TV with the first of your five chosen clips. And then repeat this procedure with the other four clips.
But in order to get it all to look right, you find that you have to slightly rotate the PIP clips to fit the TV screen properly. And when sizing to fit the TV screen, you also find that the clip requires that you turn off the “Keep Aspect Ratio”, to size it to fill the screen properly.
And... with your clumsy mouse, it’s quite tricky to do the adjustments to get everything just right in order to get the PIP to sit perfectly in the TV screen.
Then... after you’ve repeated this procedure with clip #2, and when you play it all back, there is that little shift and jump at the transition between when the first PIP clip ends and the second PIP clip starts. And this is because you just can’t get your PIP clips to be “exactly” the same in size, in the exact same position, at the exact same degree of rotation.

The Workaround
First, save and close your Main project. Then open a new PD project and load those 5 replacement clips into the library. Drag your 5 clips, one after the other, into the Master track. (If you only want a small portion from each of the 5 clips, go ahead and trim a little, but leave plenty pre & post roll for each “desired section” in each clip, as you’ll fine tune your edits later.
Then "Produce" these clips (and save as... "Combo5"?), into an Avi, Mpeg2, Mp4, (or whatever), video file, and close this project.
Now re-open your main project and place this produced "Combo5" clip in a PIP under your main “Guy watching TV” footage in the Master track.
Highlight the "Combo5" clip, and click on the Modify tab. (don’t do any trimming yet)
Now, in PIP Designer, adjust the “size”, “placement”, and “rotation” of Combo5, so it fits perfectly in, and replaces what is playing on, the TV screen. Don’t worry about it not being the right in/out points you want. For right now, just concentrate on getting the placement of Combo5 to sit perfectly in the TV screen . And take your time to get it right, as this will be the only time you’ll need to do this sizing and placement chore.
Once you get Combo5 so it perfectly sits and replaces what is playing on the TV, exit out of the PIP Designer.
Now... highlight this "perfected" Combo5 clip, and then RIGHT Click on it, and choose “Copy” from the pop-up menu screen.
Then move the track slider past the end of the Combo5 clip, and place your mouse’s cursor in an empty part of the PIP track (just past the end of Combo5). Then RIGHT click and choose “Paste”.
Repeat this till you now have... the first Combo5 clip, and 4 copies of Combo5 in the PIP track. (i.e. A total of 5 identical Combo5 clips in the PIP).
You can now you trim these Combo5 copies to get the desired in/out points for each of the consecutive 5 individual sections you want to use to replace what is playing on the TV.
Now slide all the edited Combo5’s together in the PIP track, and upon playback, each "edited" Combo5 will be the exact same size, and in the exact same position in the TV screen. There will be no little jumps or slides when one edited PIP clip ends and another clip starts. You can also move any one of the Combo5 clips clip down into any of the other PIP tracks in PD7, without it changing any of the clip’s properties.

This is just the basics. There are short cuts and other variations of this that you can explore. And... this method may not be a perfect solution, but to those who may be new to PD, or PIPs, or video editing in general, perhaps using this method (of doing a little pre-production), will ease some of the frustration when you are trying to get multiple PIP clips and images to consistently be... the same size, at the same orientation, and in the same position in a PIP track.

-Cranston-
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