Hi Tim,

If you have the Deluxe or Ultra version, you can add up to 100 tracks. The button to add tracks is called the track manager, and is just about the timeline on the left.

The video that is on the highest track (say you have 3 tracks (1, 2, 3), with one video on each track) will be over the the content on the two other tracks, track 3 in this example.

Yes...if you want to show the content on the first and second track, you will have to split out the edits manually.

Regards,
David

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/23173.page#124525
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/23429.page#126231
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/22647.page#121095

Should get you started.

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

See the image to Help

Thanks everyone this helps a lot, my research also showed some people use "keyframes" (?) to achieve this effect. Can anyone explain what that is? I am familiar with term from video encoding but not editing

NA

Quote: Thanks everyone this helps a lot, my research also showed some people use "keyframes" (?) to achieve this effect. Can anyone explain what that is? I am familiar with term from video encoding but not editing

The concept of a keyframe is the same as you're used to: it's a marker that tells the program to change something.

In this case, you would use a keyframe instead of a split. Suppose you have three cameras, and you want to cycle among them with a switch every five seconds. Also assume that the three cameras are on tracks 1, 2, and 3.

Place all three videos on the timeline in their respective tracks.

Select the video on track 1 and click "Modify." In that window, you can set keyframes for the opacity of the clip. You want a keyframe at time 00:00:00, with the opacity at 100%. You want a keyframe at time 00:00:05 with the opacity at 0%. You want a keyframe at time 00:00:15 with the opacity at 100%. Repeat until done.

Do the same thing with the other clips, adjusting the times to fit your cycle.

The result will be that you transition from one camera to another where you set the keyframes.

There is a big problem, though: PD will interpolate from keyframe to keyframe, so the opacity won't jump between 0% and 100%; the cross-fades will be very gradual. You can use additional keyframes to make them faster, but there will always be a cross-fade effect. If that isn't what you want, then you'll need the split technique. Jerry Schwartz

Just to add to Jerry's post. If you use the "rubber band" to work with keyframes, the minimum distance between keyframes is 5 frames (in an NTSC timeline). If you work in the keyframe window you can get a one frame separation in some circumstances, more often it may be two frames, but it seems a little difficult to predict reliably.

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Guys thanks a lot, I really appreciate the support offered! I will give all of these options a try! NA