yep... has worked for me in the past...

One technique used is to "over-run" the audio when two clips merge... you have to be careful with this though... another one is make sure you run the audio through the transition.

When an audio has been split you're still able to extend it to it's full length - to create an over lap or to cover the dropped in image. (either in PiP or Video time-line).

Dafydd

Quote: One technique used is to "over-run" the audio when two clips merge...

What a great tip! I tried it and it works great.

Strangely enough, when I snap the audio in place, sometimes it sounds seamless when you play it back, and sometimes there is a noticeable yet tiny click/skip/dead spot(?). I have a couple of videos like that, so I went back and extended the ends slightly and that fixed the problem.

Yet again, you da man. Thanks Dafydd!

Ich springe, weil vollkommene Flugzeuge nicht existieren.

There might be an easier way.

Take your overlay media (should work with still image but I've done this with video clips) and put it on one of the PIP tracks. Trim it to the time length you want and slide it into position under your timeline main track (in your example, acquarium.mpg). Size or resize it if necessary so that it completely overrides the video on the main track, if there is any audio on the media you put on the PIP track, simply lower it's volume to zero.

You never touch either the audio or video on your main track but the PIP expanded to fill the frame becomes a video overlay that takes over for it's duration.

I use this for easy "cutaways". The audio keeps flowing but the video temporarily shows something else. I tried this out while evaluating Power Director in the trial version and it basically seemed to work the same as the package I had been using.

Brian,
Yep good point. I use that method to... often when I make training video I need to zoom into a particular area and I've done the voice bit and need to add a close up.

misaltas,
The audio click - that used to be noticable then you had the audio in the voice timeline. You need to expand the timeline and adjust the rubber band in the audio timeline... to fade in.

Dafydd

Quote: You need to expand the timeline and adjust the rubber band in the audio timeline... to fade in.

You bet. I did take that for granted, otherwise it will sound a little louder or with a slight echo if you have two audio tracks that are at or close to simultaneous. Manipulating the volume rubberband did the trick. Thanks again.

Ich springe, weil vollkommene Flugzeuge nicht existieren.

Quote: There might be an easier way...put it on one of the PIP tracks.

Prima! That certainly does seem to be easier. I almost never use the PIP track, so little chance doing so will interfere with something else I want to do at that moment.

This technique also helps avoid snipping and snapping the audio around on two different tracks, which takes a bit of skill to do seamlessly, of course.

Oh, and yes. It does work well for both still images and video. Here is a quick 10 sec. sample which shows both.

Bif:

One more question for you if you don't mind sir. This "put it on the PIP track" technique works well if the still image or video I put there is the same aspect ratio. But if it's not, the underlying video can be seen at either the top/bottom or on the sides when I stretch it out.

Any ideas on how to put, say, a black box on there, then put the PIP thing on top? I wouldn't mind black bars there to deal with the aspect mismatch.

Thanks again for the great advice!
Ich springe, weil vollkommene Flugzeuge nicht existieren.

You should be able to stretch it out far enough to cover the full format of the main video track. I just took the acquarium.mpg clip which is 4:3 and then added a widescreen clip as an overlay on the first PIP track. It showed in the edit window as a small rectangle overlaid on the image of the first track with 6 "handles".

Click and drag on the lower left "handle" and drag to the corner, then the same with the upper right and I have 16:9 but a band of the original 4:3 image still showing on top and bottom. You can't drag the corners anymore but you still have two "handles", one at the top of your overlay clip and one at the bottom.

Click and drag the top one up to the top of the frame and the bottom one down to the bottom of the frame and you will have covered the whole 4:3 with an overlay image that is still holding it's image elements in proper proportion. Basically you are "zooming into" your overlay image enough to crop it to 4:3.

I would feel you can do the same with a main track in 16:9 and stretching a "pillar boxed" 4:3 image enough to make it cover as an overlay.

Hope this info helps also.

I just got Power Director running properly on my quad core primary editing computer. I had to replace an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB graphics card with a PNY Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB card to get it to handle AVCHD 1920x1080 video. So I'm just now getting started on a project that's been on hold for awhile. I have to try some of these things you've been asking about because what I've been using may work a bit different.