I prefer to use the mask feature found in Pan/Crop as shown in the images below (my ugly mug!!).
Place the same event of different tracks and apply the mask and FX to the upper one.
I used an extreme amount of CC strictly for demo purposes.
Yea, there is no easy way to do this. The split screen in the preview does not show up when rendering. You will have to do some cleaver masking as Mike suggested.