How to ‘preview’ lower video tracks?

[Edward Troxel]

[Will_3] “Question 1 – How can I display Track-2 or Track-3 video in the monitor? (Without moving them to the top track)
I’ve right clicked each video track and each track header but can’t seem to see how to do this.”

Click the “Solo” button on that track or the “Mute” button on the upper tracks.

[Will_3] “Question 2 – Also I read in one tutorial on multi-cam’s in vegas… use FX to display all video tracks at once in the monitor.”

Look at Vol 1 #9 of my newsletters. It gives four different methods of doing multi-cam. You might also take a look at the multi-cam video at http://www.jetdv.com/excalibur

Either Pan/Crop or Track Motion can be used to create the PIP views.

Edward Troxel

[Doug Graham]

Think of the tracks as sheets of paper in a stack. You can only see the top one…UNLESS the top sheet is transparent, or is smaller than the sheets below it.

As Ed says, you can “turn off” the higher tracks, letting you see what’s underneath temporarily. Or you can resize the uppper track(s) with the pan/crop tool to create a picture-in-picture effect.

You could also change the transparency level of the upper track, creating a partial dissolve. That’s generally more useful for a transition than for viewing multiple video sources, though.

Or you can “burn a hole” through the upper track by applying an alpha mask to it. All the areas that are black in the mask will be transparent, all the white areas will be opaque, and gray areas will be somewhere in between.

Regards,
Doug Graham