I could list several others, but what’s “practical” to one person may be “unnecessary” to another. Bottom line is that the more media you need to see or utilize at one time, the more tracks you’re going to need. Most of these effects can be achieved with fewer tracks by simply creating small projects for up to four elements, rendering it out to file, and then importing that result into a new project. But having unlimited tracks is more flexible and more forgiving (since you can tweak individual bits without having to re-render them).

“Also it is a total of 8 tracks possible right? As in, 4 audio and 4 video?”

Yes.

“still not sure if I should start in Vegas 8 Pro… learning curve about the same?”

The interface is nearly identical, so not much to learn there.

I’m working on a small narrative (short); low production value; so I don’t think this limitation will affect be but still not sure if I should start in Vegas 8 Pro… learning curve about the same? I think there are more tutorials online catered vegas 8…

“Tracks” in Vegas can be thought of like layers in Photoshop (or the GIMP or Paint Shop Pro). They’re a way of organizing your media and sometimes compositing it in different ways. For example, if you want one piece of media to appear above another (for example, adding titles over a background), you put it on a track above the other one. Another reason to use multiple tracks is if you have several pieces of media that you want to apply the same FX to, but you want to leave other pieces alone. Instead of applying them to each individual file on the timeline, you can put all of those files on a single track and then apply the FX to that track. (In fact, audio FX can only be applied at the track level.) The list goes on.

When you create a new Vegas Movie Studio project, it starts out with six tracks — three video and three audio. And VMS has already labeled them with what it thinks you should use each track for. You can use them as they are; you can delete and/or rename them; you can add more tracks from the Insert menu. It all depends on your project, what effects you need, and how you want to organize your work.

When the file is rendered, the tracks are “mixed down” — the final output does not have separate tracks. In this context, tracks are purely project-based elements.

Does that help?

If you could clarify what is meant by this and how it might affect me, I would greatly appreciate it!

Once upon a time, Vegas Movie Studio had a completely different name. It was called Sony Screenblast. But it was still based on the same code as Vegas, so I suppose they decided to make it more obvious that the two are related.

For an alternative to the velocity envelope, try changing the playback rate for an event. This method is a bit limited, but can still achieve similar results.

But Pan / Crop can’t do this alone. You can use it to crop the image or you can use it to move the image (by first zooming out instead of in). But not both.

To position the cropped video in the bottom right corner, close the Pan / Crop window and open the Track Motion window for the cropped video’s track. There, you can further resize the cropped video, rotate it, add a drop shadow or glow if you want, and you can drag it around to reposition it.

The catch, since this is Track Motion, is that whatever you do will affect any other events on this same track. If that’s going to be an issue, you can add keyframes in the Track Motion window and set everything back to normal where necessary. (Set the keyframe type to Hold if you want the change to happen immediately. See my Introduction to Keyframes post if that sentence meant nothing to you.)

And your vocab is spot-on.

I want to crop a video, and position that cropped video in say the lower right corner. e.g.: crop someone’s face from a larger capture and position that new clip as a sort of picture in picture. (I’m sure I’m not using the right vocab!)

I figured I can do it with the Pan / Crop tool – but I can’t seem to get it doing what I want. Tips there?