Terry, since you seems to be doing more of these than the rest of us, could you open a new thread in the Discussions part and do this? Even better, post the methods under tutorials?
Does anyone read those tutorials?
Here are the detailed steps:
1. Open a new project.
2. Import your objects and apply the required effects. Typically these will now be in several tracks, from #1 onwards. (From experiment I think there is an upper limit of 31 objects possible in a single collage. They get unwieldy well before that though!)
3. Move all of these so that they are now in track #6 onwards.
4. Open the \Collages folder. On my XP PC that's at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2014 Premium\VideoEffects\Collage\ but Win 7, 8 (and soon 10) systems will be different.
5. Import Spacer.tif into track 1, with a duration equal to the total length of your collage.
6. Open its properties and rename it to COLLAGE.
7. Rename each of the collage objects, so that track #6 object is now named PH1, track #7 name becomes PH2, etc. Note there are no extensions and that PH01, PH02, etc will cause trouble.
8. Reassure yourself by playing the project to ensure it does exactly what you want to see in the finished collage.
9. Decide a suitable name for your collage file. This will eventually join all the other CTF files in the \Collages folder.
10. File > Manage movies > Export, and navigate to your \Collages folder if necessary.
11. Save the file for the moment as an MVD file, with your chosen name.
12. Using Explorer in \Collages, edit the file extension from MVD to CTF.
13. Still in \Collages, copy any INI file associated with an existing CTF and rename it to match your new CTF file. So for example if your new file was called 'Zin Corners.ctf' then the INI file you want is 'Zin Corners.ini'.
14. Still in \Collages, open translation.ini in a text editor. (It might be called translation_en.ini - only one must exist or you'll get trouble.)
15. Decide a suitable name for your collage. This could possibly be the same as the file name, which simplifies matters, but it's more likely that you'll want something more meaningful. It will have to be short, as you see from the built-in collages. You can change it later anyway. See my examples.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iyotvyw2indfjjr/MEP-CollageNamesExamples-1.jpg?raw=1
16. Add a two-line entry to translation.ini. It can be anywhere but I try to place it in the appropriate section so that I can find it easily later. Follow the existing syntax. Here's a section of my translation.ini file, in which the first item is an MEP original and the other seven are new ones. The spacing in the names of the last three might look odd, but is to get the second line of the name looking OK. Experiment usually proves necessary!
[lslslsls_half_horz1]
name=>04 09
[4Stills-TinyGap-10]
name=>04 10s TinyBdr
[4#2-PIP]
name=>04 Lg+3small
[Zoom_Tile_Gaps]
name=>04 LgBdr Zin
[Zin Corners]
name=>04 NoBdr Zin
[Z-Tile-Gaps-WhtBrdrs]
name=>04 Zin WhtBdr
[Zoom_Tile Col]
name=>04 Zo WhtBdr
[Zoom_Tile BW]
name=>04 ZoBW WhtBdr
17. Save the text file. You will only see the results after re-starting MEP. But meanwhile your new effect should appear in the UI (possibly requiring some refreshing action), with the filename as the collage name, including its extension, CTF.
18. Take a JPG screenshot of your collage at a point which will represent it usefully, typically at or near its end.
19. Resize it to a suitably small size, typicall 50 x 50 (not critical - some of mine are 90 x 60) and rename it like the CTF and INI, such as 'Zin Corners.jpg'.
20. Save it to the \Collage\Icons_video folder.
21. Export the collage as a WMV and save that in the now familiar fashion, this time to \Collages\Preview.
22. Done!
As I've mentioned before, I learned the basics of this years ago from Carl and Michael (mrverron). It's time-consuming stuff, but can be fun too.