@RD_Jay

Hi and welcome to the user to user forums.

If when you say 'It was easier in the old version', you mean you had an older Vegas version, then the program you are currently using is not the same program as the one you were used to. The Vegas Movie Studio program has ceased to be and dropped from the Vegas video editing lineup and been replaced by a program previously known as Movie Edit Pro by Magix which they renamed Magix Movie Studio. So the workflow is completely different for you but the pretty much same for previous Movie Edit Pro users. If you wanted to keep your old familiar workflow you would have to now upgrade to Vegas Pro Edit.

Ray.

@CubeAce, yes I had the old Vegas version. What surprised me with this one is that simple functionality is hard. When I hit pause, and then play again, it takes me back to the starting point. So instead of that, I need to press K. Then, to split the video track, I have to hit T. In the old version there was a separate menu at the bottom, that was easy to navigate. This one has a menu on top with only the split function. Maybe I am missing something? I am not the best at tech stuff.

@RD_Jay

Maybe I am missing something?

No you are not missing anything!

As Ray writes, Magix Movie Studio is a completely different program to Vegas Movie Studio and does require the user to learn a different way of doing things! But I can assure you it is well worth doing that learning!

Jeff
Forum Moderator

@johnebaker

OMG!!! thank you, thank you, and THANK YOU for taking the time and effort to solve it for me!!!

It works!

Your video is amazing! Very easy to follow, especially with the yellow circle. Due to your video, I also realized that I needed to move the main window to the left in order to see the options on the right.

Your good karma for the year has been achieved, dude!

@RD_Jay

Hi,

There is a series of tutorials on getting started and basic editing that you should watch. See this list in this thread.

The toolbar above the timeline has some icons with 3 dots beneath them. Right-click on these to see the list of what you can select.

For splitting, you have found T for split (scissors button) as the shortcut. Z will trim what is to the left, U whatever is to the right. You'll see these if you right-click on the scissors button. If you are in single object mouse mode, you'll get gaps. In mouse mode for a single track or all tracks, no gaps. Be sure to go back to single object mouse mode.

For your initial question about 2 videos running simultaneously, you have the answer. Your friendly tool is Size/Position/Rotation and it can be simple or very powerful. Watch my series of tutorials starting with:

As you have probably seen, apply Size/Position/Rotation and you can drag the handles to resize the image and then drag it on the screen to position it. Graphical and very simple, or fine-tuned by the pixel using the value boxes.

Cropping is done using the Section effect - this is actual cropping, not just zooming in. I did a tutorial on this.

There are also PiP templates under the Templates tab, Design elements, Picture-in-Picture Basic to facilitate the task. You can create your own templates and save them.

To add to that, the track order is not the same as in Vegas. In Magix Movie Studio, the order is back to front using track numbers. Track 1 is at the back, 2 in front of, in front of 2, etc. The background stays on track 1 so there is never a need to insert tracks above to get overlays, just add the next one to a higher numbered track and it will be in front of.

Lastly, right-click on everything everywhere to get a listing of what you can do at that point. You'll learn a lot that way.

John CB