Question about what I want to do

[Rubystars]

CyberLink PowerDirector 9 Ultra is the software I'm considering buying.

I saw an AMV on youtube that has some really cool effects where characters from different anime were cut out and layered over other scenes. Would most modern editors be able to do that?

I ask because the only thing I've ever used before is Windows Movie Maker and I'd like to learn how to layer clips. If it's allowed I would link to the video I'm talking about that I'd like to do something similar one day.

I had an image in my head of maybe cutting out a video of someone talking and then having a different video sequence running behind them. For example a politician is speaking and you cut them out with just the podium and them speaking and have something funny running in the background.

Would I be able to do that with the software I'm considering?

[Pwolf]

i doubt the software can do that. what you want to look for is "masking" or "rotoscoping". Any compositing software should be able to do that, like Adobe After Effects. Also Sony Vegas has a masking feature. Alternately, you can do it in photoshop.

[Cannonaire]

Just to clarify, you will get support for masking with the Pro version of Vegas, but not with the Movie Studio (~$100) version.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Note that masking/roto generally needs to be done frame-by-frame, so almost any image editing software can be used for this purpose... as long as you save your images to a format like .png that retains your cut-out alpha channel (transparent part of the image... like my avatar). Personally I use GIMP(free) along with Magix Movie Edit Pro(~$60). Sometimes you can achieve the same thing using an effect called chroma-keying which is where any part of the video that contains a certain color is keyed-out so you can see the layer behind it. Like when weather people use blue screens. Although masking is usually more accurate.

[Rubystars]

Thank you guys for all your good information. Do any of the Sony Vegas versions have chroma key?

The pro version looks like it's $600! Wow... that's a lot of money, might be worth it but I'd have to save up for it for a while. I was looking at the $100 version but not sure what features it would have that would make it better than Windows Movie Maker.