Dealing with multiple screens in a video

[AthenAltena]

Maybe the title is a bit vague, but I"m not quite sure how to phrase this. I'm in the process of pre-production for an AMV to the song "Not what you see" by Savatage to Gunslinger Girl, and the song goes into a part that's sort of like a round. The idea I had was to have several different things going on at the same time. I guess the best thing to illustrate what I'm going for is this video with less repetition.

I'm mostly just nervous about how I would pull this off and keep it from being a visual distraction, since I've never worked with multiple screens going at the same time before. I use Magix as an editor and know that it has that capability, but I'm still unsure as to how exactly it would work as I'm putting it together, though I think it would involve working on each "part" seperately and putting them together at some point. I'm also hoping this doesn't completely fry my processor when I attempt to output it.

So basically, has anyone ever tried something like this before, and how did you go about it? Thanks.

[LantisEscudo]

Since it's my video you're using as an illustration, I can tell you exactly how I did it. (And the repetition was a deliberate choice on my part, though I can't remember my exact reasoning right now)

For each line of the round, I edited a seperate sequence; two sequences for the second verse (2-a and 2-b), three for the third (3-a, 3-b. 3-c), four for the final (there were a few timing shifts in the later verses, requiring a slight reedit for each time around). I exported each seperate sequence to an uncompressed file (or maybe lossless, I don't remember).

I used After Effects to combine the files into single-verse sequences, then exported the composite to a new file (Verse 2 combining 2-a and 2-b, Verse 3 combining 3-a, 3-b, and 3-c, etc.). Finally, I took those exported composites and imported them back into the main project.

I'm not familiar with Magix, so I'm not sure how you'd go about doing something similar, but I hope my explanation of how I did it helps you some.

[AthenAltena]

Thanks for the advice. I've already started splitting up the clips to make things easier on me and might go about the seperate editing you suggested because I'm going to have each strain represent a different girl.

Thanks again, that should make things simpler.

[Keeper of Hellfire]

Because you'll do editing and compositing in one program, the suggested way seems bit complicated to me.

You know that you can disable tracks? That's the way I'd do it: Put the first clip into a track, edit it, disable it. Repeat until the last clip is editied. Then I'd start to enable and arrange them track after track.

[AthenAltena]

Because you'll do editing and compositing in one program, the suggested way seems bit complicated to me.

You know that you can disable tracks? That's the way I'd do it: Put the first clip into a track, edit it, disable it. Repeat until the last clip is editied. Then I'd start to enable and arrange them track after track.

That's basically what I've been doing, and am done with about 3 out of 4 of them. Working well so far.