Section 30. Add, Delete, and Size Tracks

30. Add, Delete, and Size Tracks

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

4 About Video Capture

14 Add Media with the Adobe Media Downloader

29 About the Timeline and Video tracks

SEE ALSO

77 Create a Picture-in-Picture Effect

87 Create a Brady Bunch Effect

97 Create a Title Overlay for Your Video

By default, Premiere Elements gives you two video and two audio tracks with which to work. You have the ability to add additional video and audio tracks at any time. You'll need additional tracks for special effects such as picture-in- picture (showing multiple images at the same time), adding background images, titles, and text. Each still image also needs its own track; therefore, the more images you want to display simultaneously, the more tracks you need.

Tracks are prioritized from top to bottom (or layered in visibility); the bottom track being track number 1. The higher the track number, the higher the priority. When adding an image to track 1, with nothing above it, the image on track 1 is clearly visible in the Monitor. If you add an image to track 2, directly above the track 1 image, all you see in the Monitor is the track 2 image because the higher track has priority.

This all becomes more understandable when you resize and position the images, lower their opacity, or make parts of the tracks transparent. When those effects are applied to higher tracks, parts (or all) of the lower tracks become visible. One of the best examples of this is seen in 87 Create a Brady Bunch Effect. Each image in the famous Brady Bunch intro is on a separate track, scaled and positioned so all the images are visible in the same screen. Keep Track Priority in mind as you add clips to the Timeline. Make sure what you want to see is on the proper track; and that there are no clips on tracks above it that don't belong there.

After adding additional tracks, you might need to delete some empty tracks. That can easily be accomplished with a few keystrokes.

30. Add, Delete, and Size Tracks

Premiere Elements also enables you to set the size of the tracks. Changing the track size also enlarges the thumbnail images you see on the Timeline, making it easier to see the audio and video detail.

NOTE

To change the default number of tracks displayed in the Timeline, choose Project, Project Settings, Default Timeline from the main menu at the top of your screen. There, you can set the default number of tracks (for both video and audio tracks) for all your future projects. Changing the default does not alter the number of tracks in any projects created before this change.

1.	Click the More Button Click the More button in the top-right corner of the Timeline to open the More menu.
2.	Select Add Tracks To add tracks to the Timeline, select the Add Tracks option. The Add Tracks dialog box opens.
3.	Enter Number of Video and Audio Tracks In the Add Tracks dialog box, you see separate entries for Video Tracks and Audio Tracks. With these settings, you can add only video tracks or only audio tracks if that is what you require. Enter the number of additional tracks in the boxes and select the Placement of the new tracks. You can place the new tracks before the first track or after the last track. When you are finished, click the OK button to add those tracks to the Timeline.
4.	Select Delete Empty Tracks To clean up the Timeline and remove unused tracks (audio or video tracks that contain no images or clips), open the More menu and choose Delete Empty Tracks. All unused audio and video tracks are deleted. NOTE When deleting empty tracks, Premiere Elements does not show a confirmation dialog box asking, "Are sure you want to delete these tracks?" After you select Delete Empty Tracks, the tracks just disappear.
5.	Select Track Size You can change the size of the tracks in the Timeline. To do so, open the More menu and select Track Size. A submenu with three choices opens.
6.	Choose Size of Track For the size of the track, you have the choice of Small, Medium, or Large. Change the setting and notice the difference in the size of the tracks. Changing the track size also enlarges or reduces the images and clips on the Timeline. When you need to see more tracks and less detail, choose Small (the default). When you need to see a single track and a lot of detail, choose Large. Medium is a good setting for average editing tasks.