Go to help and read section on event pan and crop.

Something like this? (the split screen is about thirty seconds into the clip):

Restoration example

If so, you can use Event Pan/Crop. Put the events on two tracks, one above the other and then use pan/crop to move the event on the upper track to the left or right to create the split screen event.

If you want exactly a split screen, then you can enter the values directly into the pan/crop dialog. For NTSC DV video (720x480), enter Center values of 0, 240 to move the top event to the right exactly halfway, and 720, 240 to move the top event to the left exactly halfway.

Here's how you do it split screen:

Set up 3 video tracks.
Put your two videos on tracks2 and 3.
On track one, put the split screen preset you can find in Media Generator > Checkerboard.
Hit the 'Make Compositing Child' Arrow on the left edge of the track 2 header.
Done

Gary

I thought that you put a mask over half the lens and shoot the scene once then mask the opposite side of lens and shoot again....sorry, I just went back to the seventies for a moment...

GK -Excellent! . . . .

Grazie

GK:
That sounded brilliant to me, also. However, even though I thought I had done just as you instructed, all that shows is a split screen, half black, half white.

I'm probably looking very dense, right now, but what step did I leave out?

Caruso

Caruso, are you on vegas 5 ?

Yes, I'm using V5. I never did get it to work as described above - gave up on the Checkerboard plug-in. I've two 2-hour programs to finish and needed split screen in several spots on each.

I finally used a combination of Pan-Crop and Track motion (using each of the subject video clips on their own video track) to accomplish what will do for now.

A continuing search of this forum turned up a previous comment by GK that included the extra step of using pan-crop on tracks 2/3 - can't go back an check now, but, I think he/she left that step out in the 1,2,3 instructions given.

I did the pan-cropping, and was able to get one of the two tracks to "light-up" one side of the split screen - couldn't get the other one to light up for the life of me.

As I said, because I am under some time constraints, I deleted the track with the checkerboard FX and used pan-crop/track movement on the other two tracks to approximate the look I need.

Thanks for your reply - additional suggestions welcome.

Caruso

If you need to do this someday.
Do what Gary said, but in Vegas 5 you need to add the Mask generator plugin yourself, you need to add it to the checkboard track.

Hope this helps.

Nat

Nat:

Thanks for the extra info - I bet I can make time to give it another go or two.

I love Vegas - have always loved it, but, like other apps, find the design of the help/user manual indices to be lacking.

When I do a search on split screen, I get references to a bunch of stuff that doesn't tell me what I need to know.

Split screen isn't some far-fetched, abstract idea. Why shouldn't the index (or at least a term search) return instructions on how to split the screen?

Fortunately, Vegas, in most respects, is very intuitive.

Thanks for the info.

Caruso

Here's a method that works with Vegas 4, but because it uses only track motion, I suppose it will work in Vegas 5 as well.

To get split screen with unsqueezed images in Vegas:
Track one, open track motion. Set Center values to 0 and 240 (288 for PAL). This shifts the frame left.
Trach two, open track motion, set Center values to 720 and 240 (288 for PAL). This shifts the frame right.
Use Pan/crop to shift the images so the action is within the narrowed frames (You only get half pictures).

If you wanted one on top of the other, the settings would be (in PAL) 360 x 0 for the upper and 360 x 576 for the lower. I'm still talking about unsqueezed frames, so half of each will be left outside of the visible area.
Tor

Might make it easier for someone to give precise instructions if you define exactly what you mean by a split screen. A 2x1 split has a number of possibilities.
1) LH side shows LH side of one track, RH side shows RH side of another track.
2) LH side shows squashed whole of one track, RH side the same for another track.
3) Two quarter sized widows show the full frame frame from two tracks.

2x2 splits are simpler in that the aspect ratio remains the same.

Thanks for the tip on dropping the mask generator onto the checkerboard track -- that did the trick.