The tracks are all functionally identical. You can ignore the names on them as they're only suggestions, but are otherwise meaningless. The only consideration is that Vegas takes a "top down" approach to combining tracks. If you want to add text over the pictures then the text has to be on a higher track, which therefore means you want to avoid using the top track for the pictures.

Lotsa things here ... Under options / preferences / editing you can set a new still image length and also a cut to overlap conversion amount. Set the new image length to 6 seconds and the overlap amount to 1 second. Now if you drag a bunch of pictures to the timeline all at once they'll all have one second crossfade between the pictures and 4 seconds between transitions. That's great if you haven't added the pictures yet.

To avoid the gap when dragging the pictures turn on Auto-ripple (Ctrl-L). Then when you drag a picture all the ones after it will move too.

As far as multiple songs, it's probably best to create the entire video as one single project. That way you don't have to combine them afterwards. You can also crossfade the music that way and time the photos to match.

Thanks I tried the Ctrl L and it worked - Thanks!

I am really still having trouble with the length of each picture. I set the preferences to what you said but do I need to change any of the other settings on that menu to zero or leave them the way they are?

I re-added my photos to the timeline, but I do not see the crossfade inbetween (do I have to manually move the photos?) I added a transition inbetween the photos, would that change any of my timing settings?

Also, looking at the time on top it is not working. For example: my first two pictures end at 00:00:15 on the timeline (I have them spaced a little differently and that's fine) but then I added 4 photos (after I changed my preferences) and the first photos now ends between 00:00:23:20 and 00:00:23.25.

I really am a novice and I know these are the very basics to learn. I have also looked on youtube, but I don't have hours to search through all of these videos to find one that will really help me. Thanks for being patient with me! Your help is appreciated.

The Automatic Overlapping works when you drag a number of pics to the timeline - i.e. you select 5 pics in the explorer and drag them to the timeline. Remember to check the Automatically Overlap etc. field under Preferences/Edit.

To create overlaps for pics already on the timeline just drag one of the pics to overlap the other - remember here to have the little icon over the timeline Automatic Crossfades on.

You can add your music in one or more parts as you wish. You can shorten/overlap etc the music in one ore more audiotracks.

Do use too much time when adding the pics before you have the music - because when you have added the music you will probably want to make the pics change more or less to the beat of the music - and that means one more round of aligning the pics.
BTW: when doing this just preview audio and press M at the beats where you want the pics to change - then you have a row of markers and then it is easy to align the pics (Switch off Auto Ripple if you are new on Vegas - you can always use it in later productions :-)

Actually in that case wouldn't it be far far better to have auto-ripple enabled? Start from the beginning and move the next picture to line up with the beat, and the rest of the pictures follow. Without auto-ripple you'd likely end up with huge gaps and have to do a lot of scrolling back and forth to find the next picture, or you'd end up with huge overlaps and have a total mess to untangle.

You are perfectly right, Chienworks, however I have seen the most astonishing scre.. -sorry- mishaps when a beginner is working with AutoRipple on - and forgetting it - so therefore my suggestion :-)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but i think most of the scre ... -err- mistakes with auto-ripple are due to people not really realizing how it works or what it affects. I think once you get a good handle on what it does, when, and how to manage it, it's far more useful to have it on about 99.95% of the time. These days the only time i ever turn auto-ripple off is for the occasional J or L cut. Other than that, i can't imagine why anyone would want to endure the pain and suffering of editing without it.

It is useful to have autoripple off on some occasions. Example: when you have a character saying her lines twice, while filmed from two angles. In editing, I put the two clips on two tracks, cut them both and alternate between two tracks. If you have autoripple on, cutting and deleting a part will cause what follows to shift to the left, and I don't want that to happen.
To make my point clear, here is an example (skip the lousy intro of the movie). It is password protected because it isn't finished yet. It is in Dutch also, but I assume you're all polyglots anyhow... ;-)
http://www.vimeo.com/2942592 password = sammy