I thought I must be really missing something.

I followed the tutorial on Marty Hedler's site, and could not get Vegas 5 to do the split screen like the tutorial shows. I tried many different combinations of the composting modes - obviously I did not get it right though.

I tried it in Vegas 4, and it worked very nicely, just as indicated, and as quick as just a few mouse clicks.

Obviously, the composting mode differences are tripping me up.

Is there an easy way to do this in Vegas 5, or has it been overly complicated - or what am I missing?

I followed the instruction in help to add the mask generator fx to the parent trak, and it gets closer, but both generated media are showing through on black side of the mask.

Edit: - I think the help file is a bit ambiguous.
Where it says:
"The compositing model in Vegas 5.0 software differs significantly from the Vegas 4.0 model. To reproduce the Vegas 4.0 parent/child masking behavior, set the compositing mode of the parent track to Multiply, and then apply the Mask Generator plug-in as a track effect on the parent track."

There are two composting mode icons on the parent track. The composting icon on the left (labeled parent composting mode) should be left at the default, and the composting icon on the right (labeled "composting mode") is the one that needs to be set as Multiply - all other composting modes were left at the default.

Thanks,
Chris

I'm probably too new to give you the correct answer. This is how I did it easily with Vegas 4, which is all I have. I resized the image(using Event/Pan & Crop) to a small window and then placed it in a certain location on the screen. I left the big image (720x480) on the bottom video track and I think I could add as many small windows as I wanted on top of that. I multi-tracked me playing guitar, bass, and drums with video from each. Guitar on full screen, bass in one window, drums in the other window.

I'll be honest, I had no success with the gradient/compost thing. (I never could figure out what the "generated gradient/background" was - guess I'm a little slow). I change the track motion for each video placing it where I want (I've done a three split this way), and then I adjust the video using the video event pan/crop tool to select the part of the video that I want to be showing. This is an all or nothing solution working on the entire video, so If you want to include it as part of another video, it would have to be rendered then inserted into the final.

The answer was in the Knowledge Base all along

http://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=441&p_created=975823200&p_sid=o*zr*Doh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfbmwmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDE9MTcmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDI9JnBfY2F0X2x2bDE9JnBfY2F0X2x2bDI9JnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9c3BsaXQgc2NyZWVu&p_li=