damn, so we have everything, we can pan from left to right with envelope, we can position track inside the 5.1 field, but if we want to pan a sound from front to rear, we have to pay 4 time the price of MSP (provided the pro edit have the feature?), is that right?

this is too bad :(

I don't have movie studio, but you are saying it does allow you to create a 5.1 mix. Is that right?

He wants surround automation. It can be done manually in Movie Studio Platinum as a per-channel technique. Hardly the showstopper the OP has postulated.

Yeah, I can visualize how you could make a duplicate audio track, pan one track to left, the other to right and then fade between them.

Yep, you can make a 5.1 mix, export it as an ac3 file, you can pan from front left to front right, rear left to rear right, you also can place a sound inside the surround area. But you can't pan from front to rear.

The UI is also misleading, as we can place a sound, and then pan from left to right (see my fifth track)

I'll try the dual track method, thanks for the tip.

yes, it's just slightly more complicated to do a circular movement for example. The balance between each channel is trickier.

Maybe we will see the surround panning keyframe in the next release of MVSP? dreaming is not forbidden yet.

Movie Studio Platinum has a rich feature set for the money.

If automation, advanced compositing and scripting were in Movie Studio, there would be no professional version.

Instead of holding your breath, I suggest you hold your pennies. Been here fifteen years, and as long as there are two versions, i suspect your feature request has a relatively low probability of success.