Using multiple tracks

- Until now we've only been using a single track on the editor timeline. In fact, unless you've been exploring on your own, you might not have even realized that HitFilm can do multiple tracks. Quite unusual for a free editor to be a full multi-track editor. But what this does is give you a huge amount of control and flexibility in how you approach your edit. To demonstrate, here I have a project with a couple of videos and an image waiting in the media browser. I drop one of the video clips straight onto the timeline. You can follow along with your own clips if you want. These techniques are not specific to these particular clips.

The image I have imported here is a simple logo, exactly the kind of thing you would want to have, perhaps, in the corner of your video. This is incredibly simple to do in a multi-track editor. If I drag the image onto the timeline and drop it just above the video clip, it will automatically create a second track. Instantly, I have the logo on top of the video, albeit in the wrong place. Moving it to the correct location is as easy as clicking and dragging it around in the viewer. I can then extend the duration of the image using the selection tool down in the timeline, dragging its in and out points to cover the same duration as the video.

That was a very specific example of how to put a logo on top of a video, but you can use multiple tracks for anything you want. You can even layer up multiple videos this way. If I drag the other video clip on to the timeline, and create a third track, the video initially obscures the entire frame. Clicking and dragging on the little square points in the corners lets me re-size it. I hold the shift key while I do it, to make sure it doesn't get squished or stretched. After positioning it up in the corner, I now have an instant news report-style picture-in-picture effect.

The way tracks work is that higher tracks obscure lower tracks. It's a bit like stacking bits of paper on top of each other, and then looking down at them from above. Clips don't need to stay where you've put them. You can move clips between tracks whenever you want, just by clicking and dragging on them. Multiple tracks also come into play once you start to get into audio mixing, which is what we'll be taking a look at in the next chapter.