Premiere 6.5 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide

Track Hierarchy

Tracks 2 and higher are known as superimpose tracks. If video clips are playing simultaneously in different tracks (and the monitor buttons are active), only the clip in the highest track is visible in the program view of the Monitor window, provided that you don’t alter the clips’ opacity levels. In other words, the superimpose tracks in Premiere work much like layers in Adobe Photoshop (or Illustrator or After Effects).

You can take advantage of track hierarchy for basic editing purposes. By placing a clip in a higher track, you can achieve an effect that looks like an overlay edit in the program view without actually recording over a clip in the timeline (Figures 13.1 and 13.2).

Figure 13.1. Because of the track hierarchy, ...