Q: can you cross dissolve between to clips on different video tracks

AFAIK, multi cam in FCE is a manual-only operation.

FCP 7 does offer multi cam syncing…but you would need to make a considerable investment in a suite of apps that have been deprecated – and in some cases no longer function fully. The FCS 3 (and 2) can still be found at some online retailers.

FCP X, although quite different in its design than FCE and legacy FCP, has very strong multi cam editing capabilities. There is a 30 day trial if you want to test it first hand. If you are interested, I suggest you first view some of the very good tutorials that are on the Web and take a look at what is available on the Apple support site.

I don't have any experience with Premiere Elements, so I can't comment.

Good luck.

Russ

As Russ stated, in FCE it's a manual operation but is still fairly simple to do:

1. Line all clips on the timeline so they're in sync with each other.

2. If the audio from only one camera is to be used, you can unlink and delete the audio from the other clips.

3. Load the video clip on the uppermost track into the Viewer window by double-clicking it on the Timeline.

4. Using the Scale and Center control in the Viewer's Basic Motion tab, scale the clip to about 50% and position it in one corner.

5. Do the same for the other clips on the Timeline, but position them in different corners.

6. Depending on your computer's available resources, you may have to render the Timeline in order to playback smoothly.

7. When you playback the Timeline, you should see all three clip at the same time in the Canvas window and/or on your external television monitor.

8. Use the blade tool to cut out and delete any sections of each clip that you don't want to keep.

9a. If you plan to keep each clip on its own track, you'll need to make sure you leave enough handle frames to support the transitions you'll add - or -

9b. Once all unwanted sections have been deleted, select all the remaining clips on the uppermost track, then while holding down the Shift key, drag them to the track below (holding down the Shift key while dragging will keep the clips in sync).

10. Repeat with the next lower track until all clips are on track one.

11. Add transitions as desired.

-DH