track header question

Why does the V1 in the red box mean? See screen shot attachment at bottom.

V for Video, and 1 for track n°1

The red outline signifies Track Destination Selection.

Surprisingly, that term doesn't appear anywhere in the 3000+ page manual, despite it being an option under the Timeline menu.

This option controls what track your Insert and Overwrite operations will occur on from the Source Monitor.

Surprisingly, that term doesn't appear anywhere in the 3000+ page manual, despite it being an option under the Timeline menu.

The official name for it appears to be "Destination control and Track Number", it's described on page 523 of the Resolve 16 manual.

It's my experience that trying to guess the terminology and doing a search to find it is very hit and miss. You tend to guess the wrong search terms or to pick something that's so common you end up finding matches on 100's of pages. I've found it to be a lot more effective to navigate directly to the information you're looking for by opening up the table of contents pane on the left side of the PDF document.

The manual is very good about describing all of the UI elements. Each "page" in Resolve has a section in the manual, and near the beginning of that section is a description of the interface. For example, the elements in timeline header are described under:

PART 4 - Edit
-> Using the Edit Page
--> Timeline

Once you get used to the style and layout of the manual it's generally pretty easy to find out what each piece of Resolve does. Much easier, at any rate, then trying to figure out how to do some task. That seems best done using Google.

The black V2 means "video track two." So why the Red V1? It can't be both track one and track 2.

In the image, it means the Video from track 1 of the clip in the Source Monitor will be added to track 2 of the timeline.

I don't think it's possible to have a clip with more than one video track, so that tends to say V1 no matter which track is your Destination.

This illustrates the confusion: See screen shot below.There are not 2 video track one's. What can I do with the red one, that I can't do with the white one that is already there - I don't see the need for 2 of them. I read the manual on page 523, and still don't get it.

Click the white V1, then Insert or Overwrite from the Source Monitor.

Now click the white V2, and do that again.

Now click the white V3, and do it again.

You'll get it.

It's a design feature.

The number inside the box changes to whichever SOURCE track is going to be edited into the selected timeline track.
This is a design feature to avoid the clutter of having source side track selectors like in Avid.