Arbitrary angles or slices for split screens

Question

Is there a software or plugin for video software that allows for arbitrary numbers and angles of split screens, and if so, what is it called?

I.e. For a particular effect I wanted to split a screen in to 6 pieces the same way you would cut a pie.

OR

I.e a non rectangular grid of split screens.

This kind of assumes there is a some kind of masking feature built in to allow non rectangular non 4:3 or non 16:9 screens.

I am targeting Windows 7 and 8 mostly, but if there is specific linux based video editor that fits the bill, don't hesitate to recommend it.

Answer 1

I don't know of any software that makes this trivial to do, however After Effects can certainly accomplish it. You would need to make multiple masks that would show portions of the same video and then position them however you want. You could even derive the masks from a shape imported from Adobe Illustrator that you could slice up however you wanted to ensure that you get full coverage.

This technique is still non-trivial and would take some time to do manually, but you could then manipulate each of the shape layers however you wanted using motion keyframes in After Effects.