What editing program are you using?

honestly i could use any program...whatever would do this.. recomend a program?

In order for me to tell you how to do this, you're gonna have to pick a program.  Almost any NLE can do this, it's just that they go about it in different ways.

NLE ?

adobe premiere sometimes...althugh it crashes sometimes cause of my computer  

xp   service pack 3

intel pentium 4 cpu 2.80ghz

2.79ghz    1gb ram

my external HDD

247gb free

Which version of Premiere?  I have CS4.  Not sure how much has changed from older versions to CS4 (I rarely if ever use Premiere), but this weekend I'll make a guide on how to do this in Premiere CS4.

ok so not premeire then what program would you recommend

That's not what I said...?

I have Premiere.  Premiere would work.  I just rarely use it because I use more professional software (Avid).  I don't recommend it to you because it's really hard to pirate, and prohibitively expensive to anyone who isn't a student.  That and it has a very steep learning curve.

Premiere will work just fine.  I'm just asking which version you have, because it's possible that between whatever version you have and the one I do (CS4), they changed how one would go about doing a split-screen effect.

In fact, if you didn't know what to work with, I'd have suggested Premiere, as it's fairly powerful, but relatively easy to work with.

So, like I said, what version of Premiere do you have?

--edit--

Aaand I just noticed you said you only have 1GB of RAM.  I'd highly recommend at least 2GB, ideally a bit more (I have 4GB), for video editing.  That's probably why your system keeps crashing while using Premiere.

thats on my computer..where my video editing is done is a spare HD and there 246 gb on it

CS3 is what im using

CS3 shouldn't be that different than CS4.  I don't think.  I'll let you know when I whip that guide up.

And I wasn't talking about your hard drive storage space (246GB should be plenty, as long as you're not using uncompressed video), I was talking about your computer's memory (RAM).  1GB almost certainly isn't enough.

for the program itself?

For working with the video.  Editing video costs a lot more RAM than most things you do with a computer.  Especially doing split-screen effects.

i now have 107 gb on my pc hard drive

Again.  That's storage space, not RAM.

jusdt forget it

So...do you want me to make the guide, or not?  I was gonna do it tomorrow, but if you're not going to use it, I won't bother.