@Roger Bansemer said: "If I want to render footage as 4K do I have to set the properties to 4K when I'm editing or can I set it to 1080 and then when I render it somehow render it in 4K?"

With most render templates in Vegas there is no requirement that the Project Properties be set to the pixel dimensions of the output. A 1920x1080 project rendered to a 3480x2160 will, in fact, be 3840x2160.

 

Thanks John. You have always been so helpful and so quickly too.
I guess these are the two options for rendering. What is the difference between the two highlighted in yellow?

I'd suggest doing the project at UHD resolution so that generated media, etc. are actually at the higher resolution. I've been doing this on my laptop since 2017 and don't find it particularly slow.

I use MagixAVC for UHD and HD projects- there are presets with reasonable bitrates to start with. HEVC is smaller (well, if you cut the bitrates 50%+) but less compatible with devices.

NVENC, QSV and VCE are hardware encoders where the GPU does encoding. It's fast but can be lower quality at a given bitrate than a CPU encode. I'd do a test or two and determine whether it's acceptable to you.

Now, for the longer answer.

In the absence of any Pan/Crop changes, the pixel dimensions of the UHD source media will be rendered to the 3840x2160 pixel dimensions of the render template.

With Pan/Crop changes, the cropped area will be scaled to the render template pixel dimensions.

There are render templates that allow or require that the output be rendered at the pixel dimensions of the project:

Voukoder

Video for Windows

@RogerS said: "I'd suggest doing the project at UHD resolution so that generated media, etc. are actually at the higher resolution."

That's what I do as well.

@RogerS said: "I'd suggest doing the project at UHD resolution so that generated media, etc. are actually at the higher resolution."

That's what I do as well.

Not necessary, with the Vegasscript "Resize generated Media" ALL generated media in a project will be resized to the new (higher) project resolution with ONE mouseclick.

@RogerS said: "I'd suggest doing the project at UHD resolution so that generated media, etc. are actually at the higher resolution."

That's what I do as well.

Thanks John. Since you edit in UHD doesn't your editing process really slow down and become jerky even if you put the preview to auto?
Thanks for the screen shots.

I just cropped an UHD image way down really small and then rendered it. When I looked at the properties it still said that it is 2160 so I'm confused. I know it's not really 2160 but I guess the file size is.

@3POINT

Thanks. I noticed it, but have not used it.

@3POINT

Thanks. I noticed it, but have not used it.

Scripts are very handy and can tremendously speed up your editing workflow!

@Roger Bansemer

The pixel dimensions in the Pan/Crop dialog box Width and Height fields

will be scaled to the Project pixel dimensions.

The "future is wide open" with render possibilities to quote Tom Petty.

Edit: Something to bookmark when cropping.

List of True 16:9 Resolutions

I have a fetish for cropping on true 16:9 pixel dimensions when the output is scaled to full screen on final render.

I also have an aversion to fractional X Center and Y Center values. I change them to integers.

50 years from now, my great grandchildren will laugh and text, "He sure wasted a lot of time tidying up that sorry looking video." Of course, every word of their texts will be mis-spelled and they only will have seen the video through their ocular implants provided by the last Silicon Valley behemoth, X, which swallowed up Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Magix after all the national governments around the world were unable to regulate and were "captured" by big-tech.

"I'd suggest doing the project at UHD resolution so that generated media, etc. are actually at the higher resolution."

That's what I do as well.

Thanks John. Since you edit in UHD doesn't your editing process really slow down and become jerky even if you put the preview to auto?
Thanks for the screen shots.

I haven't experienced that- you are in 8-bit full mode? I use media that isn't so hard to decode (8-bit AVC mostly). If I have a lot of Fx I bypass them for fluid editing and use ram previews for tricky transitions. I do coloring at best/full on still frames so playback speed doesn't matter. Where do you find the system bogs down? Multicam?

But if UHD breaks what you are doing, by all means use a workflow that works for your hardware and media.