Make those childtracks as high-resolution nesting-projects.

Your last paragraph is your solution. Simply start your project at the original high resolution media properties. There is no such thing as nondestructive upscaling.

Granted, but if the child tracks could be internally processed at 4K (or the asset resolution) prior to the parent track composting them, it would help. Like when you do event motion on a high resolution asset, that’s done at the resolution of the asset, not the track, so zooming in there is non destructive.

If I assume a maximum 100% zoom on the parent track, I would have to create the project at double my intended finished resolution.

Make those childtracks as high-resolution nesting-projects.

Yeah, I was wondering that. Not sure it would be easier, but are nested projects maintained at the original project resolution?

@daniel-t Hi, if your project is 1920 x 1080 HD but your images are 3840 x 2160 UHD (4k) , zooming in shouldn't affect the quality until you zoom beyond HD because the project is using the orig UHD file as info,

What do you mean 'rendered at the project resolution prior to the parent track getting to it'? nothing gets rendered unless you 'render to a new track' or prerender a section & re-import it into the project, like i say throughout your whole project your orig files are being used,

Why not just set your project at a high UHD res, then final render out at the lower size eg. 1920x1080 if that's what size you want,

What I mean is… if I have a parent track with two child tracks containing 5000x5000 pixel assets, and the parent track zooms in on the child tracks, it’s obvious that in a 1080p project the parent track is zooming in on a 1080p composted image and not the 5000x5000 pixel original assets. For that, the zoom has to be applied to the child tracks (and maybe instead to the actual media event, I’m not sure).

If I bump the project resolution to 4K, the quality visibly improves, but it’s still not true 4K. Acceptable, but I’m pretty anal about that lol.

@daniel-t

"...are nested projects maintained at the original project resolution?"

Nested projects appear in the master project at the nested project resolution.

 

If I bump the project resolution to 4K, the quality visibly improves, but it’s still not true 4K. Acceptable, but I’m pretty anal about that lol.

Do you just mean you don't want a completed project final render in 4k that's not really 4k?

Well final render as 1080? Although I"m still unsure about how Vegas works as I don't use it's internal codecs. If you do your final render at 1080P using MagixAVC you'll see your project properties change to 1080P which is not want you want if it's behaving the same way as setting project as 1080P, to get around that you can render using voukoder, then use it's internal filters to scale to 1080p, that way it's receiving 4K project resolution, but not sure that happens when using Vegas internal codecs

Do you just mean you don't want a completed project final render in 4k that's not really 4k?

Its more that a 1080p project needs to be rendered in Vegas to 4K to maintain quality (and then re-rendered down), and an actual 4K project (which I’m doing) would need to be rendered at 8k. And that’s just assuming only modest amounts of zoom/cropping. If that becomes more extreme, then the final rendering would have to be that much higher. Which is why I was hoping there was a way to get Vegas to internally render child tracks at the asset or just higher resolution prior to the final parent track composting.

Depends on how your finish result will be... nesting project in high resolution first seems the only way to go.

Best doing this in VEGAS Effects actually.

All that has been placed in timeline will be processed in track level fx / pancrop in that project resolution.

I will use this example to explain:

(1:47 - 2:25 )

Even though I haven't try experiment replicating it limiting only in VEGAS Pro... but what I have in mind will be:

Do arrange each participant's placement and 'slow-sliding' motions first in High-resolution project and then for the 'camera movement', do it via 'main project' by nesting that high-resolution project to 'main project'.

Best doing this in VEGAS Effects actually.

All that has been placed in timeline will be processed in track level fx / pancrop in that project resolution.

Have you used Vegas Effects? I don’t actually have it and couldn’t really see what I would use it for. It’s a completely separate app, though, so I would need to “pre prepare” that content outside of Vegas and the rest of the project?

@daniel-t You lost me a little, i would just set the project as high as poss, 8k if needed then render out at whatever res you want, 🤷‍♂️

VE is linked to Vegas Pro, every event can be right click 'Edit in Vegas Effects' from the timeline, yes it does open a separate window but i'm not sure you would gain from using that, it's just like a separate composite plugin, it opens the media event so you can add fxs or edit the media, Save, then when you return to Vegas those fxs are added to the event on the timeline,

I set this project to 8k

,

right click 'Edit in Vegas Effects' on the top event,

& this is VE, project is whatever i set it at (I must have left it at true 4k because that's what it's opened at, but i can change it to whatever i want) & the event is the size it orig was just like in Vegas, so i'm not sure what benefit would be gained from that,

My best example of using VE:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/post-your-vegas-creations--109464/?page=15#ca784536

( 1:00 - 2:35 )

Besides of what @Former user explained above, you can run Vegas Effects on it's own... and create project sequence & composite there... and import project .vegfx into VP without rendering.

Just to help clarify since I'm not sure I've put this as clearly as I could... if I have the following layout:

Parent Track A (applying Parent Motion to the combined results of Track 1 and Track 2)
—Child Track 1
——Various Media (5000x5000)
—Child Track 2
——Various Media (5000x5000)

On a 1080p project, both Track 1 and Track 2 are ALWAYS composted down to the project setting of 1080p. So then if I take the Parent Track A and apply a 100% zoom, I've now reduced the resulting output quality to 540p.

If I bump the project quality up to 4K, well now Track 1 and Track 2 are being initially rendered at 4K, so the 100% Parent zoom is only reducing quality to 1080p.

Applying zoom events individually to EVENT Pan/Crops maintains quality, as this is done prior to composting (however, this is untenable for complex motion events). Applying the zoom at a child track vs parent level still reduces quality identically; the media's full original resolution only seems available for manipulation at the event level.

Anyhow, I'm going to see how the suggestion of nested projects will work, but I might just be stuck rendering to much higher resolutions than needed.

Please don't compost in VEGAS, composite instead.

Please don't compost in VEGAS, composite instead.

So the solution is Vegas Effects?

Please check this re the meaning of the words.

Please check this re the meaning of the words.

Ah, so this is grammar time. Or maybe I should say grammer so we can switch it up to spelling time!

Honestly, I’m pretty anal about using the right word so thanks for the correction, although I had thought you were describing two different technical terms and I was doing things the wrong way.

But I did also learn that “compost” has an obsolete definition of “a mixture or compound”, so I’m taking a 1% “obsolete but right at some point in history” victory lap.

What @daniel-t explain above correct, because anything that has been put into Track, will be a reference to Track motion's size.

Just remembering there is a 3D Source Alpha... hmm, I wonder if this can be helpful...

Need to experiment.

Just remembering there is a 3D Source Alpha... hmm, I wonder if this can be helpful...

Need to experiment.

Just tried... didn't work. 3D Source Alpha also use Track's size which is project's size.

This is the best way I can think:

And making it a little bit 3D look is not easy afterall.... because, 3D Source Alpha use track data size which is already 'scaled down' to project size.

The solution is to use 3D Camera Mode : 

First set your project to 8192*4608 (16:9), 

then set the two video tracks as child tracks, 

set all composite modes to 3D Source Alpha, 

then use the child track motion for panning, 

and use the parent track motion for scaling. 

This can maintain your 5000*5000 footage up to 4608*4608.

I'm not sure that 3D Camera Mode / 3D Source Alpha is doing anything different here.

I just tried a simple one parent / one child track test with a high resolution still at a lower project resolution (so it's more obvious to see if it's working), and using 3D Camera on the parent track to zoom at, say, 100% still results in halved resolution of whatever's on the child track. The difference of which can be seen by performing the same zoom as an event pan/crop with no parent manipulation.

So, the end result seems to be identical to using normal track motion.

Granted, rendering to 8K is definitely going to be my best case scenario here... but holy cow is that slow!

EDIT: I also just tried the nested project idea. I saved a project VEG to 4K, and dropped it into a 720p project. Any track motion attempt to zoom still treats the source as 720p, however event pan/crop is able to access the full 4K resolution of that project. And if the embedded project is saved as 1080p, then the available event resolution appropriately reduces.

However, I don't think maintaining separate projects that can't be edited simultaneously is going to work well for my workflow, so I think I'm just going to have to live with either reduced quality or lengthy rendering times.

Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions. Perhaps at some point in the future there will be a special parent track compositing mode that allows for child tracks to be set to an independent resolution to allow for this sort of manipulation.