thats a good question

normally you would have to prerender the track and work from there
per layer

i messed around and nudda

T1 - Empty Parent

T2 > T6 set as Child Tracks with your 4 Events one on each Track

T7 - GenMed Solid Colour and adjust colour - I've got a neat BLUE!

Now, hit and select Parent Composite on T1. Dodge is good, Screen shows some of my colours through . . .

The trick here is that the LOWEST Track allows the Parent to affect its kids? Yeah?

In fact I can now add Fxs to this lowest Track Event and have it affect all above. Try noise!

Grazie

"All I want to do is add a color effect to the parent track in such a way that that effect propagates to the children."

I think you're assuming that a parent track works like a buss track which it doesn't.
If you only have those 4 tracks to worry about you can apply the desired FX to the Video Buss track and all of those 4 tracks will be affected.The composite of all tracks is routed through the Video Buss track.

The Video Buss Track is not normally visible, enable it under View.

It would be nice to have more than one Video Buss Track.
One quite workable solution is to use nesting.

Bob.

Actually, Bob, I disagree with you. A Parent Track DOES act "like" a buss track - LIKE, being the all important caveat. In Compositing it does what it should and that is to affect ALL its kidz. What is at the lowest NON-kid track then provides the "background" for the Parent to bang against.

Layering here in Vegas is much the same as layering in Paint Shop Pro. Sure it isn't a BUSS - but not "LIKE"? I disagree.

I think our friend needed to know about the lowest non-child track option, so that is why I posted it.

Nesting, if layering wasn't my first requirement, would be my choice solution too.

Grazie

A buss is something that a signal or group of signals are routed through. Checkout the audio busses or the video buss. Apply an FX to either of them and all things are are processed through that FX.

Apply say the CC FX to the parent of a group of child tracks and nothing happens. However the motion control of the parent does affect all the children!

Let me try to explain this with an analogy.

A buss is like a funnel with say a tap. The flow of everything through the funnel is controlled by the tap.

Now tracks are like a stack of cards. They can have transparency, then we can look down through them. We can move them around so we get them moving relative to one another. The parent track lets us move the stack as a whole. That's how the parent tracks work.

Now the combined composite of those (what we might see looking down into our stack of cards) goes into the 'funnel'.

The lower non child option is affecting the output because of how it's being composited, it's not actually changing the output, it's adding to or subtracting from the output i.e. it shines through. I know that sounds like I'm being pedantic however subtle as the difference may seem it's vital to the understanding of how things work.

Nesting would work fine. Create a project with the 4 track composite. Nest it into another project and apply the CC FX in the header of the track in which you've placed the nested project. Then the FX does truly control the 4 tracks.

By using nested composites you can pretty much pull off much of what you can do in AE I think.

I don't know much about PSP (or PS for that matter) but I think the anology to a real buss there would be an adjustment layer. Apply an FX to that layer and all layers below are affected. Vegas doesn't have an equivalent, nor does any NLE.

Bob.

Now THAT'S a great explanation! - Thanks Bob!

Bob-
Would it be possible to have sub-buses? What I mean is to have dand9959's 4 tracks routed to their own -sub bus and that all ends up down the funnel in the main bus.
I hear what your saying about nesting achieving this, but is there a technical reason not to have sub-buses (or whatever they would be called)?

matt

matt, I have just used my approach, DUPLICATED the tracks; I have 2 sets of PARENTS+Kidz; repositioned each set in Parent Motion to make the sets appear in opposite corners; changed the BG colour and now have a set coloured SEPIA and another coloured PINK.

Not SUB busses but compositing to achieve colourways to each sets. Not what you want?

Grazie

Wow, Grazie and Bob, its only in the past two months that I've really been diving into parent/child and lower third backgrounds and all this composting stuff:
so right now you guys are blowing my mind!

Give me a little while to mentally digest all this, but I'm lovin it!!!

Thanks so much, I'll be referring back to this thread plenty
Matt

"Would it be possible to have sub busses?"

I can't see why not and it's been one thing I think several of us have asked for over the years. We get them with audio but there's only one master buss for video :(

Nesting does get you the same outcome, with certain advantages that sub busses wouldn't. You can run your nested children at say Best and your master project at Good. That can save a HUGE aount of render time.

Bob.

Good catch on the buss. I'll have to try the nested way sometime.

ok i missed the buss

is the buss full of parents with children in tag?

so if i have 2 parent layers and i make them child to a top layer that is a nest ??? or did i catch the wrong buss?

You caught the wrong buss :)

Seriously, there's some signal flow diagrams in the Vegas documentation. Studying them will answer a lot of questions.

Bob.

thanks

where can i download them from i can see hugh benifits from this disscusion

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/updates/vegaspro