@mark-y asked: "Has anyone actually "tested" the horrifying cost of render speed in nested projects versus the time it takes to render the material twice?"

I constructed two projects and rendered them:

1. with Pan/Crop settings applied to the media in the project
2. with Pan/Crop settings applied to the timeline of the same project nested within a new project.

In either case the fX were the same, but the Pan/Crop settings were not applied twice. There were ten events that were rotated either -3 or +3 degrees and cropped to a whole integer true 16x9 pixel dimension less than 3840x2160. The Render Template was Magix AVC/AAC MP4 at the Internet UHD 2160p29.97p default settings.

Pan/Crop Applied in the Main Project

Pan/Crop Applied to the Timeline Event with the Main Project Nested in a New project

Render Time Comparison

According to my seventh-grade math teacher,

380 seconds - 367 seconds = 13 seconds difference between the two renders (rounded to the whole second).

That comes to a 13 second / 367 second x10 = 3.5 % longer render time.*

* This is not a demonstration of the effects on real-time Preview display.

@john_dennis thanks for your tests, but I was talking of a dramatic speed lost with nesting as a whole and not in a specific case like this where you just nest a single track timeline with events with no further FX.

@john_dennis Another simple render/nest test. A recent small project with some FX and level corrections rendered normally and rendered as a nested timeline. (you may do the maths to calculate the percentage of the longer render time, but I think it's even more than 100% slower 😉)

john_dennis wrote on 4/27/2024, 7:06 PM

@mark-y asked: "Has anyone actually "tested" the horrifying cost of render speed in nested projects versus the time it takes to render the material twice?"

I constructed two projects and rendered them:

with Pan/Crop settings applied to the media in the project

with Pan/Crop settings applied to the timeline of the same project nested within a new project.

In either case the fX were the same, but the Pan/Crop settings were not applied twice. There were ten events that were rotated either -3 or +3 degrees and cropped to a whole integer true 16x9 pixel dimension less than 3840x2160. The Render Template was Magix AVC/AAC MP4 at the Internet UHD 2160p29.97p default settings.

Thanks for constructing a test that focuses on the scope of the original question.

There's at least one other way. If your project is finished and ready for render, you can nest your finished project in a new project. With this method, Pan/Crop is at the media level.

If what you're after is to get all the benefits of pan/crop on all of a particular media without the performance penalty of nesting, just drop the whole clip onto the timeline and apply pan/crop before you split it. Subsequent splits will get the starting pan/crop setting automatically applied to each piece. Only downside is tweaking pan/crop later. That would require applying the tweak to all the clips if you want consistency. The best way to do that would be to save the tweak in a pan/crop preset. Personally I like working with Pip Fx better than Pan/Crop... dragging it in front of Pan/Crop in the event FX chain gets it the same optimal quality.

If you Pan/Crop it before multi-camming it, I do believe you'll lose the Pan/Crop settings when it creates the multi-cam track for the MC edit. Not sure this will work for his situation...

I have edited a long video of 4 cameras. I realize now that one of the cameras was 1 degree tilted. I can use pan and crop to fix the one event. But I would like to do it at the media level. I don't see any way.

The only two ways I see are 1. Find each event and paste attributes, or 2. expand the multicam to separate tracks and easily find all the events. The problem with one is laborious, the problem with two is I loose other event fx to many events when I expand the the multicam track.

Any ideas?

@John-Lenihan

Although I DO like the PIP idea -- if the quality is as good as with Pan/Crop I see little downside to this. (although still wonder why they couldn't just implement pan/crop at the media level)

Just thought I'd note -- your aversion to #1 (applying it to each instance of the event -- this is what I do all the time and it really is quite easy and fast.

1. On your MC track, select one event of the media which needs to be rotated. Select Pan/Crop
2. Adjust that clip exactly how you'd like it to look
3. Right-click, Select Project Media (or just select it in your "Project Media" tab
4. Right-click the Media, choose "select timeline events" -- this will select ALL the events where that media is used
5. Right-click any one of those events, Selective Paste, Pan/Crop settings

Voila... all of them will now have the pan/crop applied 😄