You can zoom in about 2/3rds on a 1920x1080 project just fine as long as it's 1080p. I render all my vids to 720 also but shoot in 1080p so I can manipulate the frame, pan, scan and crop. The one thing to be aware of is if you shoot in 1080i the interlacing will become magnified as you zoom so it will become very noticeable with fast action subjects.

Here's a quick link to a graphic showing the relationship how much you can zoom in on a 1080 resolution down to 720.

Link

Thanks for the info... I'll do more research on it.

By the way, that makes me wonder: If I had SD (720x480) footage into a 720p project, would the best way (to avoid stretching) be the reverse of whatever I would do to add 1080 footage? Currently, if I had SD footage into my 720p project, it fills the screen and has pillar bars... but obviously it's being stretched.

I guess I need to somehow have wider pillar bars and then a little letterboxing as well in order to keep it from being stretched?

If there are pillar bars then it's not filling the screen. I'm guessing you mean that it's sized to fit the screen vertically. "Stretched" usually refers to changing the size in one dimension more than in the other, and in this case it's not being stretched, just magnified.

If what you're trying to do is keep the image 480 pixels high then the best way to do it is to tell Vegas to frame it in a frame that matches the project size. However, you also have to keep in mind that SD 480 uses rectangular pixels while 720p (and 1080p) both use square. You didn't mention whether your SD footage is widescreen or "normal", but i'll do the math for both. If it's "normal" then the the pixel aspect ratio is 0.9091, while if it's widescreen the PAR is 1.2121. You'll have to do a little math on the horizontal project dimension to get the appropriate frame size to use.

Normal: 1280 x 0.9091 = 1164, more or less.
Widescreen: 1280 x 1.2121 = 1552, more or less.

Open up the Pan/Crop window on your SD events and manually enter the following width & height:

Normal: 1164 x 480
Widescreen: 1552 x 480

This will cause Vegas to "float" your SD footage in a smaller size in the middle of the frame so that the vertical resolution matches 1:1 with the project resolution. However, horizontally the pixels will still be stretched or squished, depending on whether the SD is normal or widescreen. This is just the nature of SD.

As far as zooming in interlaced 1080i to match the resolution of 720, you're not really magnifying the interlacing to make it more pronounced. If you crop a 1280x720 portion out of a 1920x1080 frame then the vertical resolution will match and the interlacing will be absolutely identical to shooting 720i to begin with. Of course, there really isn't any such thing as 720i in a practical sense, so it's going to have to be de-interlaced to 720p. This de-interlacing will happen at the native resolution of the source material before it's resized, so pretty much the whole topic is moot.

Thanks for the great info, Chienworks.

My SD footage is "normal" -- 4:3.

I never realized that about SD pixels being rectangular. In that case, is there a smarter/better way of incorporating SD footage into an HD project?

Also, with regards to adding 1080p footage into a 720p project -- am I understanding right that I should be able to pan/zoom digitally (to a point, naturally) with my 1080p footage without having it lose any quality or detail, since I'm putting a 1920x1080 image into a 1280x720 project, as long as I'm working with progressive and not interlaced video?

Personally, i think if you simply plop your SD material on the timeline and do nothing else, you'll be pleased enough with the results. Your audience would probably enjoy it enlarged to fit the screen more than having a smaller, pixel-accurate image floating in a black border.

Yes, you can zoom in on the 1080 material in a 720 project without quality loss up until the point where the area you are using is 1280x720. Going in any farther than that will cause the pixels to be enlarged and will start to blur. You could go into pan/crop and type in the exact width & height values of 1280 and 720 and you'll be zoomed 1:1 for pixels.

I wouldn't zoom into standard definition media on a 720p project but do this: click on the media, Right click-properties then uncheck maintain aspect ratio. The standard definition media will stretch to 16:9 aspect ratio and remove pillar boxing.

At the cost of making everyone "fat 'n' short". I like that less than pillar boxing.