Tried that yesterday after doing some reading.. didn't help. The rays still ended at the edges of the resized (smaller) parent track frame.

Then another try is to use the Picture-in-Picture FX as Event FX for scaling before the Light Rays FX and use Track Motion for positioning/moving only (it would not touch the Parent Motion processing).

I used 3rd party Rays FX for this one.

@Marco. In your example image, it looks like you applied the Rays FX to the track and it added it to the edges of the track not the contents of it (event FX).

I get what you're suggesting -- scale using PIP instead of Track Motion (could apply as track FX on the children tracks if I want, ya?), and then apply the rays FX as wanted, and they'd extend out to the full output frame still.

I guess that means I have to upgrade my licenses from V14 to V16 to get the PIP effect, eh? ;-)

For this one, the graphic was just a simple 2-layers so I scaled each one on the event and made it work, but often I have many more layers, so using parent/child layering really would be very helpful.

In this case above it is an Event FX, not a Track FX, see screenshot below.

For Vegas Pro 14 instead of Picture-in-Picture you could also use a 3rd party sizing plug-in or the Vegas Pro Deform FX.

Huh. I never considered using Deform to scale an image/event. What would the advantage be of doing that vs event Pan/Crop? In either case, I can't take multiple events and nest as children under a parent track, and simple scale them all as a set.

Pan/Crop may affect the positioning of the rays which may lead to undesired results.

"In either case, I can't take multiple events and nest as children under a parent track, and simple scale them all as a set."

Why not? This will still work. I'll upload a sample VP14 project bit later.

"Why not?" Because I didn't think you could apply a track effect to a parent track (e.g. the deform) and have it apply to all children tracks or events automatically. BUT.. I just tried this by applying it to the track FX of the parent and switching the effect to be after the composite, and it DID apply that effect to all children.

NEAT!

One problem -- when I use deform there as you suggested, to scale down the children images, the rays crop to the scaled down frame and don't extend all the way to the edges :( Same problem as pan/cropping the parent track.

See -> this VP14 project file.

In the screenshot above you applied Deform as Track FX, not as Event FX.

In my sample project I applied Deform and Light Rays as Event FX and used Deform for the scaling. I then used Track Motion of the foreground and background track for positioning the single frames and Parent Motion of the Master Track to animate both frames synchroniously.

If you push in on the parent track and move around, you'll see the child tracks are still suffering from the ray effect being clipped by the bounds of those children tracks.

Yes, there's still a border which comes from the Deform FX. To avoid this one only way out in VP14 is to use the Rays FX with more subtle adjustments.

grrr. OK. And with VP16? (I see the lowered the upgrade price back down for a week or two.. strongly considering)

Not better. I'm looking for another way of compositing now.

A way with its very own pros and cons is using nesting. For each of your shrinked frames make a separate project and use whatever tool you want for decreasing the size, Track Motion, Pan/Crop, Deform, 3rd party plug-ins. Then save all these projects and use them nested in a master project which then adds Light rays and movement.

Making the shrinked frames larger inside the Master project will be a problem then because of quality loss.

A lot of work which could be avoided with a feature which allows effects to span the full output frame instead of being limited by child frames constraints. 😁