As a new Vegas user, you may have better luck for now using the Picture in Picture effect.

Keep in mind that 1080p screen aspect is not very good resolution to begin with, so thumnail images inside the frame will not read well, especially on Youtube.

Appreciate the advice. The reason I'm using child tracks is because I want to be able to make the filmstrip fly across the screen, flip and rotate, etc, while the video images stay within their cells.

Update - I tried using the picture-in-picture effect to fit the video into the cell and I still get aliasing when I use parent motion to make the cell fill the screen.

@Newcloak You can upload some full screen pics or video of Vegas & the problem using the arrow button next to the smiley at the top of a new comment, might be easier to understand what you're doing,

@Newcloak You can upload some full screen pics or video of Vegas & the problem using the arrow button next to the smiley at the top of a new comment, might be easier to understand what you're doing,

Thank you, below is an example of what I'm trying to do. The first image shows all the clips at their full size. The second image shows all the video clips arranged inside the filmstrip image. The last image shows what happens when parent motion is used to make one of cells in the filmstrip fill the screen. As you can see there's a massive loss of film quality, which I would like to resolve.

It looks like you are shrinking the image, and then expanding it. That will not look good. Vegas is probably not the best tool to do this effect with, you need something more like After Effects.

@Newcloak As @DMT3 says you're shrinking the image with Pan/crop & then enlarging that shrunken image with a different app - Track motion, If you want to shrink & enlarge you need to use the same control for both,

Unless it's changed recently my understanding is that Pan/Crop works on the source resolution and track motion works on your project resolution. Hence the reason for poor quality when you zoom in using track motion.

Thank you, everyone. I've experimented with a new approach based in the feedback, where I use event pan/crop on both the video clips and the filmstrip template. There's no significant loss in quality that I can see, although it appears that to make this work using keyframes I'll have to make 6 adjustments each time I zoom in or out rather than only once, which feels inefficient, but I've resorted to tedious solutions to get desired results before.

Unfortunately, when it comes to making things move around the screen, including along the z-axis as shown in the final screenshot below, it results in the other problem mentioned in my original post - anything outside the screen frame is treated like it doesn't exist.

.... it appears that to make this work using keyframes I'll have to make 6 adjustments each time I zoom in or out rather than only once, which feels inefficient, but I've resorted to tedious solutions to get desired results before.

Have you tried the Vegas Pro 21 demo version? the Mocha plugin should do all of this and much more.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/fx-mocha-in-vegas-pro-new-boris-video--142085/#ca888420

That is why I said you need to use something else like After Effects which has a virtual canvas. Vegas is limited to a TV canvas.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'm now convinced this is simply beyond the capabilities of my version of Vegas. Until I'm able to upgrade or purchase another product, I think I'll attempt to achieve this effect using Blender.

I'm now convinced this is simply beyond the capabilities of my version of Vegas.

@Newcloak Maybe you are not aware of all the capabilities of Vegas. What you want to achieve can be done when you use the 3D compositing mode of Vegas. There you can put images/videos in 3D space and move them along the z-axis, which looks like zooming in/out but without loosing resolution.

Happy New Year

I'm now convinced this is simply beyond the capabilities of my version of Vegas.

@Newcloak Maybe you are not aware of all the capabilities of Vegas. What you want to achieve can be done when you use the 3D compositing mode of Vegas. There you can put images/videos in 3D space and move them along the z-axis, which looks like zooming in/out but without loosing resolution.

The OP has Vegas Pro 19.

I'm now convinced this is simply beyond the capabilities of my version of Vegas.

@Newcloak Maybe you are not aware of all the capabilities of Vegas. What you want to achieve can be done when you use the 3D compositing mode of Vegas. There you can put images/videos in 3D space and move them along the z-axis, which looks like zooming in/out but without loosing resolution.

The OP has Vegas Pro 19.

 

No difference between the 3D capabilities of VP19 and VP21. The 3D capabilities even exist already in VP5, which was my first Vegas version.

@Newcloak Maybe you are not aware of all the capabilities of Vegas. What you want to achieve can be done when you use the 3D compositing mode of Vegas. There you can put images/videos in 3D space and move them along the z-axis, which looks like zooming in/out but without loosing resolution.

I see that you've increased the preview quality to match the render quality - that's definitely something I'll start doing for this. By any chance, are clips in the example you posted 4k?

Indeed the clips where 4k, but the project properties were 1080, so the render resolution will be 1080p.

Indeed the clips where 4k, but the project properties were 1080, so the render resolution will be 1080p.

Thank you, I suspect the original clip resolution still makes a difference, as I have already been using 3D compositing mode, as shown in one of the earlier screenshots submitted in this thread. I've attempted the same thing with a random 4k image in place of one video clip. This is otherwise similar to the other screenshots: 5 clips arranged horizontally against a filmstrip framing template. It appears to me that even though the project properties are 1080, the 4k image has a much smaller drop in quality compared to the 1080p clips.