500 Videos in one frame Resizing/Resolution Help

Hello FC Hive Mind,

I am a HS Choir director that over the past year has taught himself to make virtual choirs/ensembles. I am soon attempting my largest one yet. 500+. Work flow and YouTube examples of my choirs below.

Question: All of these projects have been 1080p. Is there a better option of resolution to use for my virtual choirs to pan and zoom the main grid (500 vids), or in the 16 mini grids (30 vids each)

My workflow is/will be to make 16 identical virtual choirs with about 30 different singers/videos in each (mini grids), export them as Apple ProRez 4444 (transparent background) and then combine those 16 in to one project for the giant grid. By that time the student videos have been scaled down in the mini grid project and then scaled down again in the giant grid. 

What I have done in the past is scale in or zoom/pan on the giant grid but am concerned that the clarity of students videos will be lost. In an other post it was suggested that I resize/"run through" the videos in Compressor before I start editing but i am unclear on how to do that or what settings in compressor to use.

All of these projects have been 1080p. Is there a better option of resolution to use, either in the 16 mini grids or the main grid, for me to keep my work flow but have better resolution when I scale in?

I have created custom effects in motion that automatically resize and distribute the videos evenly/consistently across each mini project. If I change the resolution of the mini grid projects I would then have to change the resolution of the effect. correct? My custom effects folder .

If this question is too much of an ask for the forum, I would love a recommendation on who i could talk to/email for help.

Thank you in advance, 

Nigel
APMusic Theory/Choir/Band
Briar Woods High School.

Here is an example of a finished product with 125-50 when i first learned how to do VCs. The clarity is ok... but this is 4 mini grids in one giant grid.


Here is one with 80 videos that i made a few months ago. 4 mini grids in one giant grid

And here is the most recent one... I used drop zones for this one, and the quality went way down beach I think the videos got scaled down and then up too much.

Depending on the size of the largest video to be seen on screen, you may want to record everyone in 720HD, since that will reduce artifacts when shrinking the videos. I'd not make the Project larger than 4K to work in. Do not use Drop Zones for this, manually shrink and arrange. Maybe make a simple grid overlay to help with that. That's a pretty large project, makes me nervous to just think about it! LOL!

Unfortunately, the students are recording themselves. Yeah, Would Making the mini grids projects 4k allow me more fellability to scale in? If the main project was in 1080?  I know I would need to have  to se the mini grids to actual size, instead of fit.

Make the main project 4K.