What happens when I crop a 5K clip on a 4K timeline?

I am shooting some action footage with a GoPro 11 recording in 25 fps at 5K and some of it needs cropping.

My timeline is 25fps at 4K but some clips need to be cropped a little bit. I'm wondering what the result of the crop will be. Will Davinci Resolve "know" that the original footage is 5K and crop down to 4K, or will it drop it below the 4K resolution?

Should I just use a 5K timeline and export to 4K?

What happens depends on your Input Scaling setting. Are you familiar with those options?

Yes, Resolve knows the clips are 5K. You do not lose image quality. Input Sizing and Edit Sizing use the original source resolution. Node Sizing and Output Sizing on the other hand use the timeline resolution (you shouldn't use those for reframing).

My settings look like this

2023-02-08_10-25-56.jpg (58.53 KiB) Viewed 142 times

Well, there's your answer. The clips will be scaled down to fill the frame, with anything beyond the timeline aspect cropped.