does producing and re-saving clips multiple times reduce the quality in anyway?

peter1969

Newbie Joined: Nov 18, 2015 07:29 Messages: 11 Offline

Solved by

Nov 25, 2015 13:44

In photography if you resave edited jpegs over and over the quality is degraded. It's a lossy format. possibly due to compression.

does producing clips and editing the same clip multiple times in PDR reduce the quality ? is it "lossy " or is all the information preserved in the file no matter how many times you edit and re-save?

which file format is best to save in , if you like to go back to a clip and edit it many times more before a final version? I have been reading there is NO lossless video file format available easily for consumers. So if i have to edit a video more than once and re-save, then I am going to lose quality. Please clarify if you know.

Thanks!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 25. 2015 13:46

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Nov 25, 2015 14:12

Most video file formats are lossy, but most of the H.264 and h.265 formats are OK to produce from the original then reuse that produced video on the timeline to do extra edits. Two or Three edits don't do much harm.

I have not have much experience with the MOV format, although the MOV video I get from my Canon G12 camera can be edited a couple of times with few if any ill effects.

Powerdirector has SVRT technology that does minimal re-rendering. You can do a lot of editing and rendering before much ill effects show up. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Nov 26, 2015 01:24

Hi peter1969 -

There are quite a few times when I need to pre-produce segments of a video for different purposes. Yes - there will be some loss of picture quality but it will be minimised by producing to exactly the same format & profile each time.

As an example, I took a short clip - 1920x1080/25p @ 17Mbps & produced it to MP4 1920x1080/25p @ 17Mbps. This file was named BC1.

Next I put BC1 in the timeline & repeated the production process, resulting in BC2. I repeated that 10 times, so that BC10 had been produced and reproduced & etc (not a kind thing to do to the original). Because I used the same production profile each time, it's hard to spot the difference (well - my eyes can't). Obviously, I don't typically reproduce clips that many times!

Here's a zip file of the original clip, BC5 - produced & reproduced 5 times - & the final BC10. Download it if you wish and make your own comparisons - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxp60P6x4uM2R0lkd2EyMGdyUDA/view?usp=sharing

Cheers - Tony
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peter1969

Newbie Joined: Nov 18, 2015 07:29 Messages: 11 Offline

Nov 26, 2015 13:19

thanks for the example. that helps.

Anonymous

Nov 26, 2015 19:48

Hi, Peter1969!

For what it's worth, I've used clips two or three times over and not noticed any image quality degradation. What I often do is make a base edit, that is, I put in a colour board(usually black, about 6 to 8 seconds in PD14 because I have the crossfading transition. In PD8 with only overlapping transitions, I used a 10-second colour board) at the start of my video, trim down each portion to an exact number of minutes and seconds, excising spare "frames", add my transitions, then produce. I then take that "produce" and add any titling and other text(explanatory captions, closing credit[scrolled upward]), then I'll produce that, each time I'll add to the file name, a final produce of my video will then be: the base edit on first render, titles & captions added on the second, music and narration added on the third render, job done! And no significant image quality degradation!

Cheers!

Neil.