Easiest method for "basic" editing while maintaining quality/framerate

[Brent212]

I'd like to take clips recorded on my camera, splice them together, sometimes cutting parts off the beginning and/or end of a clip, and save the resulting video without degrading the quality, or at least the framerate (I'll accept encoding it if it shrinks the file size, doesn't destroy the quality, and maintains the same framerate of the original videos).

My input files are mp4, progressive video, 60 fps. AAC audio.

I'd also like to be able to modify the volume in various places, but that's not a requirement.

Any advice?

[Cornucopia]

Assuming for the moment that your camera is NOT a phone, and so all your footage is true CFR, nothing you do in most editing situations will affect the framerate at all. Maybe you were thinking of bitrate.

Since you said: MP4 60pFps, AAC audio, that pretty much rules out most professional RAW or (near)Lossless formats, leaving you with only AVC-type formats.

That means that, ONLY when you are doing simple edits on a GOP boundary, and ONLY when using a better quality NLE editor that supports "SmartRendering" for AVC video, will you not lose any quality. As long as you keep the bitrate equal or higher than the original bitrate, it is likely that the quality loss incurred through Titles, FX, Processing/NoiseReduction, Layering, and non-GOP-boundary or non-SmartRendered edits will not stack up so much as to be noticeably degraded (hopefully). But of course, if it maintains or keeps a slightly HIGHER bitrate on those re-encodes, it will also have an EQUAL or LARGER filesize, not smaller.

For all this, I'd suggest something like Vegas Movie Studio.

Would also work ok for your audio adjustment needs.

Scott

[Brent212]

Awesome, thanks. Any experience with AVS Video Editor? I tried that out, and it seems to do a good job. Had to manually edit a profile xml file (for a custom mkv profile I made) to use 60 fps as the output, but the result seems solid. Haven't noticed any picture degradation, the file size is about 1/3 the original size, and it even seems to play a little smoother (less processor intensive?).