Hey guys, I don't really understand the following;

When I record a gaming session with fraps I end up with moderately big uncompressed files. I can edit these files in virtualdub (append files and cut out unnecessary parts). I then save them using "Direct Stream Copy," this takes mere minutes for a 10minute video.

So once I got a few 10-minute video's stocked up I usually batch-convert them using this codec; http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/

Works great, again it takes just like half an hour for multiple videos with the codec set to fast/less compressed, which will still end up with small enough files for youtube.

But sometimes I want more. Sometimes I want to add watermarks to my video's, or change the audio or whatnot. This is where it gets painful.

Using Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 I try to save the still un-edited (for testing) fraps file using the same codec described above, with the same settings as used in virtualdub, but all of a sudden saving the file takes like 50 minutes rather than 5 to 10?

So I figured maybe I should just edit the video in either vegas or adobe premiere, save it uncompressed and then compress it using virtualdub. Here's the result, again with un-edited fraps files for testing perposes:

Adobe Premiere CS5; 12 minutes, and ending up with a 50GB file (The fraps file was 4GB)
Sony Vegas Pro 8.0; 50 minutes and file also way too big.

So my question;

Is there a faster way to save uncomressed but edited files in Premiere or Vegas, which I can then batch convert using virtualdub? Premiere's speed is *decent* at most (twice as long as virtualdub which actually even encodes the video!) but the file size is way, way too big. Or pherhaps a substitute program? Preferrably free of course because I'm not rich and don't like to "illegally" download programs except for testing before I buy, but I aint all that rich.

Thanks!