Clipping Original Content and no-encoding

[mshetzer]

I primarily film wildlife, and will set a camera rolling up on a bird nest for an hour or two. Typically I'll keep 30 seconds of the whole hour.

I want to go through my collection, and clip out everything, and just save the good parts, removing all the boring stuff.

Are there any downsides to saving the clips without re-encoding to save file size?

If there is a good 30 seconds in there, I'll normally save 40 seconds to have extra on the ends just incase. When I've saved in other codecs (like 422 Prores), the size has grown significantly if I keep 5-10 minutes of the hour.

Thanks for the help. Its such an important decision as I want to clean up my whole library and get rid of all the boring content permanently.

[jagabo]

What video and audio codecs are used in your sources? You can only cut on keyframes if you don't want any re-encoding. But since you don't mind having a little extra at the ends the keyframe restriction is probably ok for you. Some codecs are all keyframes, some may have keyframes at 10 (more or less) second intervals.

Depending on the software you use you might run into audio sync problems.

[mshetzer]

Thanks for the advise.

All my footage comes from Nikon Cameras (D5, D850). I think its .264.

Would it be better to encode it as .264 then? Would that solve the keyframe\audio tracking issues.

Matt

[jagabo]

Most acquisition formats use 1 or 2 second GOPs. I don't think you'll have problems using lossless editing with that video. Just try it and see how well your clips work in the editing software you use.

[mshetzer]

Thanks for the help ! I'll give it a try.