Hi,

Is it possible to export project losslessly, by no reencoding original videos and keeping original encoding ?

In my case I have a camcorder where videos are in mpeg2. Can I export into mpeg2 without decoding/reencoding ? In this case (mpeg2) even exporting to DVD would be ok.

This would prevent any loss from original informations, and even be faster to process...

 But anyway one of the use I see to this is to be able to do quick edits (just selecting tracks and some cropping..), then archiving before further editing

-> using lossless codec would be bad for archiving. And decoding/reencoding may needlessly loose some infos to these videos that I will then edit again (so lose some more infos)

The minimum I need is to be able to do all my selections / cropping this way (taking care of transition/effects may be deffered later, to the "real" editing)

Archiving original videos and kdenlive projects associated might be a very good option, if adding the possibility to easily crop and delete unused originals (or parts of, maybe keeping some margins for further transitions ex. 10s before and 10s after each crop).

It is just pure chance that it was posted while I was writing mine !.... 

This feature is called I guess "non-destructive rendering". I think it is on the to-do list of long-term features, which means that if someone comes with a patch for MLT, it will be studied and might be applied. But it is not on the primary list of the to-do list.

This kind of feature would be very interested for HDV and AVCHD also. But it is quite tricky to implement. Between two I frames it would be okay. But any time you add a transition, you need to rencode and merge with the resulting movie. 

thanks.

yes, not so easy to implement...

what about the other "solution" I mentioned : if non-destructive rendering is not yet available, it would be cool to be able to edit (ie. crop only) originals.

-> From a kenlive project,delete all originals (those in its imported sources) that are not used, and crop unused parts of clips in the projects. (or do not delete but make copy of used content).

Project  of course "just" have to update its references to new video lenghts.

This way the only work to do on clips is cropping. This should not be too difficult for any codecs (crop time need not to be precise at all, it can be adjusted to the easiest frame for the given codec)

In this case, the aim is to be able to archive/work on projects without have too keep full originals with hours of video you know you will never keep.

Kdenlive is the GUI of MLT rendering engine. Non-destructive rendering is on MLT to-do list, but it will not be implemented rapidly. Sorry.