Newbee codec confusion - How to store raw-cuts

Hi All,

My name is Michael, I do live in Germany and I am new to this forum. I am using DR since a couple of month now and our relationship is starting to become serious I am creating videos for my own pleasure and I am still learning something new every day.
I do have a question regarding my workflow and the codecs to be used. I found a similar thread in the forum but it doesn't nail my problem. Maybe there's a more straightforward answer.

All my consumer cameras are creating H264 encoded videos. Often I have the camera recording while I quickly change its position or arrange for the main shot. This results in lots of scenes I don't need.
My first step is to do a raw cut. I cut out all the chunk-scenes and render out the cleaned clip for permanent storage. If I do render h264 video again in h264 - do I loose quality even if I keep the quality level?
Of course I could render using an editing codec like DNxHD but this will blow-up my storage device.

Is there any advice you gurus can give?

Best regards, Michael

[Peter Chamberlain]

moved to resolve forum

Yes you loose quality. Likely a lot. Use a lossless cutter such es TMPGEnc Smart Renderer, Machete, LosslessCut, Video Redo etc to trim your raw H264 for archiving.

Thanks a lot Peter for this very useful hint!
So I guess for editing I would then transcode the H264 raw clips into DNxHD or something similar to not loose quality in the editing process. Is this correct?

Some H.264 formats are trimmed down lossless by Media Management.
Give it a try, but if it works, define subclips if you need more than one part of the same original. Don't worry if the results are a few frames longer, they are extended to the next I-frame to avoid recompression.

Hi Uli,

Yep! This looks promising. Never touched Media Management before but it looks pretty much straight forward. I will give it a try during my next project.

Thanks for the hint & best regards...

Now that I know how to trim my raw footage (thanks again Uli), I stumbled over the next question regarding codecs:

If I use the trimmed H264 material in my timeline and then deliver in H264, I will also loose quality, correct? Would it then make sense to transcode the H264 clips into DNxHR before editing them? Does this preserve the quality? If yes, I could also skip the proxy generation and operate directly on the transcoded material. (I usually generate half-res DNxHR proxies because they edit faster).

Best regards, Michael

Avoid conversions where you can. If your system can handle the H.264 keep it, it won't get better. But I'd suggest rendering out in a high-quality codec as a master 'tape'. Other encoders like x.264 are better anyway (Handbrake).