[FFmpeg-user] Basic Video Manipulation Qustions

[John Van Ostrand]

Hi All,

The RAW video discussion had me thinking about resolution and bit rates for
video and I had some questions. These are not how-to questions but general
video questions. I'm an amateur so the contest of these questions is around
video for home movies and social media, stored and shared as data files,
and displayed on computers, tablets, and TVs.

1. Why does it make sense to convert from a lossy format to raw? You're not
gaining any more detail.

2. Does re-rendering video over and over at the same resolution, frame
rate, and bit rate cause degradation? For example, if I want to make
several changes to the video, like colour correction, splicing out
sections, transitions, titling, etc. should I be trying to do that all in
one command?

3. I understand that -c copy is a great way to eliminate time and preserve
detail but what's the best way to do this when converting from one codec to
another, or when performing editing or other changes?

4. How important is it to keep standard resolutions, frame rates, and bit
rates? Do hardware decoders do better with those? Do software decoders
handle weird resolutions better?  Will strange decoding artifacts appear
more often with non-standard parameters?

Thanks
-- 
John Van Ostrand
At large on sabbatical