I just did a little experiment with avidemux 2.74 in copy mode cutting an mp4 h264 video at non i-frames at both ends and it took just slightly longer to save the video (but still almost instantaneous) than when I cut same video at i-frames positions suggesting to me that the only re-encoding that took place was a few frames at both ends. Older versions of Avidemux could apply smart rendering to H263 encoded stuff, but not to H264. To get a seamless cut, you need smart rendering - or you have to reencode everything. One example: Cutting ads from TV recordings. This means, that small parts of the video have to reencoded (but not the whole video). Smart rendering means, that you can cut at any frame. Excuse any errors I am using my little Amazon tablet to type this and it ain't easy! PS as i recall you could when transcding select either target size or video quality and use constant or variable bit rate and use various filters sch as resolution etc. i suspect if I was doing extensive transcoding etc I woould probably use my windows machine.The question may be above my pay grade and better left to the original poster but if you can elaborate a little more on what you mean by smart rendering I will try to answer to the best of my ability when I get chance.

My video editing needs are very basic at the moment. I believe all mediainfo would be the same.I did transcode one short video as an experiment and it accomplished the task as i recall quicker than the handbrake in the raspbian repository and also faster than winff gui for ffmpeg.The resulting qualty seemed to my uncritical eye to be comparable.If i recall the processing on a not terrbly high bit rate or resolution video seemed somewhat faster than real time. It worked great for my needs.No codec or format change. I am not sure whether the cuts would be frame accurate. In the menu i could have specified next frame rather than intra frame. I cut a few videos mp4's not avi's in copy mode at intra frame points. HI Guenter, I am away from my pi for a while and I will try to check when i get a chance. Does this version of avidemux support smart rendering? And if so, for which codecs?

Avidemux help