I understand the limitations mentioned for reencoding, which are perhaps likewise applicable to other software vendors also. It does limit usage though, in my opinion. It may be fast with GPUs, but the difference on my high end machine is still of an order of magnitude if reencoding is avoided.

>> This is an interesting idea. Do you mean, have a special extension, and when you open it do your editing + auto save + at close, you've already saved the video project?

Typical video software has it like a build process. So there are these project files maintaining the list of all resources, edits performed, settings, etc. Editing a Word document needs none of it. For many casual edits, it would be great to just open a video file, make edits (e.g., rotate the video, remove some segments, increase brightness, etc.) and click save (which overwrites the original file), and all done. There's no "project", no auto-save, etc.