Non-destructive editing

Non-destructive editing is a form of editing signals where the original content is not modified in the course of editing - instead the edits themselves are edited.

A pointer-based playlist - effectively an EDL - is used to keep track of edits. Each time the edited video is played back or accessed, it is reconstructed from the original video source and the EDL. Although this process is more computationally intensive than rendering each edit, changing the edits themselves can be almost instantaneous, and it prevents further generation loss as the video is edited.