[Vincent Becquiot] “It is a given that Premiere will recompress at 5:1 any clip with added titles and effects”
Hmm…I don’t know about this. Any links to point us to this information? Also, to answer the second part of the question: If all you have are straight cuts, then there really isn’t anything to “recompress”, unless you are going to an inferior format, such as MPEG2, MPEG1, WMV, QT, FLV etc…