thanks for the quick reply
am i right to say that YV12 will be the most similar to my camera’s footage and therefore the best for an intermediate codec? after i have edited i usually compress to AVC/H.264 for internet or burn direct to DVD. what do you mean when you say “if nothing else was done to it”? i am just converting to lagarith between camera and NLE but within the NLE i will be doing a lot to it: colour correcting etc is this what you mean?