Good Housekeeping: Is there any quality loss on rendering?

[Black Lab]

[daniel]

This means the final footage will have been rendered twice rather than once but if I understand you correctly you're saying I should be able to do this without any noticeable quality loss.

First question: do I understand you correctly?

You understand me correctly. I have smart-rendered mpeg video that included a resolution chart, half a dozen times and can not detect any loss of resolution.

This would be a good test for a photo camera or a JPEG encoder, MPEG is a different beast, with the main purpose being differential encoding.
Did you make experiments with fast and randomly moving and zooming charts? Did you check color transitions banding, f.i. magenta to cyan via yellow in a smooth wave, movig on the whole screen ?

Steve, any pointer to that discussion?