Original file, captured from I Am Alive with Open Broadcasting Software.

Edited file, output from Blender... (note the heavy artifacting and colour compression in the well of the desk, just above and to the left of the girl's knee - now a uniform green rather than gradients of brown) ...with the following settings (informed by this page):

Does anybody know of a way I can edit a video in the Blender VSE without losing so much information and gaining so many distracting artifacts?

(Also - I know this is unlikely, but... is there any way to edit (eg. snip a bit off at the start and end) a video without having to re-render the whole thing? Takes so darn long...!)

All the best,

--Rev

EDIT START While the links below suggest solutions in line with what I'm looking for, testing the solutions (H.264, Lossless Output, etc) results in near-identical results to my problem examples. While I continue to experiment with this, the information provided as answers have failed to have any impact on the issue at hand. Is this unavoidable? Is Blender, then, unsuited to editing such footage? Should I use a different program that doesn't need to re-render the footage? Or should I make my initial recordings with far less compression? EDIT END

Original file, captured from I Am Alive with Open Broadcasting Software.

Edited file, output from Blender... (note the heavy artifacting and colour compression in the well of the desk, just above and to the left of the girl's knee - now a uniform green rather than gradients of brown) ...with the following settings (informed by this page):

Does anybody know of a way I can edit a video in the Blender VSE without losing so much information and gaining so many distracting artifacts?

(Also - I know this is unlikely, but... is there any way to edit (eg. snip a bit off at the start and end) a video without having to re-render the whole thing? Takes so darn long...!)

All the best,

--Rev