That's a good observation. I would certainly recommend keeping .avi's uncompressed until the absolute final. and even then keep an uncompressed version on hand.

Still, (except for maybe very short clips), it's best to render to individual frames to start off with. If something unexpected should happen somewhere in the middle of the rendering process, you still have the rendered frames up to the point of the problem, so you don't lose everything and have to re-render right from the start all over again ;)

Hey! His nose is dry! ... Someone should lick it,  just in case. - Diego