BAM file size post bamaddrg

[EAC92]

I have been using bamaddrg to assign tags to my four samples of sequence data, and then saved the output as a new .bam file rather than feeding it straight into freebayes.

The files parsed through bamaddrg were raw alignment bam files, and then I plan to send them through samtools, sort, rmdup and index them. However one concern I have is that the .bam file output by bamaddrg is about 40% of the original size of the input bam file. Can anyone explain why, and does this matter?

[sagitaninta]

I was also trying to assign tags only without feeding it to freebayes and the standard output was just the binary going all the way the terminal. Do you know what is the recommended output? Unless this thing could not do it without piping it to freebayes. Or have you move to another software for adding and reading tags considering this comment is 4 years apart? LOL