[Thunderbird]

I just bought a Canon HG20 AVCHD camcorder. I want to systematically archive the videos from the camcorder and keep them on a big hard drive in native format for future use. My question is...

Am I OK to use the iMovie camcorder archive feature, or is it better to make a disk image in Toast? iMovie saves the camcorder contents to a folder, while Toast makes a disk image. The toast image doesn't have the same structure as the camcorder, but it still works just fine with iMovie.

I'd rather use iMovie for simplicity, but is there any reason why I'd be better off with a disk image rather than a folder? In the future, I will likely edit these videos with Final Cut Express.

[AndrewEWilson]

I don't see the 'iMovie camcorder archive feature' in my copy of iMovie 09.

AVCHD is a highly compressed format which your camcorder uses for storage. When you import into iMovie, the file is converted to a different format (it doesn't matter what for the moment), and if you compare the stored size of a video on your original AVCHD format and the converted format you will find it takes up at least 4x the disk space. The conversion is why it takes so long to import - you are not simply copying the file onto your hard drive, you are converting it.

So if you have lots of video, archiving the converted files will take a lot more space.

After editing, you have a new file (new improved content, more disk space used). If you export this, you will compress it into a new format, possibly H.264 if you want full size HD. This will take more than real time and create a new output file. When you want to use it for editing again, you have to spend real time importing it again.

If you simply back up the project (much quicker), you can easily open it again.

In particular about your disk image and folder query, I assume you are going to put the result onto a different media for archive. If you make a disk image, you are copying the files to somewhere else on your hard disk (takes time and space) and you still have to write it off to the other media for archive. Presumably the alternative folder already exists (its the output from iMovie), so you simply need to write it off to the other media. I would avoid making a disk image.

But for real archive, copy your AVCHD files straight from the camera onto some other media. You can quickly import them into a new iMovie project from there.