Best way to archive MiniDV Footage on Disk

[gdi]

I have a TRV-900 I want to retire and need a good way to archive the MiniDV tapes without quality loss. Can I do this with iMovie 9 on my iMac? Or will it convert it to a lower quality?

I will probably get Premiere Pro CS4 on my Windows machine but I was hoping to use iMovie or another quick and reliable method to save to a USB Disk.

Thanks in advance!

[minidv2dvd]

the only format that can be considered lossless is to keep it in DVavi, the same format as on the tape. it's 13GB/hr so plan accordingly.

[zoobie]

and keep your tapes

[cd090580]

You can also zip or rar you DV files, you can reduce significantly their size (although compression is rather slow). You can gain up to 100 MB on a 800 MB DV avi file.

[gdi]

Thanks, that helps.

I will obviously keep the tapes. I'll try doing a straight copy of the avi files, I am too impatient to zip them!

[gdi]

I ran into a problem - anyone know how I can mount the camera (firewire only) on my iMac?

I can see it and control it in iMovie, but if I import from there it will be converted to the iMovie format, right? I was hoping to just do a straight copy/archive as suggested.

Thanks

[zoobie]

glad it's obvious to you
too bad it isn't to the others
dunno about your imac
maybe this bump will help