I've got a sony hc1 and a new hc7 with about 60 tapes of my kids. I want to backup/archive these to hard drives and store the tapes. I've got several 500gb hard drives that I want to keep the raw footage on. I will then edit copies of this footage and watch directly from a pc, keeping the raw footage untouched for future use. What's the best way. I've tried several trial progs. Some have it in avi, mpeg, mpg or m2t. What program and the setting would be best. Also can the raw footage have the blank or bad footage just cut out without any loss/rendering to save some space? If so, what prog would be best for this?
Again this footage can't be replaced and would like to have the best for down the road.
Thanks
R.