So I apologize if it's already been covered but I couldn't find an answer. I'm thinking about getting my wife an HV20 and it's something she would use a lot. After reading through here I think I understand what I have to do to bring the data into my computer and how to work with it. That will create a ton of data. I've already got 3 external hard drives on my computer for backup, audio and pictures. Do I simply continue to add those? The easiest thing to do would be to burn to a DVD but then I's lose the HD data--wouldn't I? If I went that way wouldn't I need a Blue Ray or HD DVD recorder? How do you folks store everything?
Thanks

John:

Save the tapes. Still the lowest cost storage medium, and no use reusing the tapes. That always maintains your raw footage.

You only bring into to your computer, the footage you want to edit.

You edit your project, and then burn to DVD, whether it be standard definition we are used to, or HD or Blue Ray. But the raw footage is always saved on your tape.

Obviously, if you are doing a huge project or have a bunch of small projects you want to same in the original edited fromat, you will be dedicating edited storage space on hard drives, whether it be USB/Firewire or internal hard drives.

Finally, you can also render an edited project back out to tape to keep in HDV format.

Moved from Canon HV20 to High Definition Video Editing Solutions. This isn't an HV20 question so much as it is a post-production data management question.

John, you're not alone. I've been converting the m2ts I have to either wmv or mp4 format. Those can fit on DVDs as a lower-quality (not lower res) version. As for the project m2ts, I've been buying external HDDs. Cheaper and bigger the better. Work on a project, dump the sources in there. Back it up to DVD-Data (yeah I wish BD or HD DVD were cheaper --- don't want to go LTO or backup to MiniDV again -- a personal preference, don't be predjudiced by it) as a secondary backup if I want--but rarely do.

So that gives me WMV/MPEG-4 which is playable on PCs, some newer DVD players, media players, game consoles. I still keep the source tape. And then if I ever need to re-render to a different format I have the HDDs which could be sitting in a corner for whenever a better archival format becomes affordable.