Best method for keeping iMovie projects long term?

I read through 30 pages of posts as I think this is a pretty basic question, but didn't see it directly addressed, so please forgive me...
Some of my movies are mammoth in size (as much as 30GB for 1 movie), which I've learned are due to iMovie handing onto full clip size even when only 10 seconds of it makes it into the final film...
I am starting to move the movies off the iMac onto an external HD, but don't know what is the most economical way to keep a copy digitally without sacrificing a lot of quality? Full Quality QT? as iDVD project instead of iMovie project?
Any suggestions are most appreciated. Thanks to all.
Message was edited by: toddleu

Hello Toddieu,
I am sure that there are better ways to store your projects, but I have struggled with the exact same question that you have and here are my solutions. I like iMovie 6, but I hate the "non-destructive" editing which makes your projects huge. So, this may seem strange, but I start my movies in iMovie 4. I import all of my raw footage and then do the first round of crude editing which, as you mention, sometimes reduces a 5 minute clip, down to a couple of 10 or 20 second clips. By the time I am done with this process, I usually reduce an hour's worth of "raw" footage down to around 30 to 40 minutes worth of "good stuff". Then I close iMovie 4, copy the movie file (just to be safe), and then open the copy using iMovie 6. When you do this, iMovie 6 will tell you that this movie will be permanently changed to the new format, which is what you want, so click OK. If the movie opens correctly, and everything looks good, then I continue editing the rest of my movie using iMovie 6 (fine cuts, transitions, titles, music, effects, chapters, etc). In the end, using this technique, an hour's worth of edited video uses about 12 gbs of HardDrive. I have several external HDs and I store all of my finished movies on these externals as iMovies (full quality). You don't want to save as DVD projects, because these are compressed files so you will lose some quality.
Like I said, I am sure there are easier ways to do this, and I am interested to hear what other's are doing, but this works for me.
Lincoln

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