Archiving Digital Video Using iMovie

Simple question. I just want to save digital video from my digital camera to an external hard drive for archival purposes. I want to be able to access the video in the future without being locked in to any specific application. When I "import" my video using iMovie 4 it saves the video in a "project" as a .mov file. I believe .mov is a proprietary Apple format. I'd rather save the files as MPEG 4 files. Make sense? But I don't see any "save as" function in iMovie 4, or iMovie 8 for that matter. Advice? J

With proper storage tape will probably outlast any hard drive. It's cheap so you could make more than one back up.
Magnetic tape has been used for nearly 80 years. Most of those originals still perform but finding the playback devices is more difficult.
Your 150 GB drive will store about ten hours of video in its "source" (.dv) format.

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