AVCHD(H.264) to AIC What does it mean????

Question

I just bought a Canon HG-10. The format is AVCHD or H.264. I get 1080 out of it. Ok, now, when I get the file into iMovie08, it is transcoded to Apple Intermediate Coded AIC.
1.- Did I lose quality there, in addition to time??
2.- This is a transcode, right??, it became a different format or compression, correct??
3.- When finally outputing from iMovie 08 into, lets say, AppleTV, am I going to transcode again into H.264???
4.- For the purpose of long-term keeping/archiving, should I save the original AVCHD from the camera in a folder-external drive-DL DVD or whatever, and only take into iMovie those that I am going to edit, when I am going to edit them??, or it would be ok to store in this AIC format??
I bought this camera to see High Def stuff. So I want to see high deff stuff. It seems that the only place you can really see hidef is in a computer, not in a dvd player, nor appleTV
I am new to camcorders, and really not sure of what to expect of this.

Answer 1

I found this post by Tom Wolsky:
+Tom Wolsky+
+Posts: 8,868+
+From: Northern California+
+Registered: Nov 7, 2001+
+ Re: confused about editing AVCHD files+
+Posted: Nov 26, 2007 8:44 AM in response to: DrewJ +
+ Reply Email+
+AVCHD is a long GOP, MPEG based compression format. A GOP is a group of pictures, usually 15 frames long. The first frame is an I frame, a wholly compressed frame of video. The subsequent frames look to that frame and the adjacent frames to compress the media. Th first frame is a picture of someone standing in front of a building. The person moves. Only those portions of the image that contain the movement are recompressed; the other portions take their information from the I frame. The frames can either be B or P frames, either looking back to the I frame, or based on looking back and looking ahead to the subsequent frames. When you stop on a frame the camera reads the data from the adjacent frames and creates a viewable display. When you edit on a B or P frame, the computer has to reconstitute a new I frame and then build a GOP structure for the frames that follow. That's what it would have to do if it was edited natively. Instead the material is converted to media that's composed entirely of I frames. Any compression is within one frame, and an edit can be on any frame because none of the adjacent frames require information from any other frame.+
+GOP based compression is used for delivery formats like DVD and the web. It was never intended as a production format. Camera manufacturers decided it was an easy way to make cheap cameras with no regard whatsoever for having to do anything with the material besides record it and play it back. Unfortunately most people want to edit it, and the computer manufacturers have to come up with a way to make this possible.+
That explains why it is converted into AIC.
The storage question was solved in another thread, suggesting to just copy the AVCHD file inside my HG-10 and store it like that, when needed I could mount it as a disk image, and iMovie will recognize and then just import what I want. This will save disk space, a lot of it. Downside, you do not exactly know what is contained on each file, and have to invest some time to get to it. If you store it in iMovie 08, you can easily find what is on each event and use it for a movie, although, it will take tons of space.