Best approach to convert HD camcorder footage to blue-ray (and archive)

I have a Canon Vixia HV30 camcorder that I have used to take HD footage. I would like to archive the tapes' raw footage (for backup purposes) and also burn a blue-ray for each tape. Prior to the Canon (and switching to Macs) I had been using Studio on a Windows system to do the same for footage from a standard def Sony camcorder. Despite reading through the material on this forum and elsewhere I am confused about a couple of items and am hoping someone can help me understand how to archive and burn the camroder footage to BD easily.
Coming from the Windows environment, I was used to Studio taking raw footage and converting the entire tape to one .avi file that I could then edit in a baisc manner (trim, add menus, add transitions, add chapters, etc. but not adding other audio, etc.) and burn...all in Studio. The Windows desktop I had been using for standard def is not powerful enough for HD (it's from 2004) so I have to explore other options.
I have a MacBook Pro with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo process and 4 GB memory and am using Mac OS X 10.6.8. I also have iMovie 08 (7.1.4 [585]) and Toast Titanium Pro with the HD/BD plug in (11.0.04). Toast will not recognize the Canon camcorder connected using the Firewire 400 connection (but will recognize the Sony). So I have used iMovie to download the camcorder footage to my MBP in HD (full quality).
Here are my questions:
1. when downloading, it appears that iMovie does not retain the raw/same format as used by the Canon but converts it to something called Apple Intermediate Codecc. Does this converstion affect the quality of the footage? I do not want to use the convered material as archival material if it's already been converted once.
2. If the answer to # 1 is yes, iMovie converts the raw footage, is there another program that I can use in a Mac-environment that will simply download the footage in it's original format?
3. iMovie also splits up the footage into clips vs. showing one file and I cannot combine the clips into one clip (to be analogous to the workflow I have been used to in Studio). Is there a way to do so? Short of backing up my entire laptop (which I do), how can I extract the original footage from iMovie and copy it for archiving on a NAS drive?
4. Where is the best "place"/approach to perform basic editing (adding menu, adding chapters for different sections of the disc, etc.) on the footage?
5. If the answer to #4 is iMovie, would I then simply burn the iMovie project in Toast to Blue-ray?
I had thought achieving my goals would have been easy in a Mac environment (like it is for everything else) but am surprised to find it so difficult compared to how easy it was in Studio. (Am I really better off getting a lower-end Windows 7 desktop and upgrading Studio and keep that just for converting our HD camcorder tapes to blue-ray? I would rather not do so of course.)
Thanks in advance for your help.

Calbe and AppleMan1958
Thanks for the replies. Based on your replies, I think I can stay in the Mac-environment.
1 and 2. I cannot archive as AppleMan1958 suggested to keep the original without conversion because the footage is HDV 1080i. I understand however that iMovie will import and convert using a lossles codec. (The camera is tape-based and doesn't show up in Finder.)
3. Having archived copy (if there is software that will let me do so for HDV) will negate the need to find the iMovie "version" but if necessary can do so directly.
4. One follow-up questions...if I use iMovies, do I simply use the project or the actual movie for purposes of burning to disc?
5. I agree Calbe...it's different so I'm thinking it's difficult. I am sure I'll get the hang of it once I better understand how the flow works from camera to disc!
AppleMan1958, is there another consumer level app that you can recommend that I can use for archiving HDV?
Thanks for the quick replies.
Hollistonma

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