Best Practices for Professional video editing

Hi
I'd like to know your thoughts on what the most proffessional / effeciant method for editing are. At the moment, I archive all the footage from a DV tape through iMovie (I just find iMovie easier for doing this) save / archive all the imported segments of clips I need, name them, then import them into FCP
When I finish an edit I export and uncompressed Quicktime movie, then back up the entire project on an external drive
Is this good practise, Should I export the final edit to tape?
I've just started out as a video-maker as a paid proffession and I'd like to know the most 'by the book' methods
THanks
G5 Dual   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Sounds to me that you're doing a whole lot of extra steps using i-movie as your import. You're going to lose some of FCP best media features by not digitizing with FCP. Batch Capture in FCP isn't hard to learn.
I wouldn't say there's any "rulebook" for professional editors. We all work a little differently but here are some of my "best practices"
Always clearly name and label all of the tapes that you are using in a fashion that makes sense to you. When I cut a large project I may have multiple tapes. If I lose a piece of media accidentally, it's easier to go back and re-digitize if I have organized the project early in.
Clearly label bins and use them wisely. For example, on a small project I might have a "video" bin, a "music" bin and a "graphics" bin. This saves searching through one large bin.
On larger projects, I try to think ahead to how I will edit and make bins accordingly. For example I might have bins as follows, interviews, b-roll location a, b-roll location b and so on. Then I'll have music bins, animation bins and still graphic bins. I generally try to save all to one hard drive which saves me looking through three or four drives. This isn't always possible depending upon the size of the project.
As for back-up. Lots of peope buy harddrives for each project and then store them until they need them next. Of course, keep all of your raw-footage and you can always re-digitize.
When I'm done with a project I save the completed project to tape...this is for dubs and library. I save the FCP information on a DVD and I burn the media from the drive, because I can't afford multiple hard drives. I would rather re-digitize my raw if I need to re-do the project in the future.
That's how I do it, but other editors have other methods. I would highly suggest digitizing in FCP and not i-movie, but that's entirely up to you. You're not doing anything "wrong."
G4 Dual Processor   Mac OS X (10.4.1)  
G4 Dual Processor   Mac OS X (10.4.1)  

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