Exporting Master Archive Copy of Project on Mac

Question

I know, I know. There are like 100 threads on final export and the best ways to do it for archival purposes. But honestly, I'd read one and it would say one thing and then I'd read another and it would say another. I guess that makes sense since there probably isn't the ONE best way to do anything. But coming from FCP, to export a archive copy of your final project you simply selected EXPORT>Quicktime Movie and it would do it all for you with no adjusting or tweaking of any settings necessary. It simply would save it using your sequence settings as a copy that you could use as an archive OR (and this part is important to me) you could take that file and bring it back into Compressor later if you wanted to encode this master copy into other formats (DVD, Bluray, H.264 for web, etc.) with the least amount of quality loss. Its almost as if you had exported the video directly from the original timeline. That's what I'm looking for here.
All that being said, I know there is a "Match Sequence Settings" box in Adobe Media Encoder which one would think would be similar to FCP's "EXPORT>Quicktime Movie" option but I've read in various threads not to use that and it made me nervous anyway because when you select it the "quality" slider is set to 50% and greyed out and the resulting file was going to be .mpeg which I didn't know if that was the best option or not to preserve quality. My original source footage is AVCHD so I've been going back and forth editing native and editing in ProRes 422.  Since I'm on a mac (2011 27" iMac i7 with 16gb ram, AMD 6970M card etc.), I've read of a few options:
1) Quicktime using the Animation Codec.
2) The mac version of the UT video setting
3) ProRes HQ or 422 (however I've also read that this isn't the best option if you want to re-export the footage later into other formats)
Various other virtual and lossless  methods but many of which seem to be for PC users. I am a mac user.
My goal is to have a master copy that will need no more editing but one I can drop into AME or even Compressor to make future DVDs, BLURAYS, High quality H.264 files for web delivery, etc.
While I realize there isn't one answer probably, what are the advantages/disadvantages of the 3 methods above and is there a better way to export a file for archiving and possibly re-encoding later. File size doesn't really matter. Well, within reason. With FCP, an hour long sequence would usually be under 50gb if I remember right. So anywhere in that ballpark (or a bit higher even) is cool with me.
Please feel free to describe in detail the steps to making this MASTER file of the final edit.
Thank you!

Answer 1

Jim Simon wrote:
they all lose chroma detail by sub-sampling to 4:2:2.
That's only true of the UT codec if you use one of it's YUV options.  UT also offers RGB.
Plus, with most source material being recorded in YUV 4:2:2 at best, archiving to the same is not a really a major issue.
Yes I agree Jim.
I personally have a problem/criticism with Ut RGB since it saves in the RGB colorspace. I just don't think it's a good idea with footage being YUV to be doing a rec601 or rec709 conversion when I know for a fact (as a developer) that the transform matrixes are not always correct - 1 of the 3 years of development of x264pro was getting the colorspace handling correct for every possible pixel format that Premiere/AME can process.
I do disagree with the theory that since the source is 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 that you don't need any better. If you do hard cuts and no scaling I'd agree but anything more involves manipulation of the footage as 4:4:4. So, if your long term archive format (ie Master) or short term (ie Diigital Intermediate) is ever going to be manipulated again why damage the result of any of those editing actions (cross dissolves, any Fx, or any Color Correction for that matter)?
I fully acknowlege that we're talking about a very small amount of error - and only comes into play if you're compressing the final Master as pretty much lossless but for me I want a Master to be, well, ... a Master. I (personally) define that as being a perfect reproduction of the timeline without the ability to change the editing/Fx decisions made. It's nit picky but it's what I think since storage is DIRT CHEAP. The salary burn in just reading this thread just paid for another 2Tb. We'll all save thousands of RAW camera files (6-10Mb per image) without any concern for size so why are we even flinching at the idea of another Gb here and there for a Master video file?