IMovie '09 - saving and backing up Projects and Events

Question

It's taken about two years, but I finally think that IM '09 is better than HD '06.
Now that I am comfortable, have started to work on all those videos going back (yikes, 25 years) and four formats. Hopefully will complete the project prior to getting the "Final Cut" so to speak!!
As I'm anal about saving and backup, I have three copies of the events, and three copies of my projects.
I think I have finally worked out what happens when a change is made to a date in an event, and which projects do or don't show up when you open iMovie.
As there isn't any official (as far as I know) method of synchronizing projects, I would imagine that the best and speediest editing protocol would be:
a) to keep and only edit the projects on the host computer (that's doing the editing) - I have noticed that any changes to a project are ONLY made to the copy that you are ACTUALLY working with on the host computer - and copies on external drives are not altered (unless you select that drive's copy in the project finder) - IOW, only one copy is changed at one time.
b) back up the project to the external drive at the end of the edit
c) as all changes (I assume) are only made in the project, as long as one doesn't delete any unused clips, the events should remain the same wherever they are stored - so, no need to back up once they have already been saved to the back up drive(s)?
Once a project is finished, and say, burned to DVD or BD, how do most people save - finished movie back on the tape, or just one or two copies on an external drive?
I would be grateful for input on "best practices" in this regard.

Answer 1

Great question. I think the issue of backup is a important one, and one I always worry about since I have a lot of video footage that is irreplaceable.
For back-up, it is helpful to define the risk you are trying to protect from.
For example,
1) risk of corruption in iMovie --> I might use Time Machine (but I do not because I have not had the issue)
2) risk of hard drive failure --> I use SuperDuper! nightly
3) Risk of theft or fire --> offsite backup
Here is what I do...
1) I back up my boot disk with SuperDuper automatically to alternate external partitions every other night so I always have two bootable systems. One is less than one day old, and one is less than two days old.
2) I back up my original video files. For my Motion JPEG, VHS-->AIC, DV, and 8MM to DV, the EVENT is the copy I back up. For my AVCHD high def video, I back up the archive of the AVCHD, but I am not currently backing up the Event files, because I would need from 4 to 8 TB to back up these events depending on whether I made one copy or two.
3) I use CrashPlan for my offsite backup. It costs less than $4 per month, and I seeded the initial backup to an external drive to minimize having to transfer video files over the Internet. I currently have 1.2TB of data backed up to CrashPlan, which includes my entire boot drive, and the files described in #2.
4) All of the above is automated, so I don't have to think about it too much. If I have to manually do stuff, I tend to get behind.
You have to consider the value of total multiple redundancy vs. the likelihood that 2 or three unlikely events would all happen at once. For example, CrashPlan could lose my data. My hard disk could fail. I could lose everything in a fire. But it is unlikely that they would all happen at once, except in nuclear war, in which case, who cares?
I am considering adding Time Machine backup and some off-site backup of the Event files into the mix, but for now I am satisfied.