Importing Sony AVCHD into iMovie - "voodoo" codec?

I have recently purchased a new Sony TG1 HD camcorder which records AVCHD files onto Memory Sticks. I would like to archive this footage on an external HD and would like to use iMovie08 to import and save this footage. Obviously I want to save this footage as an exact digital negative ie uncompressed and exactly in the same format as it was originally recorded. In going over some old posts I found the term "voodoo" codec used to imply that iMovie08 is not capable of saving this footage properly as some strange codec is employed and as such some degradation to the original footage occurs. It was stated that only Final Cut Express (or Pro) was capable of saving the footage in the exact same quality as it was originally recorded in ie lossless. Any comments?
Thanks
Gregg
Message was edited by: buzzlulu

AppleMan
Thanks for the reply. At present I am already doing as you suggested - creating a disk image of each full Memory Stick and saving these for archival purposes.
I am still curious to learn more about how iMovie08 converts the AVCHD files as compared to FileMaker Express. If I want to transcode the files into a usable format ie H.264(MPEG4) than will iMovie output the same result (from a quality standpoint) as Final Cut Express? Furthermore if I want to watch these recordings in full quality I can easily attach the Sony TG1 to my HD TV via HDMI. If iMovie transcodes these original files to MPEG4 and these were played back on my TV (via a media player) would they be of the same quality as those played back by directly attaching the camera to the TV as mentioned above?
Thanks
Gregg
Message was edited by: buzzlulu

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