Importing video clips in AVCHD (Lite) into Aperture vs iMovie

I'm trying to figure out which application I should use for importing and storing video clips shot on my Panasonic DMC-ZS7 camera. This camera can shoot in AVCHD (Lite) or in Motion JPEG. I use the AVCHD (Lite) format to shoot the videos with this camera.
The two application options I currently have for importing video clips from this camera are:
a. Aperture 3.5.1 (I'm not using iPhoto since I have Aperture).
b. iMovie 10.0.1 (I'm not using Final Cut Pro)
When I first got this camera, Aperture 3 did not support the AVCHD Lite codec. Back then, iMovie could import video clips shot in AVCHD Lite, but it had to transcode the AVCHD video clips into AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). Some time later, one of the Aperture 3 updates made it possible to import AVCHD Lite into Aperture (without having to transode into an intermediate codec), so we started importing our video clips shot in AVCHD Lite (together with our photos shot by the same camera) directly into Aperture.
iMovie 10 released in 2013 supports importing video clips shot in AVCHD Lite without having to transode them to AIC for storing these video clips in iMovie. So, now we have a dilemma that we need help with. Which application should we use going forward for importing video clips from this camera?
When I look at the metadata for the imported videos in Aperture, I see that the format of the imported video clips is listed as H.264. However, I can't seem to be able to find any information about the format in which iMovie stores imported videos. I can "Reveal in Finder" a video that I import into iMovie, and I see the size of the file and the .mov extension assigned to the file. With video files, the extension does not always determine the codec of the file, but in my non-expert opinion, the .mov extension is not H.264; I may be totally wrong here, though. What I have noticed, though, is that a video clip imported into iMovie has the file size that is about 10% larger than the same video clip imported into Aperture.
Therefore, I have three questions:
1. What format is a video clip (shot in AVCHD Lite) stored in Aperture 3.5.1 and in iMovie 10.0.1
2. Which format (the one used by Aperture or the one used in iMovie) is better suited for transoding AVCHD videos into? The balance of the quality and file size is the main consideration for us.
3. Which applications would you personally prefer using for importing video clips to and why?
I do want to use some of these video clips to make home videos in the future, utillizing iMovie. However, it seems I can still store the raw footage in Aperture and access this raw footage from iMovie to be able to create an iMovie project and a final home video. One of the concerns is that if we keep importing our video clips into Aperture, the Aperture library could grow beyond the size that Aperture can support and we may end up losing our photos due to the database corruption. Is this a real risk?
Thank you!

I had the same question recently. Go to the right of this box and a little above, into the Search Discussions window. Type in this: Is MPEG2 the answer
You will find my question, and the great answers I got. Follow those directions and you will be all set!

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