Premiere Pro CS3 - How to Save a Final Project to Make Changes to Afterwards

Question

OK, I just registered to the forum and this is my first post/question.
I'm fairly new to Premiere Pro editing
, and I wondered if there was a way to save the whole edited project/sequence to an external drive in case the client wanted changes to the project after they had viewed it.
I edit mostly weddings, so the projects are anywhere from 1hr 30m to 1hr 50m. I've watched all the lynda.com tutorials on Premiere, and I know about saving the final project as an ISO image file or as DVD folder, etc.
Also, I thought I remembered hearing something about being able to 'delete' the footage that wasn't used in the project too, and just saving the edited project somehow? I just thought I'd ask before I go ahead and delete all the footage that pertains to this edit. I've made an ISO file, but it doesn't look like Premiere will load it; nor will it load the video_ts files/folder.
Anyway, so my questions are:
1. Is there a way to load an ISO file to make editing changes?
2. If not, then how could I save the whole project/sequence in order to load it back into Premiere to make any changes to the original edit?
3. Does anyone here use Premiere for wedding edits? And if so, how do you 'save' projects for the longterm, in case you wanted to make changes to it?
4. Once you have an ISO image file saved, how do you burn it through Encore? Or am I forced to use the Roxio Creator program?
I guess that's it for now. I'm sure there are many more questions that I need answered, but I'll save them for later. :-)
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!

Answer 1

I do a LOT of weddings. Here's the process I've come up with over the years.
First, make a window dub of the whole thing. Sit down in front of a properly calibrated TV and home theater system and watch it from beginning to end. Make notes on what needs correction (here's where the visible timecode comes in handy) - music selections, audio levels, clips to be trimmed, color corrections, misspellings, etc.
Then, make those changes.
Next, author the final DVD for client review. Send that out with appropriate paperwork for a signed approval. Never delete/archive a project without client approval. Now, because some clients would take literally months to approve a project, I instituted a time limit of three weeks. After that, any project is considered approved and may be archived. I make this very clear, with the deadline in writing, when I send out the review sample.
If the video comes back for changes, things are still in place and I just make the requested changes, sending out another review copy with a two week limit this time. When an approval comes back or if a time limit passes, I finish up the project.
I make any remaining client copies, plus one copy of the DVD to go on a shelf. I also make an ISO for storage on an internal hard drive, to be moved later to an external hard drive at the end of every year. This gives me two master copies of the finished DVD.
I then save the project file, music and other audio selections, pictures and graphics to a CD (DVD if more space is needed, but this is rare). I make two copies in case one goes bad, and file them by groom's last name in a small CD file case. The previews and conformed files can always be rebuilt, so there's no need to save them. The actual media can be recaptured from tape, so they just get put on a shelf.