Transfer HI8 to One Touch DVD, Need suggestions!

Question

Hey everyone, I have a Hi8 Sony Cam that I have prob 60 tapes of home movies for (Yes I know my dad filmed everything)! I want to first tell you my ultimate goal is to transfer all of these tapes onto DVD's over the course of the next year or so. I want un compressed video and audio, I would like it to be in the same quality that it is on tape just straight across onto DVD. I would like to fit 60 or 120 min on a single DVD-R which I know a single layer can hold. All these movies have been recorded on HI8 or Digital 8 tape, all are 60 min long, and recorded in SP mode.
Anyway, I wanted to ask some opinions here, I just transfered the first tape, capture if you will into iMovie. It is 12G big, and is taking forever to convert as I am exporting it in hopes to burn it to a DVD. Isnt there an easier way? I found the One touch iDVD, and it says you plug your camcorder in, launch that and it transfers it directley to a DVD, that sounds right! But, what if I wanted to add some more footage after that, Does it finalise the DVD after its done burning? I have some family trips that are several tapes long 200 hours+ on some of them. I would love to fit 2 HI8 tapes totaling 120 min on one DVD R but if it finalizes the DVD when its done thats not going to work for me..
Does this make scene? I hope so.. I don't have any intentions of editing the video, I just want to transfer straight across to DVD. If someone could help me out that would be awesome!! Thanks guys!
-Jason

Answer 1

Jason
As stated earlier I don't work with imovie but here are a couple of pages from the imovie 'help' menu:
"Saving your movie as a QuickTime movie"
When you save your movie in QuickTime format, you can play it on computers or publish it on a webpage, a CD, or your iDisk. When you export your movie to QuickTime, you can choose one of these settings:
Email: Best for sending over email.
Web: Best for playing on the web.
Web Streaming: Best for posting on a QuickTime streaming web server.
CD-ROM: Best for playback from CD-ROM drives.
Full Quality: Creates a movie with original quality, preserving the most data possible. Use for movies you want to import into other applications, such as iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, or Final Cut Pro, for further editing.
Expert Settings: Use when you want to customize your export or use other formats and codecs.
Important: The viewer needs QuickTime 7 or later to watch your QuickTime movie.
To save your movie as a QuickTime movie:
Choose Share > QuickTime.
Choose a movie format from the pop-up menu.
Click the "Share selected clips only" checkbox if you only want to share clips you selected.
Click Share.
Name your movie, select a location for the file, and click Save.
The time it takes to save the movie depends on the movie's length and the format you choose".
You want to save it as full quality movie for your purposes but by exporting via QT, you can take that version and later on send it out to web etc. by resetting the parameters but this way you have saved it in the best quality setting.
The Archival Grade is the best you can get . . not sure of the price but in not prohibitive, that's what I would use for your projects. But if too expensive, even the one grade down in the Taiyo would be fine. If you want to imprint the DVD itself, you need to buy the white im-printable version. I use an inexpensive Epson printer that prints the discs fine (don't use paper labels). I use a very simple program called Disclabel.
Any other questions as you work through this, let me (or others on the site) know.
Craig