I am new to this so please be gentle. I have a Canon HV20 with about 10 tapes recorded. I want to switch to AVCHD and had my eye on the Canon HF10. So when I sell my HV20, I want to make sure I can access my media in the future. I also use an iMac with Final Cut Express and Pro. What are my options?

1- Can I record from the HV20 direct to the HF10 so I can then store the media on my hard drive?
2- Is there a way to put each tape as is on a hard drive without compression (or at least near tape quality)?

3- Am I missing an easier solution?

Thanks,

Steve

Just use HDVSplit to capture all your tapes to hard drive. Its slow (real time capture of course), but it'll be exact digital copies of the HDV footage from the tapes. Then store your tapes and sell your HV20 and you should be good to go. If your drive ever crashes you can at least hunt around for another HV10/20/30 cam to borrow for another round of capture.

Hopefully long before a drive crash you'll be able to edit your videos down to something manageable and burn everything you want to keep onto Blu-Ray.

I checked out the beta site for HDVSplit and it says it is only for Windows. I only use Mac. Any suggestions?

I have all my Digital8, MiniDV, and the few HDV projects shot with an HV20, all as "captured" stored on 3 external hard drives which all remain powered down unless needed.

All of the standard def DV is in the same AVI format it would be again captured from the tapes tomorrow, and the HDV is as captured originally. All files are accessible by any software that can edit them and with no quality loss over when originally captured for edit.

AVCHD files, of course, are copied directly from the media card and stored on those same 3 external drives.

Periodically I'll purchase new external drives and copy the material over. Since these drives are not running much at all they tend to last...And last...And last...