What format should I transfer my MiniDV tapes to?
The “DV” in miniDV = Digital Video. The DV format you have a,ready recorded to thoses tapes is the least compressed. It cannot be “lossless” because even DV format video uses some compression. That’s how a full 60 minute miniDV tape can store 14 gig of standard definition video when imported to a computer’s hard drive using a firewire cable. Other formats – MPG, MOD and others will compress more. MiniDV tape is already an acceptable archive media. Better than a single hard drive or even optical disc. The only potentially “better” method might be a multi-drive RAID 1 system. S-Link, Buffalo, NetGar, Promis and many others make home/small office network attached storage (NAS) RAID 0/1 systems. Basically, two hard drives have identical data writen at the same time. Hard drives are mechanical and will fail (so a single hard drive is a bad idea). When one fails, take it out, replace it, and the working drive automatically copies over the data. But you are still importing the digital data fr
