HDV archival file format

[yuri_base 1]

Is there an HDV file format that is cross-platform and not destined to be obsolete in at least couple of years? Is it that .m2t thingy? I have an iMac with Leopard and want to dump all tapes to computer. What software would you recommend for this purpose?

Thanks!

Android+Wear/iOS/Windows apps:
L/D Vario, Smart Altimeter, Rockdrop Pro, Wingsuit FAP
iOS only: L/D Magic
Windows only: WS Studio

[DSE 5]

m2t represents Mpeg 2 Transport stream.
Apple doesn't use this stream natively, although this is what all HDV camcorders output. Apple doesn't like muxed sources. Do you have MPEG StreamClip?
By "archiving," do you mean that you're wanting to store the content found on your tapes on an HDD system? The tapes themselves are your "archives" but you might want backups. Or, are you wanting to archive edited footage as an accessible file to a hard drive and tapes? I'm assuming the former, not the latter? In that case, just capture using iMovie, Premiere, or FCS. Any of the above will suffice. Figure approx 13GB per hour, or 13GB of storage per tape.

Archiving in .m2t is fine, but with an Apple system, it's not terribly efficient because it involves a transcode. If you're looking to archive the project, my personal preference is .mxf, which Final Cut works with very well.

[yuri_base 1]

Thanks for the advice! For now, I settled on dumping tapes in iMovie 6 HD and saving the projects. The files are much larger than what you mentioned - about 1GB per minute, 60GB/hr. How do you get 13GB/hr without transcoding? Also, is there a way in iMovie to do "destructive editing" - i.e. permanently delete parts of the clips that were cropped out, to save space?

Android+Wear/iOS/Windows apps:
L/D Vario, Smart Altimeter, Rockdrop Pro, Wingsuit FAP
iOS only: L/D Magic
Windows only: WS Studio

[DSE 5]

Apple does things differently, as I mentioned.
HDV by its very design is 13GB per hour as stored on the linear tape. Apple transcodes it. If you use native capture tools, there is no transcode that takes place.
iMovie before version 4 was destructive, and I'm pretty confident you can save a project with only used media in later versions, but I don't know how. I don't use iMovie other than to show little stuff here and there.