Some basic questions

I am finally getting around to making digital copies of my home movies that were recorded on a Sony Handycam using Hi8 tapes. I have an ADVC-55 which is working great to import the videos to my MacBook Pro. I will be using iMovie 11 and iDVD.

I have about 10 Hi8 tapes to import. Some are short, like 30 minutes, while others are longer, like an hour and a half.

Right now I am in the import phase and I just wanted to make sure I am going about this the right way.

1. I created a new project and have been importing each tape as a new event. I'm assuming these events will be available to me for any project, right? I don't have to create a new project for each tape, right?

2. I think I have enough hard drive space on my MacBook Pro to fit everything I have to import but when I am all done with this work, I'll probably want to store the files on an external drive. What do I have to do to move them to my external drive? Which files/folders am I looking for? I know with iPhoto, it's one big file that contains all of my photos. Is it the same with iMovie?

3. Once I have finished importing all of my tapes, is it best to create the movie(s) while the files on on my laptop's hard drive? Working with them on an external drive would slow things down, right?

4. All of my tapes are from different times, different holidays and I want to put them onto DVD to share them. Do I create multiple movies via multiple projects in iMovie and burn them individually to iDVD ending up with multiple DVDs? Can I put more than one movie on a single DVD? If I have a bunch of shorter videos, should I assemble them into one big iMovie first and then burn that one movie to DVD?

5. I have a MacBook Pro 17/2.2/2X2GB/750/SD/HR-GLSY that I bought in March 2011. It has a Superdrive. I want to make DVDs of my home videos and give them to my family. Which blank DVDs should I buy? Should I use dual layer or not? Do I have to worry about compatibility these days?

6. How much can I fit onto a blank DVD?

7. I also want to make digital copies of my movies, meaning copies I can play on my iPad or iPhone or post to Facebook. But my imported videos have that thin bar of distortion at the bottom edge in the overscan portion of the image. While I haven't tested it, I don't think it will be a problem for my DVDs, since I think the TV will crop it out. But I can see it on my digital copies. How do I get rid of this on my digital copies? Do I use the crop feature in iMovie? I'm thinking I create my DVDs first, then crop the movies (select the whole movie and crop?) and then create my digital copies. Any advice?

Thanks!

Paul