Converting old family films, what is best format to request for archive and iMovie?
I am having a professional service scan my old family 8mm films, and also convert some old Hi-8 videotapes. As part of the service, they prepare a DVD, and also video files on a hard drive which I supply.
But they're asking what format I want the files in for the hard drive. Their default offering is AVI, but they say I can get what I want. (I always thought AVI was too Windows-centric.)
So, what *DO* I want to ask them for? MP4? Or what? What should I tell them?
My goals are:
1) preserve the video on the hard drive in a format that will preserve the highest quality, and also will be readable for a good while into the future.
2) be importable into iMovie (or FCP), verhaps via a utily like MPEG Streamclip, so I can do some editing.
Thank you!