[X4U] iMovie "File Package" question

[Mark Des Cotes]

Hi all,

I don't have much experience with video but I'm having fun learning.

Last year I borrowed a friends camcorder (don't remember what kind)  
to film my daughter's dance recital. After filming I plugged the  
camcorder into my Mac and iMovie popped up automatically and asked if  
I wanted to import the video. I did so and it created a nice folder  
containing various folders and files, one of these folders called  
Media contained all the various video clips I had taken. The total  
hard drive space taken up was just over 10GB. I never did anything  
with the files.

This year I borrowed the same camcorder and did pretty much the same  
thing. Although I noticed that the newer version of iMovie I have  
this year created a Package instead of a folder. I should have  
realized this right away but it took me a while of searching for the  
movie clips before I discovered that the file was a package and that  
if I show it's contents I can see the individual clips.

Finally I decided to try out iMovie and iDVD and was able to  
successfully create several DVDs of both recitals to send to relatives.

Now I have just over 21GB of HD space being used up that I would like  
to clear. I want to burn a backup of the files before deleting them  
and I realize 10+GB is too much for a DVD, even a DL one so I figure  
I'll just burn to multiple disks. This is not a problem with last  
year's files since I can open the individual folders and burn the  
media content to the multiple disks and if I ever need them again I  
can just load them back the way they were. However I'm not so sure  
about this years file. The Package is 11GB, and I know that by  
"showing contents" I can view what's in the package and even select  
individual files to burn to disk but what I don't know is what will  
happen in the future if I try to put them back together? Will I be  
able somehow to get everything back into is nice and tidy Package?  
Will I even need to? Is there anything special I should know before  
backing up this year's files?

Thanks, and sorry for the wordy message for a simple question.

Mark Des Cotes