[Kraetos]

Helps a lot, thanks. My primary concerns here are storing these video clips on my hard drive, and being able to pull screencaps. For screencaps I guess I'll need more keyframes.

After reading, it sounds like I wanna do the following:

1) Convert .m2t to Apple Motion JPEG A
2) Open in QuickTime, edit out extraneous stuff (the commercial brakes, for instance)
3) Convert the edited Apple Motion JPEG A to the H.264 with these settings:

For near-DVD quality video I would suggest H.264/multi-pass/1500 kbps/100-frame keyframe interval (for video) with AAC/44 kHz/Stereo/128 kbps (for audio).

I would be using QuickTime for this final conversion, correct?

At which point I will have neat and tidy little 42-minute epidsodes of Battlestar Galactica on my hard drive. I think I am going to need to buy an external drive though.

Thanks so much for the help, I was really lost in something that is almost completely out of my league.