Help compressing raw footage to be edited later

[SloMocean]

This past weekend I shot a concert (two camera setup) for a local band. They hired me strictly to shoot and dump the footage and then hand it over to them for editing. They don't have a tape drive or camera, so I'm having to give them the raw footage on DVDs. 8 1/2 hours worth - roughly 100+ GB.

Is there a way to compress the footage enough so that I don't have to burn 12-15 dual layer DVDs, but the footage retains a high enough quality to then be brought into their NLE, edited and encoded to a DVD?

I know that the final footage will be comperssed to mpeg2 to be put on the DVDs, but I don't want to do this up front if it will have to be encoded again after editing and compromise the quality of the final product.

Also, I'm working on a Mac (FCP) and they will be editing on a PC (Vegas). Any specific file formats to stay away from when going back and forth (besides .wmv)?

[vidwerk]

Assuming it's SD. Export the footage as Quicktime with DV/DVCPRO_NTSC codec. Burn DVD data or better yet, transfer to EXT HDD. It's your best option to retain your native compression.

vidwerk.

[vidled]

You could just give them an external 120GB 2.5" hard drive formatted to Fat32 with original files. That way they have the best material to start their editing with, not compressed files.
If cost is an issue, insist on them returning the drive to you, otherwise simply charge them for it. It's not that expensive, and considering it would take you considerable time to compress and burn the 8.5 hours onto DVDs, you might find it much more cost-effective.

[Demistate]

I'm sorry, but unless his time costs a bunch of money, there is no way that even a stack of 50 DVD+r will cost less than a 250GB internal drive, for 60$ (That's the cheapest you can find them on Pricewatch.com)

However, I think the poster above me has the right idea. Buy some sort of hard drive, transfer the files and hand it to them. (Let them know in advance so you don't piss them off about a possible charge, or the fact that it needs to be returned to you).

[QXZ]

If he's already captured the DV footage into FCP, there's no reason to go to the trouble and time of re-exporting the clips. They already exist on his media drive as DV/DVCPRO Quicktime files.

I would say your best bet is to lend them an external drive with all the necessary files on it or just suck it up and burn a ton of DVD-Rs. Extra compression before the edit is always a bad idea IMO.