Lossless storage of HD Data

I want use use pinnacle studio to capture HD video, cut out the real bad pieces, and write the video to disk, without losing quality. That is; I don't want to downsample to DVD quality, DivX encode or anything like that.

So Far I've only found the option to MPEG-2 encode data, when outputting to a file. Is the original data (I.e on the tape) in MPEG-2 format, or is the tape format "Raw" (Frame by frame, uncoded). Am I going to lose quality writing my movies to disk using the MPEg-2 Option ?

Anyone with a better solution? I can write the movie back to a tape, but I'd rather not.

I want use use pinnacle studio to capture HD video,

If by "HD" you mean "High Definition" - you won't be able to Capture or Edit HD video using the "plain" version of Pinnacle Studio.

You'll need Pinnacle Studio Plus Titanium Edition version 10.5 or better.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/

Right now Adobe Premier Pro seems to be the more popular software for working with HD video.

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/

If you are capturing HDV from a HD camcorder such as an HDR-HC3 or similar, the video is stored on the tape in MPEG-2 format already. Transcoding will only be done on the frames surrounding your cuts - the rest of the video will be directly copied. At least, this is my understanding. HDV is stored on the tape in your camcorder in MPEG-2 because raw HD does not fit in the same space as raw DV does (it must be compressed).