Comment lossy is not an issue (Score 2) 130
I'm a professional video editor, and I can tell you flat out that lossy codecs are not necessarily bad. DV is a very solid option, it's supported by all software. ProRes is fantastic, but it's OS X only, unless you want to shell out several hundred dollars for a Windows codec plugin.
In most software, if you edit with the DV or ProRes codecs, frames will only be recompressed if you actually change the image data. If all you're doing is straight cuts editing, then your exported, edited frames will be bit-for-bit identical to the originals.
If you do need to adjust the video, add transitions, etc., then frames will be recompressed. But you will be very hard pressed to visually detect any generation loss. You'll need to repeat that process through ten iterations before you see any image degradation.
And remember, your original footage is VHS, which is hardly broadcast quality to begin with.