Sayonara Cassettes!

A stroke of ambition hit me late last night and I decided to test out the TV tuner card Mike lent me to see if I could digitize my old videocassettes.

Success! Sort of?

The thing works…I started recording a Smashing Pumpkins: Intimate and Interactive concert back from…1998? It records in real time so I figured it would try and tape the entire 6 hour tape. I left it running overnight and when I awoke, I found it did in fact tape the 2 hour long show, but didn’t bother capturing any other footage on the videocassette. Another drawback is the fact that this 2 hour long MPG file is 8 gigabytes large…I would need a dual-layer DVD to put this onto.

Granted, this is after setting it up for 45 minutes and letting it run overnight. I’m sure this weekend I will find the answers to the following questions:

• The resolution of a TV set is 320×40. But if I record at 700+ it turns out to be less in size. What’s up with that?
• Is there a way to bring down the size while recording? When trying to create the DVD, it does start talking about how it’s WAY too big for a conventional single layer DVD and attempts to downgrade the quality, but it only shaved off 500MB. So two options appear: 1) Figure out a way to record it into a lower quality to begin with. 2) Use a program to downgrade to a nice 4.7GB size (perhaps DVDShrink? Does it work with MPGs?)
• What do I do with all the old videocassettes afterwards? I’m talking EVERYTHING. I want to first transfer any home videos, as well as stuff I’ve videotaped off of TV. Then I will ahead and tape actual movies. But afterwards, should I just chuck them in the garbage? In essence, I have converted the videos and they will be on a nifty DVD. I have heard that DVDs degrade over time, but so do videocassettes…
• Can I make a business out of this? Someone told me that a business charges $75 per hour of video that they convert to DVD. That is insane. I mean, I haven’t gone through the whole process of making a DVD yet, but I don’t think it will take too much of my time. MAYBE if I have to search for different scenes and make a menu and whatnot.