DVDs

Boy! This week has been pretty busy. I've been put in charge of converting all the old home videos (in VHS) into DVDs, and it is no easy task.

First off, all of the work is done on the fastest machine in the house...my dad's! :P So I am running back and forth across the house because the computer is in his room. (I was actually thinking what if his PC and my sister's swapped places. It would make sense, as she is mainly in school, and being next to the teacher while my dad gets an actual desk for his REAL PC...but whatever...)

Anyway, so besides this new exercise I'm getting, there's also the actual process of conversion. First, I hooked up the old VCR to output via RCA into the back of the TV card we bought a while ago. One of the problems with this stuff is that to record, you have to let the whole video play in realtime! Unlike if you were ripping a DVD, I believe the speed at which it rips depends mainly on how fast your DVD drive is. Anyway, this time consuming process fortunately uses low CPU power, so I am able to convert previously recorded videos (which output to MPEG) into a smaller compressed Xvid format.

So the process is:
-Record video tape on computer
-Convert recorded video into a smaller file (Xvid)
-Burn video on DVD
-Move Xvid video on 200GB hard-drive in mom's machine & Delete from dad's

Oddly enough, my dad's computer rejected a 200GB drive for no apparent reason. So now instead of being able of just saving it there on that machine, I gotta whip out my 80GB external passport drive, jam the videos in there, and THEN transfer to the main drive. My dad doesn't want to clutter his machine with the videos as he will probably be using that machine as a work computer when we get to Colombia.

So I believe that is enough reading for you today. Go play some video games or something.