Video capturing again

Or, Why I Need a Bigger Hard Drive
Shortly after the wedding, I wanted to convert our wedding video from VHS to something digital, so I bought a video capture card to stick into the computer. Knowing digital video takes up a lot of space, I also added a 160GB hard drive to the system as well. Did an ok job, but I soon discovered that the 1.5GHz processor in the computer was a little underpowered for video stuff making for occasional spotty captures and long rendering times. Had fun capturing videos of stuff with it though, and managed to get a few seasons of Good Eats archived away as MPEGs on CD.
Then the card languished for a while and got removed to make room for a 5 port USB card. Earlier this year I finally Powerleaped the computer and decided to dust off the video capture card. Took out the modem to make room (finally got DSL, so didn’t need that anymore) so now I can start capturing again.
Of course in the interim, stuff got put onto the 160GB hard drive, so now I need another hard drive to store the AVI files on. It’s going to have to be an external one because I’m out of molex power plugs inside the case. I’m not sure the power supply in my computer has enough to power another device anyway. Fortunately there’s the Firewire port to plug into. The 750GB external drives have been coming down in price pretty rapidly, so I’ve got my eye on those. That should definitely give me more than enough room to keep me video capturing for a while.
Working on making a DVD of a recent talk given at the last Lab Club meeting. Next up I’m going to recapture the wedding video.