Huzzah! After a few false starts and 24+ solid hours of computing time, I now have an AVI of the MST3K episode “Being From Another Planet” fit to burn onto CD-ROM. It’s XviD-encoded and all commercials have been excised.

The process went a little something like this:

• Hook VCR to computer via TV tuner card, in this case the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon. (mere minutes)
  
• Use VirtualDub to capture the full airing as an MJPEG file. (2 hours)
  
• In VirtualDub, trim out commercial content from source MJPEG file. (half an hour)
  
• Apply an array of filters as per the Digital Archive Project’s encoding instructions. (half an hour, including the download of filters that don’t come with VirtualDub)
  
• Make the first of two encoding passes with XviD. (6 hours and some-odd)
  
• Make the second of two encoding passes, specifying 690,000 KB of desired file size. (6 more hours and some-odd)
  
• Realize that XviD doesn’t have the foggiest clue how to hit a target file size. (30 seconds, followed by two minutes of cursing at the 760 MB AVI file resulting from the previous step)
  
• Make the second of two encoding passes again, specifying 620,000 KB of desired file size. (6 more hours again and some-odd)
  
• Rejoice at the 694 MB AVI file that looks and sounds good enough to burn to CD-ROM. (5 minutes of whooping and carrying-on)

My previous “archiving” efforts concentrated on making VideoCDs, but I was never happy with the visual quality of those two attempts (Space Children, Jack Frost). The upside is that those can be played in almost any modern DVD player or computer, while this archive is strictly for computer-based viewing.

Good thing I have that myHTPC-equipped multimedia computer out in the living room, eh? (Mwahahahaha!)