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but you can write Video CDs on your CDRW

I have seen the term "Video CD's" before.

What is a Video CD? Does it have the same screen size? Does it have the same quality as VHS?

Video CD

Quality is comparable to VHS, but not to DVD. Capacity is not comparable to DVD either. It's cheap, though, if your DVD player recognises CDR or CDRW media. All Pioneer brand DVD players recognise these media, many others do as well. Also computer DVD-ROM drives.

AB

VCD is the format of choice in the Asian market. It is not used over here in the US due to the ease of copying via inexpensive CD-R/RW burners. The DVD format has some regional protection code built in that requires DVD player software to choose one of 5 zones to be assigned to. The data (movie/audio/data) can then specify which Zone(s) are allowed to decode the movie/audio/data. This is to thwart the copying and sale of movies created for say Singapore at 2 US$ from being reshipped to a reseller in Kansas cheaper than the US wholesale price from the original movie distributor.

But now with the advent of inexpensive DVD-R units, we can start taking advantage of this technology to preserve those short lived oxide media videotape images to a more durable medium (just make sure that you keep two copies whether on DVD-R or VCD for that inevitable scratch or ding that renders your memories unusable.

Have lots of disk space available and break the video down in 5, 10, or 15 minute chunks that you can create an index from. These shorter clips will be easier on your system to compress into the proper mpeg format as you go, rather than trying to mpeg an entire 2 hour tape capture at once. There is a <$500 appliance that does VCD creation on the fly that you might consider since it takes all the guesswork out of the process:

http://www.terapintech.com/store.html