Back

Okay, mixtape thoughts.

A well compressed 4k film is 2GB. A well compressed 1080 film is 600MB. If i go for maximal compatibility and quality, rather than optimal size (and storage is currently cheap enough that I can), a 4k film comes in around 5GB in h265, and a 1080 film comes in around 3 in h264. You can go bigger, obviously, but if it was a born digital file there isnt an obvious benefit (analog noise does not compress well, so stuff shot on 8 or 16mm needs a little more bandwidth or DNR.)

(I've never tried to encode 4k in 264... Not going to get sidetracked right now. )

Music in flac is 8-10 MB per song, but 320k mp3s are sufficient, and 96k opus is fucking fine and even if I have the Space why would I burn it up on stuff no one is going to notice?? If you can tell the difference between 320k mp3s and a flac file in your car 1) no you can't 2) you spent too much money on your car's dac 3) when is it ever going to matter?

So, at 4k I can fit 6 pretty high bitrate films on a $3 flash drives. 16 if I work for it.

At 1080... between 10 and 40, de9ejdijg on bitrate.

6 films is at the high end of what I'd want to include in a collection, honestly. 10ish hours of video is a huge expectation to put on someone. We watch 1 - 2 movies a month. 3 - 6 months of films in a mixtape is not the move.

40 is ridiculous. That's not a curated experience, it's a pile of junk. (I mean, it can absolutely be a curated experience, but it moves in to different territory. That's a classroom curriculum or a museum exhibit, not a mixtape.)

That's 4.5 weeks of uninterrupted audio.

So optical media, right?

A DVD-R holds 4.7 GB and costs, what, 20 cents? Less in bulk?

Doing optical media mixtapes gives me enough room for a 90-minute album, two hours of video, a game, and a website to introduce and contextualize it all, for 20 cents.

Add a case and a booklet for less than a dollar, and I still come in way under the price of USB drives.

But then folks have to have optical drives.