[ale] Request for Comments/etc - Multimedia questions

[Greg]

I am starting 2 projects around the house and I have some questions on
multimedia (of which I have "0" experience).  My first project is to convert
all of my vinyl LP's to ogg vorbis (*not* mp3s) (reasons of which see
http://www.cdburner.ca/digital-audio-formats-article/ogg-faq-help-comparison
.htm).  My second project is to bring over several digital camcorder tapes
and VCR tapes to DVD format.  I am at the stage now of researching what
needs to be done and have some questions on how to best get this stuff
done - mainly with regards to hardware.

I am currently using a home-make pc using an Athlon XP 1800+ processor and 1
GB of RAM and a 50 GB HD of which I have about 6 - 10 GB free.  I have a
home RAID array on another pc of 400 GB usable space, so storage is no
problem, but I think the processing/rendering/whatever takes up a lot of
room.

For software I have on Windows 2k Pro from AIST MovieXone, MovieDV, and
MyDVD and several programs for ripping mp3's and ogg vorbis, so that part is
ok.  I don't have anything for cleaning up LP's noise, though.  For Linux I
am using Suse 8.2 and MainActor, Audacity, and whatever else comes with Suse
8.2 Professional (which worked *on the first time* on the first click
yesterday !!!).  I actually took about 20 seconds of camcorder time and
produced an avi file easily, so I know Linux is ok for this.  My questions
are thus:

LP project:
* any comments on what pre-amp to buy for going from turntable to pc ?

* any suggestions on software to clean up LP's ?

DVD project:
* do I need more RAM or disk space ?  I think 9 min of DVD == 2 GB and 1 min
of ogg vorbis ==125 MB.  Is this true ?

*  would a 64 bit processor make any difference in the rendering/DVD making
process ?  Would dual processors ?  Running on Suse 8.2 I kept getting "Your
machine is too slow" warning dialog boxes while viewing an avi file.

* anyone have any experience with Apple's PC's ? (Aaron ?)  I saw a while
back a technet article that showed that AMD/Intel single processor PC's were
as good as the old G3s (?) and cheaper.  I know Apple has since gone to
different hardware, so I don't know what the deal is now.  I know that AMD
has some nice 64 bit dual stuff now.

* any comments on a DVD burner ?

* any other comments/advice/tips/links ??

If anyone would like to see what I have found on the internet so far, then I
would be happy to post a list of links I have found on these topics.

TIA

Greg