yo lazi
damn, i feel the same as you with the hard drive space issue. i have like 100gigs, but quality shit will eat you up. i did a lil practice video to get a feel of the program. a four minute file was like a gig. i had to render it to a smaller file size with fewer frames. i had to compress the hell out of it to send it to hi_d_ho_man.
i'm using a 4mp still cam myself. i only have one 64mb memory card in it so i can only do 60 sec. of footage at a time. i'm cuttin up a lot of clips from other videos to go with my songs right now, just to get in practice. i'm rendering in vegas also.
i understand what you mean about having your sites set too high, i don't really want to pick up another expensive and time consuming trade, so i'm just using the resources that i have to my full advantage. the real lick would be to shoot to film and not digital. digital is the stuff they shoot soap opera's with. film cameras can easily run you like 20k for a used one.
i'm going to continue a nice pace with this video thing. i know a couple of dudes that just started a late night show that hosts local and exclusive videos. they wanted me to help em out, but i don't want to commit to something like that yet. i'm trying to apply my main focus on my music.
this dude that i'm cool with runs his own mom and pop store. he's trying to make some major moves in the music business. right now he's hustling his ass off with burned dvd movies, car tv's, cd's, magazines(source, don diva), oils, amps, car stereos, premastering, cd duplication.......
he has a hook up on dvd's and cases right now. i could ask him how much he get's has stuff for and we could compare prices with your brother-in-law if you like.