the thing that gets me is the economics that make it actually cheaper to have a giant flash disk than it is to make the size I actually need

Like I know how it happens and I still think “how does that happen?!”

I've been working on this for a few months. I started when YouTube started to block people just for connecting from a VPS [not even a VPN].

The idea is to create -- before YouTube goes dark from my perspective -- a Flash stick or SSD mix tape of the type that you've mentioned.

However, my version is targeting 1 to 2 TB media because that isn't too expensive any longer. The price is likely to drop to pocket change in the short term.

1 to 2 TB is enough to hold, in a shirt pocket, dozens of movies, entire TV series, entire radio station music playlists, all of Wikipedia [without videos or histories], 1,000s of books and comic books, 1,000s of paintings or photos, entire Linux distros, mirrors of numerous websites, and perhaps at that point the collection will be getting started.

Stuck waiting somewhere? No problem. Half of a century of media is in your pocket.

Two decades ago, I phoned a librarian to discuss an estimate of how much data was in her library. She was startled to learn that numerous books, even then, would fit on the then-large storage of an 80 GB Seagate or Buffalo external disk drive.

Today, 80 GB isn't even a drop in the bucket.

So far, I've got:

* All of "ALF", "Dead Zone" [TV series], "8 is Enough", "Land of the Lost", and more regular series.

* The Anderson Puppet TV series: "Captain Scarlet", "Thunderbirds", "JOE 90", and others.

* For YT shorts, all of "Beluga", "HISHE", and "Omeletto". Plus how-to series about terrariums and the required humorous cat and dog videos.

* Every song that I'd like to hear again from the 1960s to the 1980s. Note: The 1990s to 2020s are O.K. but there are arguably fewer classics.

* Dozens of DVD and BluRay films [which I largely paid for and have a right to transcode]. Plus what happens to come along at "archive.org" and on other sites.

I like to pick up oddities such as an HD version of "Gumbasia" and the rare original version of "The Point". Note: We're of an age and so I assume that you remember the latter production.

Technical note: If one follows the Doom9 BluRay technical instructions, it's now possible to play or transcode most BluRays dated through 2023 under Linux. I didn't think that that would be possible, but they've kept up.

* Entire CDrama series. Why not? There's room. Try "Legend of Shen Li" [the Chinese Star Wars] or "Imperial Coroner" [plucky girl rises to success by becoming the Quincy of Ancient China].

Screenshot below: This is a scene from a music video titled "We're NASA and We Know It".

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.