Regarding the analog vs digital issue: It's fascinating what a difference fandom makes! I started vidding in about 2002, though I never did it to share with other people until 2006-ish: I was mostly playing around with an old copy of Premiere. I used all digital footage, and most of the people I knew who made vids used digital footage -- but this was in anime fandom, where most of the available footage WAS digital: TV rips or fansubs downloaded from various sites, imported DVDs bought on Ebay, or officially dubbed/subbed DVDs bought here. Even with the official releases, I remember anime being an early adopter of DVD technology because it was possible to have subs and dubs on the same discs, and most people were rabidly one way or the other way -- with VHS, they had to release everything TWICE.

It's just really interesting to me how different the experience was of going through this transitional fannish phase in anime spaces vs western media fannish spaces must have been. For the most part, I was in anime and comics fandom from the time I first discovered fandom around 1999-ish 'til I got into Stargate Atlantis in 2006 -- not that I didn't have periods when I was reading fanfic for western TV fandoms, but all of my social interaction was on the anime and comics side. I had no exposure whatsoever to the social milieu of TV fandom (Vividcon, LJ, all the big pre-2006 fandoms, etc) before 2006.