My #1 priority at this point in time is to make sure that my HDD isn't the only copy of this thing and the best (cheapest, too!) way to do this is via uploading it to Usenet.

x264 encoding is CPU-intensive and I'd have to devote 100% of my computing resources for too long in order to crank out a small-enough-to-download 720p stream. I don't have a render farm at hand. Plus, ResampleHQ (the only gamma-aware downscaler I have access to at the moment) isn't as fast as I'd like it to be, so that would most likely slow down things considerably.

I'm willing to pay the S&H fees, both ways, if someone would like to donate (temporarily or otherwise) a powerful-enough rig to crank this out in a reasonable amount of time. PM me if you're interested.