Silicone tipped are so much better. They’re easier to clean, they’re more comfortable, and they block out outside noise much better.

It depends where you live if you need a VPN or not.

Depending on your hardware strength and what media you’re converting, the handbrake suggestion might be best. But I’m coming in to say that does take a lot of compute power. You mentioned watching cams, so if it’s popular TV/movie data you’re compressing, it’s often quicker to just download a different, lower resolution source from torrent.