If you can afford them, RAID boxes on a Windows 2003 or Mac OS-X server are the
best solution for processing and compressing. Inexpensive RAID arrays can be
built from scratch using 500 or 700gig drives in SATA configurations. If RAID is
out of the question, individual firewire or external SATA drives can be used. We
use a combination of RAID and Firewire 800 drives most of them home-built. We
keep track of these drives and replace them after about 80% of their life
expectancy has been used up. We backup to DVDs - which is cheap and more
reliable than tape.

Gigabit ethernet (already mentioned in the earlier messages) is a requirement.
It is almost impossible to edit project files on a server without that speed. 

Having portable drives is very useful. We can download a project file from a
server into a drive, so a faculty member can take it home over the weekend and
work on the editing. 

We have done several projects in the past that contained more than 60 hours of
video each. In each case we created designated server space that could be
accessed from the digitizing computers as well as from the editing computers via
gigabit ethernet. A high quality switch and a robust network are essential for
this type of production. 

We have found the latest version of OS-X servers very useful for our needs. They
are reasonably easy to operate and can be used simultaneously as file servers,
web servers, streaming servers and much more sophisticated applications. 

Otmar Foelsche





***********************************************
 LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for
Language Learning (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching
and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/).
Join IALLT at http://iallt.org.
Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask])
***********************************************