CompuServe Messages

24-bit animation being an absolute pig for memory, storage and frame accurate recording capability, I'm considering attacking the second with a large capacity eraseable optical drive. Does anyone out there have any experience with these beasts? I've done some checking around, and the Ricoh 640 MB unit ($1899 internal, $2499 external, $349 per cartridge) seems to be about the best buy. I'd be using my GVP 33 MHz '030 Series II accelerator/SCSI controller board to talk to the drive. There are some 1 GB units around, but they seem to start at around $3500 (although cartridges are no more expensive than the 640 MB ones). I'd appreciate any experience others have had (successful or otherwise). BTW, as for the third obstacle mentioned above, the best (but not cheapest!) solution I've seen is a recordable laser disk machine. Sony makes one (about $20,000!!) that takes composite, component or RGB video input/output. Panasonic makes one (even more $) that is eraseable. These guys hold 40-50000 frames (25-30 minutes) on a cartridge. Best part is – NO wear and tear on the transport mechanism of a very expensive tape-based single frame recorder. Also, essentially no generation loss, as the incoming video is digitized and stored in binary format. Oh well, I can always dream… Thanks, Joe Pizzicaroli