CompuServe Messages

GreG, You seem to be the guy in the know, so I thought I'd ask your opinion here. I'm buying a new system for home which I intend to use for rendering and animation etc. I use Imagine PC 3.0. Where I have a problem is viewing and getting my animations to tape. I don't want to buy a single frame recorder, and don't really require that kind of quality anyway (I won't be selling my work). Here is the system I looking at: Pentium 90 PCI Fast & Wide SCSI III controller & 1080mb drive ATI 64 bit display card 512k cache 32 mb RAM The vendor claims I can move 20mb/sec continuous data off the hard disk with the SCSI III setup which should be adequate. However, I have no easy way of compressing or playing 24 bit animations as I do with FLC files. Is there a software package out there that lets me compress a string of 24 bit TGA files? I know Visual Circuits sells the Bit Blitzer that does this, but it's $1,500 and VL-Bus only (with a 32bit accellerator). Also, do I need an "AV ready" hard disk such as the Seagate Barricuda? I would prefer to go with the above setup, and use a (relatively) inexpensive scan converter to output to tape. Thanks in advance for any input, it's really appreciated. Trevor Low, Vancouver, BC