CompuServe Thread

I am working with my local school on setting up a computer based video editing system. The students are currently making videos using VCR's and "splicing" and have some cameras and VCR's. We would like expand our video lab and capabilities and are looking for recommendations and estimates of street prices on equipment and software. We are primarily PC based and use DOS and Windows. I do not have an extensive background in DTV but am very familiar PC's, computer based graphics, and animations and am trying to help them determine what a good setup would be. The budget would be around $4K for HW (boards, disks, cables and SW not counting cameras, PC's or VCR's. I think we would trade some quality and convenience for more stations to maximize the education. We would like to add some special effects (titling, transitions, perhaps animations) and do non linear editing. We would also like the end result to be close to the original video quality of the source tapes. The options seem to fall into two categories: I. PAR system One suggestion was to use a PAR system (big disks, etc.). We might be able to get the disks donated. It would seem then we would end up with a great single station, that would do everything they want, but only one student could use it at a time, and the disks (more storage than all other computer disks in the entire school combined) would only hold video, not programs, student data, etc. Is there a way a PAR system could be networked and used by editing stations which edited at a lower resolution? Or can they be system disks as well as video? II. Lower resolution editing and off line final processing I guess we would: 1. Time code the video. Can we do this with a little added equipment to the current VCR's or do we need a totally new VCR? 2. Digitize it at a lower resolution that would be adequate for use on a PC without stuttering (this way we could use the donated disks and store programs and data too). This lower resolution would be used for editing only and possibly for putting the video on disk for other computers in addition to putting it on tape for VCR's. 3. Do the editing on the PC at lower resolution and/or frame rate 4. Generate a file that tells how the original frames on the tape are to be put together (including titling, effects and/or transitions). Are there common standards for this? 5. Use equipment, that will be directed by the file above, to generate the final tape that would hopefully be close in quality from the first. I don't believe we have VCR's that can be controlled, so I suspect the final recording would have to be done on a VCR we would buy, get donated or by someone else who would provide the service for free or for a fee. (Even if we had to buy one of these, it could serve multiple editing stations.) 6. Add titling, transitions, effects if necessary as post processing I am hoping we could get two systems that do the second option for the price of the 1st option. I think we would be willing to trade a little quality in final result for more stations as long as the resultant quality was not too far from that of the original. Any help on recommendations on equipment, software, alternate strategies etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, -Marco