Re: HD SR storage

I've spent a decent amount of time working with 16 bit tiff stacks, and at 1920x1080 with no compression each frame is 11.9mb, and 12.7mb at 2048x1080. The delivery format isn't actually as much of an issue right away (TIFF stacks are by nature 4:4:4 and framerate independant). Currently I use a 10 disk array to work from, and this can consistently keep up. That being said, I've done AE work with these files off of FW800 disks in a pinch. It's not pleasant, but a lot of RAM can get you enough of a preview to work with. Tim has a couple of good points. Stay away from RAID 0, and for that matter watch out for large external drives that do a "secret" raid 0 (a 1.5tb external is guaranteed to be 2x750's striped). Will you be delivering TIFF stacks to another facility to print to tape? If so, then it's up to them to maintain the desired framerate for playback and you can work with slower drives. Once again I wouldn't advocate this, but it is possible. You will however need LOTS of space, and as Tim said, a backup is essential, so definitely double what you estimate you need.