hi

i work for a large college in essex, uk, as a video production lecturer and was wndering if someone would help me out with a few questions?

we are currently running 18 final cut studio 2 suites on G5's with 4GB of RAM and split hard drives of 170GB and 500GB looking after the system and the captured footage.

what we plan to do is upgrade these entire systems next year hardware wise and go up to final cut studio 3.

does anyone have any advice on what the minimum hardware spec is we should be getting to go with final cut studio 3?

also, we want to have one of the suites (x2 systems) as a HDV room. i was thinking HDV deck, HDV monitors/screens and blu ray internal burners to burn straight from final cut 3.

can anyone with any experience give me any insight into what i'll be needing for a HDV setup? what kind of monitors should i get? or maybe i should just get commercial screens? should i also have a very basic non HD screen to check the worst case scenario? internal or external blu ray burners? do i need some sort of black magic card to play the HDV in and out?

any help would be much appreciated on this.

stephen