Hello all! I am new to these boards, and am glad to have found a place that is filled with other young Film Makers looking to become masters of their craft. I personally would love to be a part of post production (I am trying to learn 3d animation, and I already Know and love the Adobe DV Collection). I am about to Delve into the World of Avid Xpress Pro (along with the mojo), and i was wondering a few things about possible accesories.

First off, Do you guys (editors) find the Color coded keyboards really helpful? I was looking into getting one, but at a price tag of 80-150 bucks, I think that I could learn the shortcuts on my normal keyboard for now. I know the Color Coding helps, but after buying the Xpress and Mojo bundle, I won't be able to afford much.

Secondly, Are Shuttle Devices (i.e. The Contour Shuttle Pro) really all that helpful? I am not sure of exactly all of their functions, but I have found using my mouse and keyboard to be the good enough for me when it came to Editing big projects (a feature length documentary and numerous highlight reels for the HS football team I used to play for). I saw that a lot of professionals use them, but I don't know if they would actually improve upon how quickly I edit Film, or if they are really worth over 100 dollars?

Lastly, I was wondering about Storage. I currently have a lot of storage (2 internal 160 GB, 1 20gb internal, and 2 external 250 GB HDDs). I was wondering if it would be better if I had the Four Big hard drives installed in my system, and had the 20 be an external? Lacking space/power connectors in my computer, I had to buy external cases for the hard drives I bought when I was doing the Documentary (it was shot fully on DV, and there was 24 hours of footage that I had to archive first, and then start working with Timecodes, In all the project took over 400GB). All of my HDs are IDE 133, and I was wondering if you think it would be good to have the 1 of the 160's as system drives and 1 as a cache disk, then put the 2 250's in a Striped Raid Configuration, to allow for Uncompressed Video Storage? I have yet to try any form of raid, and am wondering if you think it would be a good Idea to try to pull it off, or if I should just keep the setup I have now?

Thanks for any and all suggestions/help. I look forward to becoming a part of this community and I hope to help out as many people as possible.