A number of recent studies have investigated scheduling techniques in support of variable bit rate (VBR) video. When compared with constant bit rate (CBR) video, VBR has a lower storage and bandwidth requirement while providing the same quality of images. However, a VBR video clip might exhibit a significant variance in the bit rate required to support its continuous display. The previous studies have proposed techniques to support the display of a VBR clip from two different perspectives: disk storage subsystem and the network. In this study, we propose a taxonomy of VBR disk scheduling techniques that includes those proposed for the network. The results demonstrate that a new class of disk scheduling techniques, termed Atomic — VR ² VITAL, is superior. Algorithms used to represent this class were adopted from the networking literature.