In this paper, we present an algorithm that integrates scalable compression techniques with placement algorithms for disk-arrays to provide efficient support for interactive scan operations (i.e., fast-forward and rewind) in video servers. We demonstrate that by suitably exploiting the characteristics of video streams and human perceptual tolerances, the overhead of such interactive operations can be substantially reduced. We present an analytical model for evaluating the impact of the fast-forward operation on the performance of the disk-array-based server. We validate the model through extensive simulations and analyze our results.