How resource intensive is it to record a 720p WebCam?

[TechBoyJK]

How resource intensive is it to record a WebCam?

I know this is kind of a vague question. In my basement, I have a bunch of music/band stuff setup and my friends and I always jam down there. I have a decent recording setup, and I want to figure out a way to get a multiCam recording of some of our songs.

I don't want to invest a lot, and with 4 cams on one screen, they really don't even need to be 720p. I think if I'm going to have 4 of them, it's 480x240 minimum needed.

So I'm thinking about getting 4 decent webcams that can do 30fps at 720p and have good reviews.

Will be I ok putting 4 of these on a single USB 2.0 hub?

My rig has 16GB of ram, and I'm also wondering about the feasability of using it to record the video WHILE I'm recording audio.

Thoughts?

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

What are the rest of your specs?

 

[TechBoyJK]

What are the rest of your specs?

AMD Phenom II Black 3.4ghz quad core
160GB 10K raptor (c
1TB 7200rpm data

When I'm recording audio (i have a 16 channel mixing setup using Ableton) it usually only uses 30-45% cpu and about 4-5GB of ram.

I wondering if I can put 4 webcams on it and record them while I record the audio. If anything, I'm wondering if disk i/o might be a problem.

 

[Crono]

It depends on the codec and bitrate, but assuming higher end of 5,000 kbps with let's say MPEG-4, with 4 720p streams, that's about 2.4 MB/s total. You shouldn't have a problem with the hard drive (18.75 MB/s). And a decent hub should allow 60 MB/s so you really should be fine.

Quad core Phenom should be sufficient, as well.

 

[TechBoyJK]

It depends on the codec and bitrate, but assuming higher end of 5,000 kbps with let's say MPEG-4, with 4 720p streams, that's about 2.4 MB/s total. You shouldn't have a problem with the hard drive (18.75 MB/s). And a decent hub should allow 60 MB/s so you really should be fine.

Quad core Phenom should be sufficient, as well.

Cool, thanks!

I'll give it a shot. If anything, I'll build a microPC to dedicate to it. But I'd like to be able to record everything (vid/audio) in one shot at the same time.

 

[CuriousMike]

I'm curious to hear what software you'll find that will allow the simultaneous web-cam streams.

 

[Crono]

I'm curious to hear what software you'll find that will allow the simultaneous web-cam streams.

If he didn't have any specific software in mind, this free home surveillance software should do it.

 

[Railgun]

I've used yawcam. Worked well with single cams and I think it will do multiples.