VLC as a video surveillance monitor for 2-4 cams?

[soon]

I have a number of Axis M1054 IP cameras (which I belive can stream in mjpeg or h.264)

I want to be able to switch back and fourth between 2 (maybe up to 4) such camera-feeds and view+record the currently selected feed (incl. sound)

I'll want to do this with as little CPU work as possible, whereas storage is less of a concern.

I'll be doing this on win XP and linux platforms.

I can buy an expensive dedicated video surveillance app to do this, but will VLC do it for too?

I hope so, and I'll gladly donate some $ if VLC can do this for me.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

It's probably easiest to run 2-4 separate instances of VLC... each recording and displaying one camera.

[soon]

That would be fine, but also more CPU intensive, no?

Should I go with h.264 or mjpeg? As far as I understand, h.264 playback is CPU intensive (more so than mjpeg?)

-Soren

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

As long as you don't transcode, you should be fine.