noob - Very basic setup question

[pithhelmet]

Hi everyone -

I would like to do a test setup here at the office -

I need 10 cameras broadcasting to about 50 machines

The image size should be about 320x240 black and white
with no sound.

I was looking at using the really inexpensive cams -
like the GE refurb units (10 bucks each) - usb version.

What else will i need to make this setup work (aside from 10 pc's)


I will be testing on a closed network (to check performance)

thanks
tony

[markfm]

You'll be transcoding -- can't shovel raw video, must encode it -- so the Servers need to have at least a little oomph. At least a 600 or 800 MHz P4 would be nice, though a faster machine gives you more room for things going forward (and/or higher resolutions -- CPU use scales linearly with the frames per second and the input video size, so a 30 fps 640x480 takes roughly 8x as much horsepower as a 15 fps 320x240).

If you have a faster machine, you might be able to do several Webcams served from one box -- start a couple of separate copies of VLC, each one hooked to the desired input camera. I absolutely haven't tried this myself, but if VLC is able to recognize them as separate input devices, you should be able to. For my work, I use a 3 GHz machine -- that is big enough to do a full frame rate 640x480, plus a bunch of video filters (company logo, date/time stamp), without any issues, and at home I test the same things with a 2.6 GHz -- also no problems.

[pithhelmet]

Hi everyone -

thanks for responding,

the test parameters changed (or i mis-understood, cannot be sure

I will be setting up 10 seperate machines (laptops)
pulling video from a web cam on each laptop -
and sending the data to a "hub machine / recording machine"
and each of the laptops (10) will view the data
of all the OTHER machines output...

sorry about the confusion -

q1) With each laptop sending thier own signal out
over the network - do the other machines just 'subscribe' to
the stream of the other 9 machines?

thanks
tony