how many cameras can it effectively support?

Question

i'm planning to get a computer that dedicates on capturing from video for a security system. I'm planning on 4 leadtek tv tuner cards and each of them has a camera running on Athlon XP 1800+ on debian. Will this program run at decent fps for all cameras? Thanks

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.1
ffmpeg version:
Libraries:	ffmpeg, mysql, postgresql
Server OS:

-- MadOnion87 - 14 Jul 2005

Answer

I assume a Leadtek TV card is a standard TV card with a BT878 chip, a tuner and 1 or 2 video inputs.

If you run 1 camera per TV card you can run at full natural speed (25 fpd in PAL and 30 in NTSC). If you use more than one camera per BT878 chip things run slower. Maybe 5 fps.

Naturally during Motion detection the frame rate can slow down if all 4 cameras detect motion at the same time and you have all the features turned on.

The picture size if also important. There is a 4 times difference between processing a 320x240 picture and a 640x480. Look at the specification for the CAMERA. How many lines does it have non interlaced?. It makes little sense to run at a higher capture size than what the camera will give you.

Having more than one TV card in a computer works great with Linux. I have 3 TV cards and I have heard only success stories with 4 also. So I expect you will have no problem with that.

-- KennethLavrsen - 15 Jul 2005