[MPlayer-users] Dream video machine or nightmare?

[Yan Seiner]

I have a project where we're trying to capture 4 video signals.  For 
various reasons, we want to use 1 box if possible.  Disk I/O and CPU are 
going to be limiting factors.

Based on my experience with video capture, I need to be able to capture 
at 640x480 resolution, possibly with no compression if I can get enough 
disk space and disk I/O.  The total length of video is going to be about 
30-60 minutes at a time.  The signal is NTSC, 30 fps.

So, I'm trying to put together a machine with the following specs:

4 video capture cards (BT848)
SMP CPU
SCSI or SATA RAID (I need redunancy; two fast drives in a RAID-1 rather 
than RAID-0 - I can't afford to lose this data)  I might consider 
RAID-10....

Could anyone with some more video grabbing experience suggest some 
hardware?  CPU, mobo, SCSI/SATA controller, etc?  I am partial to AMD, 
but don't mind shelling out the $$ for Intel if it's worth it.

Also, has anyone done this?  Is this feasible?  I want to use mencoder 
to capture the raw data, then post-process it to compress for storage 
and distribution.

Thanks....