Number of simultaneous cameras

Ever since I updated from OBS classic to OBS Studio I've been having problems with my 2008 iMac which only has four USB ports and according to system only has two USB 2.0 ports.

Someone told me the limit to the number of cameras is the number of USB 2.0 ports natively available. I was planning to update my 2008 to 2014 but wasn't sure if I should update my 2012 to a 2014. Whether I buy one or two depends on the answers to the following questions:

If the computer natively has four USB 3.0 ports if it could be thought of as multiple USB 2.0 ports for each 3.0 port in terms of the camera limit. And therefore 5 USB 2.0 sources would easily fit.

I also got a 2012 iMac running the current version of obs using OS 10.13. there are only four USB 2.0 ports but there is a firewire port and a thunderbolt 1 Port. Is there a way I could pipe either my video capture card or use a FireWire camera to get my fifth source?

Also I heard the Apple OS could handle way more cameras than obs. Is there a way I can have a subscreen as the left eye and a subscreen as the right eye and then have a third screen take half the image of the left eye and half the image of the right eye as three separate scenes and combine them into one stereo image? Like treating the outputs of one scene as a source for another scene I guess that's what the virtual camera is.

At most I'm going to need is five or six capture sources two stereo cameras and one TV source that may be 2D or 3D.

Will a 2012 Mac Mini be able to handle five video sources, as in one main 2D or 3D game and two 3D cameras using two separate cameras to make the left and right eye?
 
Main question: can the latest OBS for Mac OS 10.13 handle 2 stereoscopic cameras and one video source? This will determine whether I buy 2 or 1 retro but later Macs.
 
I think I got part of the equation you have to look inside your system to see how many USB ports you natively have. I have four USB 2.0 ports but according to the system it says it's 2. I assume it's for USB ports sharing 2 ports of USB 2.0 ports worth of traffic. So slightly less then a gigabit per second, since USB 2.0 is 480 megabits per second.

Since I got a gigabit of USB traffic and since unplugging One camera makes another camera work, would lowering the resolution lower the traffic quantity pushed by a single camera? Also if I'm going to do 3D with throwing the color saturation to negative 100% give me a monochrome picture and save traffic and then from there make the left eye red the right eye cyan and add them up in an RGB plus fashion to save bandwidth on my cameras while conveying the 3d effect.

I don't have much outbound band with anyway so would that make sense? Reducing resolutions and monochroming the 3D instead of two independent eyes?
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Understand that number of USB ports and the sustained throughput of a USB Root Hub are often different (especially on consumer systems). Search this forum on USB Root Hub and associated troubleshooting tools for more info
 
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