Quote Originally Posted by RobF
If I have 4 movies all with a data rate of say 3MB/sec would I need a hard drive with a data rate of greater than 12MB/sec or would it need to be more as all 4 movies are playing simultaneously?

Would the 4 movie challenge be the same as playing back 1 movie with a data rate of 12MB/sec?
playing one movie at 25fps only needs 25 transactions per second

playing 4 movies at 25fps needs 100 transactions per second.

the disc is a mechanical device it takes time to move the head to get the next frame.

so no- 1 movie at 12mb/s is not at all the same as 4 movies at 25fps.

higher data rate movies - have their own set of problems.
different sub-systems in the computer get overloaded.