pc's work fine for video encoding. most people will tell you the more ram the better, and i totally agree. that being said, i am using a computer with only 512 for encoding, and it's working just fine for me.

to be specific, i'm using this box:
http://www.mypccity.com/proddetail.asp?linenumber=1182

perhaps things would be faster with another - i don't know much about video - but i have no problems to report capturing, or using sorenson, ulead video toolbox, or several other video programs.

if you're planning to strore a bunch of videos, get the biggest harddrive you can. our raw videos are between 3 and 9 gig each when stored.