Capturing live VGA video to AVI

[eljainc]

Hello,

I saw a posting on DVDRHelp that someone was asking something
similar. I am trying to capture a live VGA signal and store to an AVI
or MPG file. There are some problems/issues that we are facing however:

1. Our video source is VGA (800x600x16 bit). We would not like
to use a VGA to TV or VGA to NTSC converter. We have not found
a decent quality one available. The Focus TView Gold was supposed
to have some advanced features, but it turns out they were not so
advanced.

2. We would like to acquire a portion of the VGA desktop, not
everything on the screen. For example, the total desktop size is
800x600, but the region of the video that we'd like to capture is
roughly 640x480.

3. We need a portable solution, or one that is portable enough, since
the observer is constantly travelling to different locations and acquiring
video.


Currently we are using an Archos AV120/AV140 to capture video
by converting the VGA signal to composite, then recording realtime
to DIVX. The quality is okay, but the text is not very legible if the
text size is rather small (12 point or less)

Some tactics/ideas we've discussed are the following:

1. There is a product called VisionRGB / VisionRGB Pro, which
capture a VGA signal. It can capture up to 1600x1200 (Pro version).
It is a half size PCI card. It captures RGB/VGA data. With this, using
the SDK, it would be possible to save as AVI. However the VisionRGB
would have to be in a computer (and rather powerful one at that)
to do realtime encoding to DivX. The VisionRGB is from $1000-1300
though (yikes)

2. On the host system, have one of those programs like Camtasia
or other screen capture programs running, saving as many frames
per second as possible, outputting through a USB/Firewire connection
to a second computer which stores the AVI file. I don't know if
this would slow down the host PC (the one with the VGA out) too much
as to make it much less responsive.

3. I really don't like this solution, but one of my colleagues does. Connect
a small LCD VGA monitor (under 10") and have an analog CCD camera
focus on the portion of the screen which we require the video. To the
composite output of the camera, we could connect the Archos AV120
to record the video realtime. I think this would yield the poorest
possible quality video of the three. My colleague mentions that we
could build a self contained unit (under 1 ft square). A smaller LCD monitor means that the unit dimensions could be smaller.


Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions? I see that someone
mentioned the Grand DVR master, which takes in composite/VGA/RGB
video, compresses, and then outputs data via USB 2.0 connection.
I am trying to find out how much this thing costs.

Thanks in advance.
Mike

[fingernailX]

http://www.ggvideo.com/vsc100.htm

Today, we used the above to record a State of Florida Dept of Education webcast to DVCAM on a Sony DSR20. This was for replay to faculty and administration. Quality is excellent and the resultant tape can then be captured via firewire like any DV device and you can do whatever you want with it. We have also used to record students flash/multimedia projects for inclusion in news broadcast and campus cctv channel. You get what you pay for.

[eljainc]

I talked with someone at Extron about the VSC100. It is discontinued and has been replaced by the VSC 500. That carries a hefty $1300 price tag. And yet it does not even do what we need. They have a VSC900 model, which allows for variable zoom, but this model is $4K, and is quite large (rack mount). This is definitely not for the average consumer. I really wonder how much better they work than a TView Gold or other converter.

[andkiich]

Check out camstudio in the TOOLS section. I tested it out the other day, grabbing some flash animation. It allows for customizable capture size and you can use different codecs as well. There is a bonus too, its FREE.