Capturing video from a VGA out into another computer

[jitsuphil]

Hi everyone.

I'm doing a project where I want to be able to plug the VGA out (or possibly DVI or HDMI) from my laptop into a capture card in my main computer. From there I'm going to record it.

I understand that I could just install a video recording program onto the laptop, but don't want to do that, I'd like to keep the laptop untouched if at all possible.

I've been looking online and have had trouble finding capture cards of this nature. Can anyone suggest a VGA/DVI input card or box that can help me do this?

thanks!

[victoriabears]

does your laptop have a svideo out , and if you have a dvd recorder, do it that way.

However you are really making life hard for yourself, whats the end result required and for what use?

[poisondeathray]

Have a look at the black magic intensity pro, it has HDMI input as well, which very few cards have. It has breakout cables for the other inputs. But it might be overkill, depending on what you want to do...

[jitsuphil]

Hi victoriabears, my laptop doesn't have svideo out, it does have VGA out and HDMI out. I'm acutely aware that this is causing trouble for myself, I'm hoping to make a system where I can plug my laptop video out into my server which has some big screens, so I can display the desktop, record it and send it to others. Rdesktop/VNC/etc. are too low bandwidth and the framerate is crushing if trying to stream a youtube video for example.

Hi poisondeathray, that Blackmagic Intensity product looks sweet - if my budget can handle the dent that would be ideal. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks for the advice so far, I'm going to keep researching along the lines of this Blackmagic card so I can deal with the video stream in software.