VGA Capture and record?

[shifterkart]

Hi all, I have searched this question, but I did not come up with anything simple and solid.

I take AutoCAD training classes, in class we all have our own work station and the professor takes control of our monitories via some types of ab switch, so we can all see his screen.
They are allowing me to “capture” and record the entire training course as long as I do it by only tapping into the vga at my terminal.

I have looked around but I have not found any simple workable solutions to record these lesions via the vga. I would like to bring in a laptop and send the video to the laptop to be recorded.

Someone suggested recording the lessons with a camcorder, which is fine, but the 2 problems with this solution are the refresh rate not matching producing that dark bar on the screen and the overall quality. I would be willing to explore this option more if I could get the camcorder to record at a matching rate. How about a web cam? I have no experience with web cams.

Because I am recording a software lesson the frame rate does not have to be very high. A little mouse pointer blur is fine.

Thanks for any and all feedback.

[yoda313]

ask them if they will allow software recording. There are multiple recording software that can capture screen activity into avi files. That might be more feasible and probably cheaper.

[shifterkart]

Thanks, but I cannot install any thing on their computers, not even a USB charger or device of any kind. It is not about security or copyright. They are simple adamant that any method of capture has zero possibility of corrupting their systems in anyway. The only 2 options for capture are: A) Hands off. Something like a camcorder pointed at the monitor or B) VGA capture.

It is an unusually courtesy that they provide, and that is as far as they are willing to go. The rest falls on the student.

So have any solutions with a budget of 2K. These classes in their entirety cost 10K++++ so some students are willing to spend the cash to preserve the lectures for future reference.

The school is trying to put me in touch with some of the prior students that did VGA capture. But, it is not high on their list of things to do. My classes start in 2 weeks.

Thanks,
SK