Choosing Your VGA Capture Device – Cost vs. Quality
Capture and grab – these are new terminologies relevant to electronics devices. Technological advancement enables DVI and VGA capture of signals. How can you capture the signals and what will you choose as device? VGA capture is the chosen device!
There are several methods to capture a VGA or DVI signal. The captured signals can be from different sources such as computer, projectors, radars, medical devices or servers. Different solutions had been designed to capture the VGA signals; they can be simple and inexpensive or they can be costly high quality solution devices.
The screen casting or screen recording software has been used before the VGA capture solution. The advantage of the VGA capture is the absence of software to be installed on the source equipment. The captured signal is a one to one copy of the VGA output. Once the video has been captured, these data can be broadcasted over the web. They can also be archived for future viewing. Furthermore, they can be edited. Video capture will be through an internal PCI card, known as capture card. This card is similar to a frame grabber, a device to capture video stream, transfer the captured data into a PC readable format. Other names given to this card are VGA grabber, VGA capture card, VGA capture device or RGB capture card.
Types of VGA capture devices
1. VGA to video converter
These solutions are low-priced. They have marginal quality and low frame rate. This is a device that captures VGA signals and changes these signals into video signals such as RCA component or S-Video. You can view these signals through your television. For this device, you can use any video card that has a video-in that will record the video signal into the computer. Or – you may use an external capture device to record your output. The resolutions for this low-priced marginal quality VGA capture is relatively low – 640 x 480. Some users who are not very choosy can be contented with this VGA to video capture solution.
2. Frame grabbers
Frame grabbers are more expensive but they are high quality and fast frame rate. They also have high resolutions. The price of this device can be three times or more of the lower-priced devices. Frame grabbers grab analog VGA signal, then the captured signal can be converted into digital USB stream which can be read by your computer.
The VGA to video solution will be used by users who are not very particular of the quality of the capture and people who have a tight budget. Most however still prefer the USB and PCI frame grabbers because of the quality of output.
The two types of frame grabbers
- External over USB – The manufacture of high quality external (over USB) frame grabbers are manufactured by Epiphan Systems.
- Internal over PCI – Manufacturers of the internal (over PCI) frame grabbers are EMS Imaging, foresight Imaging, Unigraf, PixelSmart and Ncast.
All these devices (VGA to video and frame grabbers) can save the captured images as series of pictures such as JPEG and PNG and video file such as AVI and MPEG. Some support Windows Media Encoder or Quick Time Broadcaster in order for the user to broadcast and share the captured VGA stream. The frame grabbers capture high resolution images – sharp in colors and high frame rates.
Users of VGA capture devices had to be decisive in choosing between the low-priced and the expensive one. Choosing a lower quality device may lead you to regret the low resolution output. It is best to read and research on these applications then find out which is most optimal.