Recording a PC's VGA ouput...

[doowrehs]

Hi there,

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum...couldn't decide which one would be most suitable.

OK - my problem is this: I'd like to capture the VGA output signal of a PC on my PowerBook and record it. In theory, I plan to simply detach the VGA cable from the PC's monitor and plug it in to my PowerBook via the DVI/VGA port (using the DVI/VGA connector - although I might have to mess around with male/female connectors). Having done that, I'm hoping that Quicktime will recognize it as a video source and I'll simply be able to select 'New Movie Recording' from the file menu, thereby creating a .mov of the PC's VGA output.

How does this sound? Am I heading in the right direction or hopelessly off base (and if so, any advice?)?! I know people will probably say, "just try it and see!", but I don't have access to a PC until the day I'm supposed to do the actual recording - and I don't want to mess it up.

BTW - the reason I'm doing this is because I need to create a Dreamweaver tutorial for some Windows users. I know it would probably be much simpler if I ran Dreamweaver in Virtual PC, but I can't afford to buy VPC right now.

Thanks for any input!

 

[mkrishnan]

Umm, unless I majorly misunderstand you, the biggest flaw in your plan is that the DVI/VGA port on your powerbook is an output, and not an input. It is there to send data out to the screen -- you cannot use it to bring anything into the computer.

I think you will need some kind of hardware digitizer card or device, such as EyeTV, etc, etc, to do this.

The other option (could you explain why this will not be acceptable?) is to use software on the Windows computer that captures the screen as a video.

I can help you look for such software, although I haven't used it in great detail. It will output a video file of the screen capture on the Windows computer, which you can then transfer easily to the Mac.

 

[generik]

Just use one of those utilities that takes rapid screen captures. It works better that way

PS: Hey, even movies are only 27 frames per second

 

[Counterfit]

You want something like this, except for Windows.

 

[robbieduncan]

Whilst it's mostly for games fraps might work to capture the movie on a PC.

As noted above you have no hope of getting it to work the way you are talking about!

 

[mkrishnan]

Here are Windows examples:

http://www.mandsoft.com/index.htm
http://www.etrusoft.com/screen-recorder/

 

[Sun Baked]

There are $100-$300 Firewire boxes used to capture Digital/Analog video signals.

You can use one of these to capture the PC video signal.