I recently purchased a Epiphan VGA2USB LR to record presentation video from workshops where multiple people present during the day.
This device is a frame grabber, it takes the VGA input from the computer and makes images, in fact it makes so many images that one can record video at 30 frames per second depending on the resolution.
I have found this device very nice to use with Camtasia.
The particular things I like are:
- No software needs to be installed on the presentation laptop (this is huge!)
- The ability to record what is being presented including software demos and videos (most local sw can’t record wmv video)
- The ability to record a computer without impacting the computer itself, from a performance point of view (local screen recording can be compute intensive)
- Can record wireless audio on a separate laptop
Here is how the video part is connected, speaker audio can be input to the recording laptop (Computer in this picture) via USB or Mic input.
Here is a youtube video of recording using the VGA2USB LR and Camtasia:
Direct youtube link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_qDaeeteRw
If you want a in depth review of this little device, check out this blog post by Victor, it even contains a device teardown to see whats inside.
Enjoy!
– Dom
Dominic Pruitt 
I am struggling to understand how to get a fixed frame rate with this device.
I have set it to limit and fix the frame rate but as you say it seems to vary based on the screen activity.
ANy way that you know to lock in the frame rate??
From what I can tell in using the device, you can only set the upper limit on the frame rate. This will of course depend on the resolution being captured. I’ve noticed that when capturing at 1024×768 the frame rate dips as more things on the screen change, but rarely goes under 20 fps (capturing application & mouse movement). When using 1280×1024, I see the fps go as low as 5-10 fps.
Recently bought this device and have yet to get it working, from a frame rate perspective, within the specifications on the website. My needs are simple capturing 1024×768 at 25 fps. To only way to get acceptable capture (without horizontal lines at times) is to set the hardware compression in the driver to low, this drops the frame rate to less than 15 fps! Am in dialogue with Epiphan via my dealer to try and find the solution.
As a Mac user the first problem was that the Mac driver did not allow you to adjust the hardware compression ( the default is automatic and not a good setting), so waited for the new driver and this does eliminate the qulaitybissue but at the sacrifice of fps.
My unit is apparently a new mark II version and this may be the problem, but can’t get to the bottom of it yet.
Have some examples of the problem on my blog at ttfn.tv/ttfn.
Have had the unit for about 6 weeks now and still not usable. Has been back to Epiphan but they found no problem with it!
So for now if you need quality capture at 1024 x 768 with a fps rate above 15 then this is not the unit to do it.
Mark
Thanks for the information Mark, I live mostly in the Windows world and don’t have much perspective on the Mac side. For most of the things I do (presentation & application capture), I can get by with some of the lower frame rates. If one tends toward full motion capture (30 fps), then the lower frame rates don’t help.