A frame grabber is an electronic device that captures individual, digital still frames from an analog video signal or a digital video stream. That’s the official version of a video frame grabber. It sounds like corporate speak, doesn’t it? It not as hard to understand as you think!
A video frame grabber is a single frame captured from a video. It’s the same as when you use your cell phone to take that real life picture. In real life we are moving pictures and when you use a camera or cell phone to take a picture it’s grabbing a frame of your life. It’s the same with any video and it uses software or hardware to grab a frame of video.
When you go to the ATM and get money out there is a video frame grabber taking your picture every 3 to 6 seconds, depending on the bank and their security system. When video security systems first came out they had to keep the number of frames down because of hard disk storage. Now, they can record as long as there is movement in front of the camera but some systems still use frame grabbers.
Today, video frame grabbers are used in all walks of life. Google Earth uses them to take snapshots of everyplace on earth so you can see your house from space anytime you want. Radar, remote guidance systems, medical companies, scientific research and most technology fields use frame grabbers to capture images at high frame rates and resolutions.
Everywhere you go there are video frame grabbers hard at work. They can use hardware such as video card, USB and digital cameras to capture frames. With a few cables the images can be uploaded to your computer, edited and out on the Internet within a few minutes.
You can grab frames from analog (TV), digital (cameras or camcorders) or right off the Internet. You can use video frame grabber software to capture any frame from a video or movie you like and make it into a background for your computer, send it to your friends or print it out to hang on your wall.