Video capture - Anyone help me please?...

[Chadford]

...well not me I'm trying to help a friend.
Here's the scenario.

My friend's a composer and performs contemporary music concerts. To accompany his music he also displays a video sequence (~1 hour long) using a laptop plugged into a projector.
He uses a modified version of Fractint running on a really old IMB laptop (Win95).

The problem is...
1) He is worried that this old laptop will die at some point soon.
2) He has lost contact with the guy that modified Fractint.
3) He does not have the source code for the modified Fractint.
4) The modified Fractint runs too fast on a modern laptop.


He would be happy to somehow get a DVD of the of the sequence and use the DVD instead.

The output he uses is from a standard VGA output - I think the resolution is 800 x 600.

He has tried a cheap VGA to composite converter (~£20 from Maplin) to try and record to DVD, this does not work well.

I have considered using a modern laptop with his Fractint and running CPU crippling utility but I don't think this work as part of the sequence runs correctly on a modern laptop but some of it does not (too fast).

I think the solution is to use some form of capture unit.

Can anyone suggest something that has a chance of working?

...also can anyone suggest where else I can post this request for help?


Thanks.

Edit: 'Fractint' is a very old program that displays fractal images that can morph from one into another. His modified version allows secondary images to blend in an out using varying transparency and colour transitions linked to the fractal being displayed

 

[Iccz]

I know this isn't really directly answering but could they not move to a different piece of software? Something like Electric Sheep?
about electric sheep | electric sheep

Recording what he has would be quite a task as the problem is an old machine like that would struggle to run the appropriate capture software to record it while running the software for the visuals, you'd probably find it'd struggle.


I don't know much about the software mentioned, maybe someone in the software boards might, or even General Chat... but unless it has a way to export to some kind of video or even single images named in some order then I'm not sure what much you can do.

 

[Chadford]

I think using new software to generate his images or even getting someone to re-write the modified Fractint is an option but it would be an awful lot of work to reproduce what he already has. He considers the imagery he has created as an integral part of the overall work and as such I know that creating something similar (not identical) would not be an option.

I guess another idea would be to buy up a number of old laptops of a similar specification to the one he's using, again not ideal.

I'm sure there must be some form of capture system out there somewhere?
I wonder if some sort of Telecine capture would work? Hmm.