Frame grabber

A frame grabber is an electronic device that captures (i.e., "grabs") individual, digital still frames from an analog video signal or a digital video stream. It is usually employed as a component of a computer vision system, in which video frames are captured in digital form and then displayed, stored or transmitted. Early frame grabbers typically had only enough memory to store a single digitized video frame, hence the singular "frame" in the device name, whereas modern frame grabbers often can store multiple frames.