What is a Frame Grabber?

A frame grabber is the usual name given to an electronic board to be installed into a computer and aimed at interfacing a video camera to this computer.

This name is quite adequate for area-scan cameras, which generate image frames. When line-scan cameras are involved, lines instead of frames are generated. Nevertheless, the interface board is still commonly called a frame grabber.

The frame grabber can be categorized in several kinds, according to the internal storage structure:

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Frame buffer-based frame grabbers

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FIFO-based frame grabbers

Another kind of frame grabber is the frame processor, which includes some image processing means.