Is there a way to capture the screen as real-time video?

Question

I need to make a video as a demo for one application I have developed. I know that there are some experimental applications that use DDMS and achieve a framerate of 5-6 FPS. This framerate is completely insufficient for my purposes since the application has smooth animations that I would like to show. Is there a way to do a real-time screen capture on Android? Should I settle for a capture of the emulator or a real video done with a real camera?

Answer 1

Among the ready solutions, the one that provides the highest quality is beagle board or some other board with DVI or S-Video out. Second best is emulator.

Answer 2

Apparently, some phones provide TV video output. That seems to be the case of my Galaxy S i9000, which has a "TV Out" setting, providing video output via the Jack (TRRS) connector. Some HTC phones (Droid Incredible) may also support such video output. Then, all that is needed is a small S-Video acquisition card to capture the output.

I haven't tested that yet, but it is reported to work, and should allow to demo all features including multi-touch gestures, which could be hard to reproduce on a beagle board with a mouse plugged in... Plus, the phones have everything installed out of the box, that saves time.

EDIT - 19 Sep 2011:

Unfortunately, using the Samsung S GT-I9000 video output didn't provide good results. I purchased the specific Samsung video cable plus a Terratec G3 video acquisition USB adapter, and the results were not satisfying. The video was flickering, the image was of pretty bad quality, and it wasn't good enough for creating a demo of my app which relies on OpenGL.

So, I purchased a JVC GZ-HM435 camcorder, which records in HD, and that was a lot better. I was able to create a pretty nice video, with very acceptable quality, by positioning the camcorder appropriately using a proper stand. Also, this method better demonstrates the interactivity of the application, because one can see fingers, pinching and all that. It really shows how it works.