VIDBOX Video Conversion Suite

Been meaning to get a device to archive all my old DV stuff for ages. Now I can, and now I have.Plug and play is fairly idiot proof. To be honest, I was amazed at how easily it worked. The software that you download (and register with a code) from their site is quite intuitive. Basically, you select your source and then you can preview the footage with a small window (double click to go full screen!) and then you can choose the length of the clip, or even just choose a start and stop point. The files get saved to a folder on your computer and then you can watch them with ease.I have not even needed to bring these into an editing program but I imagine it is very easy to do so; at the most you will need to convert the clips to a file that is readable by your editing software.In these modern times where everyone just digitizes and clouds stuff, physical media is nearly obsolete. So much to the point where I had to buy a power adapter for my DVCam deck, no idea where the original one got to. Though I have a fair amount of "finished projects" backed up in digital form, there were still some missing pieces on the tapes in the box. I now have the ability, if I chose, to dump ALL the footage onto external hard drive storage. The original footage is only DV so it takes up very little space.The price is a little high for a really small little device, but all those shoe box memories are priceless, right? If you're like me and haven't watched those old VHS or DV tapes in years, this is a nice stroll down memory lane.Consider the price it would cost to get these "professionally transferred" ...you'll be saving hundreds! Even with no computer savviness and even if you have to buy some old equipment to make it work, it is totally worth it. You get a lot more satisfaction (and privacy ;-)) doing it yourself.

This product works great with Windows 10 and 11 - none of the problems that there are with other products. Took me 10 minutes to set up and then I was off and running. Very easy to use. The only tricky part is that it uses the same output name for every file created on the same day, so be sure to rename the second one (and more) or it will overwrite the first one you did for that day.

The media could not be loaded. I pulled the vidbox converter out of the packaging and plugged it all in to my VCR and windows 11 laptop and it worked like a charm with the vidbox software that I downloaded from their website. I was a little bit confused as to which software to download but realized that there was a software package with a name that matched the name directly above the license key in my paperwork, "Video Conversion for PC", and I downloaded that software, put in the license key and started using easy mode but I wasn't happy with the graininess of the footage. At the end of the Easy capture it asked me if I wanted to convert it to MP4 so I did and the file size went down considerably. When I plugged the VCR directly into my 65" Sony 4k TV the footage was a lot cleaner than the file I got out of the vidbox, Grrrrrr!I decided to try again. This time I used the advanced mode. It wasn't a ton more complicated to use. I boosted the saturation from the default of 32 up to 40 and I reduced the default sharpness from 4 down to 0. Then I recorded in mpeg2 mode. I did not convert the file to MP4 the 2nd time and it worked.The second mistake I made came in post processing. It has nothing to do with vidbox but I thought I would share anyhow. When I turned my video clip from vidbox into a movie using the free program "Windows Movie Maker" I chose to Save the movie as "Recommended for this project" which turned out to be a low definition 480 resolution MP4. When I uploaded the movies to youtube they were super grainy. Later I used "Windows Movie Maker" again and tried saving the movie as "For High Definition Display" which produced a 1080 resolution MP4 file. This didn't show the graininess when viewed on my 65"4k TV. I was finally happy with the results when I uploaded the movies to youtube.I'm not sure using advanced mode and changing the settings for saturation and sharpness made all that much difference. I'm pretty sure the most important steps were (1) don't convert your vidbox file to be an MP4 and (2) save your finished movies as HD files before publishing to youtube.The vidbox case itself feels a little bit tinny. The circuit card is a bit loose in the vidbox tool. Didn't seem to cause any issues though. I would buy vidbox again. FYI, I did not get a discount for writing this review. I'm just a guy that had some VHS tapes to convert to digital.

This is the second device of this type that I had purchased to digitize VHS tapes, and it is by-far the better of the two and works exceptionally well. I am working with tapes from the 80's till the 00's and this little Vidbox device just keeps chugging along and helping me to preserve beautiful memories for years to come.I like the functionality of the app that you need to use to record the tapes onto your computer, I am using Mac OS Catalina. There is a small viewing window to watch the videos as you're digitizing but the window size is not able to be increased. Would be great if there was a volume control on the app as well so that I can still do other things as I digitize but that isn't a big deal.Would buy this again, the price tag is a bit higher but when you're dealing with otherwise forgotten memories, it's well worth the price!

Easy to use