VIDBOX VHS to DVD 8.0 Deluxe

Great VHS ripping, great editing options, great dvd burning tools. Reviews that reflect poor quality reflect the quality and condition that the VHS tapes and VHS players are in. I tried three VHS players from Goodwill stores and the third one played the best. TIP: shop Goodwill and look for DVD/VHS combo players. These are the most recently produced VHS players and worked the best for me.

Initial review: Worked well the first day of use. On second day, it was DOA. Works good when working. Serious reliability problems. Revised review: Amazon sent a replacement immediately. Replacement has worked flawlessly for over 40 video tapes. Changed my rating from 2 stars to 4 stars. I would recommend to a friend.

My experience with this product and the support team has been good. I found phone support to be excellent. A young man named Justin, clearly from North America, very polite, patient, articulate, knowledgeable and helpful. Then again, I am a bit more tech-savvy than most users, and I try to be polite to tech support people. Here are some caveats that I have learned. Make sure the little box has a good power supply. Best way to do this is to invest in a powered USB hub. If you have a lot of USB devices chained on your PC, the power may drop a bit to your devices, or so I have heard. I have a couple of powered hubs anyway, so I used one for this device. If your videotape/VCR combination is not producing a good, stable image, you are going to have video and audio problems with this program, such as the intermittent blue screen interrupt on video and ticking audio artifacts. What plays acceptably on your TV may not do here. I was trying to make a digital copy of a film I had recorded off cable many years ago, and I had the issues. Justin asked me to try a commercially-manufactured VHS movie, and the video issues immediately disappeared. As for my audio problems, mea culpa, I had the RCA audio cables in the wrong jacks on the back of the VCR. So far, the thing works OK for me.

I wouldnt say its entirely user friendly but it has helped to get our old home movies from VHS to a portable hard drive. Grab some popcorn, pull up a few chairs and enjoy the movies because you have to sit through them anyways. The problem i had with ours is that at times it would freeze and not record requiring us to have to start over. That was annoying but by babysitting as it was running we had less issues. Some technology just needs to be babysat i guess.... Get it if you got time to kill and do not want to see your home movies deteriorate to nothing, or you can binge on old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Captain Bucky O Hare tapes

I knew going in that this product was likely to disappoint, but having read reviews for many of the other similar products, it seemed they all had their fair share of cons, so I took a chance. The bad: This software crashes. A lot. Without warning. For no perceivable reason. I tried updating the software, downloading new firmware, uninstalling/reinstalling, and nothing seems to work. While easy to use, the software does have some blind spots, most notable in the picture slideshow creator. That part of the software is basically unusable due to lack of option for sorting the photos and creating multiple separate slideshows for one DVD. The good: Even through the many crashes, I was able to eventually get my home movies onto the computer and create DVDs from them. I found that if I simply left the software alone and didnt touch the window at all during the download process, it would not freeze. It was annoying, and certainly not something I should have to do after paying $40+ for a product. I do not recommend this product. The ONLY reason I did not return it myself was because I was downloading home movies from VHS to create DVDs for a Christmas present, and I simply did not have the time to return it and look for a better product. Even on deep discount, this thing is broken and a real pain to work with. Its a travesty that something like this is released and continued to be sold. UPDATE: Three years later. Hi again. I just built a brand-spanking new computer with all the bells and whistles. I thought Id give this product another shot (seeing as how I had some more VHS tapes Id like to digitize) with the new rig. Certainly all those old problems were due to my lackluster budget computer, right? Wrong. The same freezing issues persist even now, with a AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU, 16 GB memory, new GPU, etc etc. I said not to buy this at $40+, and its apparently only gone up in price over the years to $75+. You do the math. There has to be a better option. 2021 Update: No idea why I keep thinking this junk is going to work. Its only gotten worse over the years. Now the video doesnt play in the screen on the computer either. Worst purchase Ive ever made.

Although I have not made use of all the options on this device and software, I have been able to go through nearly 30 VHS tapes and preserve them in digital format, both to my hard drive and to dvd disc. It has been VERY easy. The options to edit are quite limited, however. For example, on a video project, if you have a main clip that you want to fade in at the beginning, then fade out at the end, you cant do that. You are allowed only one effect per clip. If you have two clips, you can apply a transition effect, but only one. So each clip allows one transition and one effect. I also found the text quality very poor. Im using a laptop in 1920 x 1080 resolution, yet each time I open the advanced edit software, it recommends 1024 x 728 or higher resolution, as if I am not already in a higher resolution. When I apply text to introduce a video, it comes out very fuzzy. Its also difficult to find the center of the video. There is no option in a text/ font menu where I might select center text as an option. Whats most important is that I get my deteriorating VHS tapes put safely to digital and retire my ancient VCR, and that I will be able to do and therefore, am very happy with my purchase.

Ive been able to transfer from VHS to DVD fairly simply, but I havent figured out the advanced editing features yet. Im not tech savvy, so I may not be able to do any editing. The directions are pretty useless. But, the DVDs I made played back on my TV/Dvd player as hoped.

I converted 54 hours worth of tape into a 7 hour family film. Great for beginners, easy editing.

I had two copy programs and cords but neither worked. Though not flawless the product worked for me. Sometimes though everything was hooked up properly I had to restart my PC to have it recognize the connections.

For the most part, I like this software/hardware product. I actually am very happy with the hardware. It is easy to connect my old camcorder to my computer and transfer to digital format. I have been putting them (transferred home movies from VHS) on disk drives (I call them thumb drives). My somewhat low rating is for the editing software. If you try to get too fancy making changes, the program stops responding and if you dont save your project OFTEN, you lose all the work (and a lot of time) you put in up to that point. The PDF directions are easy to read and comprehend but it wont let you email it to print from a different printer. (Mine is out of ink right now and I wanted to email it to work so I could print it on that printer.) There are a few other options Id like to see added. For example, there is a title screen and a credits screen in the storyboard editing. You cant copy a photo into either of these screens. It would be nice to be able to do that. It would also be nice to add a picture to the transitions between clips. And, I discovered (during this last non-responsive error) that you can add text to a clip but only to the beginning of a clip. I would like to add text to the middle of a clip, kind of like an editorial during events. I will continue to use this program; I just have to remember to save the project often and find other tricks to make title pages and ending credit pages the way I want them by making a new clip screen and adding a picture. Hopefully, it wont freeze before I get each edit done.