VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac

The only quirk of this is during set up when it asks to have access to your computer's camera without explanation. I said "no" and that was critical. What it actually needs is not your camera, but the video connection which the camera happens to share. So it didn't work after I said "no" and I couldn't figure out why. Tech Support responded very quickly and I reinstalled and said "yes" and voîla!, it's worked fine ever since. (They are taking up my recommendation to explain and clarify this weird request in the instruction set up as there was no mention of the implications of saying "no" or why they need it.)All that now said, I've digitized about 20 VHS tapes so far. I just pop a tape in my deck, set it up on the software then hit the record button on the software, hit the play button, and it records in the background while I work. You can view the progress of the recording anytime on the software's small screen. Best to use gold tipped RCA jacks to maximize connectivity and clarity. There's a Video Composite jack, but read up on this as it is controversial whether it gives you better results than RCA jacks. You decide.A convenient feature is that you can set the time of the recording to match the length of your input tape.It digitizes into an .mp4 format. The only tricky thing is that if you want to edit, say in QuickTime, as soon as you trim a section, the .mp4 file immediately turns into an "untitled" file, so you need to save it as a different file. (I suppose it's a safety feature so you don't accidentally overwrite what you've just recorded.)FYI: a 2 hour VHS tape = about 3.25GB as an .mp4 or .mov file.This little converter and the software works very well and does what it is supposed to do: convert your old analog tapes into digital format. You of course need whatever deck for whatever kind of tape you have to plug this converter into, and after conversion, you are free to do whatever you want with the .mp4 files. This just converts it into digital format and does it well.I shouldn't have to add this, but there's always someone who will ask this or think it somehow possible, so I'll answer it here: as one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, nor squeeze blood from a turnip, nor get water out of a stone, you cannot get Hi-Def (HD) video results from 30 year old VHS tapes that were made well before "HD" was even a concept. You can't get "Hi-Def" out of "low def", which is what VHS and BETAMax and all those analog tapes were. What you have on the tape is what you will get in the digital product of an .mp4 file. No better, no worse. This is not a "magic black box" that will turn your ugly old washed out color VHS or Betamax 480p tapes into hi-resolution full-color 1080p or 4K digital images.It just transfers your analog tapes at whatever quality you took them at to digital file format (.mp4) and does it simply and well. Good product. Highly recommend it.

We have boxes of old VHS tapes around the house and I've been afraid of losing access to all the video on those tapes.The VIDBOX Converter is allowing me a chance to digitize all our old analog VHS Tapes so that we can keep the memories stored on the various tapes we've amassed over 50 years.Setup was really easy. You connect the composite video (yellow) and stereo audio (white and red) to the back of the VIDBOX and plug the other Yellow, Red, and White cables to your VCR. Then, simply plug the USB cable on the back of the VIDBOX to your computer.The VIDBOX Conversion software allows you to pick what media device you plan on using in order to record the footage directly to your computers hard drive. You name the file, pick the aspect ratio and then hit record. Once you hit play on your media device, you're able to see a preview window of what you're recording.For a two hour video, the file size was around 4GB.Really that's the only downside to this process ... you have to record everything in real time so whatever the length of your tape is, that's how long it'll take to capture the footage. Regardless of how long it takes, I'm so glad that there is something like VIDBOX so all the home movies we've filmed over the years are not lost.Oh, and I can't say enough good things about the customer service that I received from the kind support staff at VIDBOX too.I know that when I was looking to purchase something to digitizing our tapes, I didn't mind paying for a product that was a little expensive as long as it worked. I can 100% confirm that the VIDBOX does everything it promises to do!

I got this VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac because I have literally dozens if not HUNDREDS (maybe more!) of VHS videocassette tapes. I have BOXES, BOXES & BOXES (at last count I counted a half dozen big boxes FULL of tapes, but there are probably MORE in storage!) of VHS tapes, most of them unlabeled (either because I was too lazy to label it at the time and never got around to labeling them AND/OR because I reused & taped over some of them more than once and didn't see the point of wasting extra labels which I didn't have to keep re-labeling them) that I wanted to easily convert to digital files.Originally, I had gotten Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 Deluxe device & software in November 2011. But I'd never used it, mainly because a lot of my VHS tapes were stashed away in brown cardboard boxes that were either stacked one on top of the other in a spare room, or were kept on the top shelf/shelves of closets that at 5'1, I could not easily reach (and there was nowhere else to put them without them being in the way). Thus, I wasn't really inclined to spend time struggling to get them down (and risking the boxes falling on my head!) and having to go through each one of the dozens or hundreds of VHS tapes, manually rewinding and fast-forwarding to try to figure out what was on each tape and whether its something I wanted (or needed) to keep & convert to digital or just dispose of, as is.Also, I never ended up using the Honestech VHS to DVD software because it had Windows-based software and I was having a LOT of trouble with Windows computers. Which is why, after years, if not DECADES of issues with Windows PCs, I switched to Mac in 2013 (December 2013 -- my family gave me a MacBook Pro as a Christmas present) and I got this VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac in December 2014.But I'd never used it until now (September 2018), because of the aforementioned lack of inclination to move/go through the stack(s) of boxes, manually rewinding, fast-forwarding, and playing & recording/converting dozens or hundreds of VHS tapes.Eventually though, I got so sick of all the mess & lack of space (and therefore, lack of organization) of the things I DID/DO want, due in part to all these tapes creating massive clutter. So I decided to make use of this VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac and turn the videos into digital files, thereby condensing the BOXES & BOXES of dozens or hundreds (or even more!) bulky and largely obsolete VHS videocassettes into a couple (or hopefully, no more than just a few!) high-capacity MULTI-terabyte hard drives in order to dispose of the numerous tapes, and de-clutter/pare down "stuff" as much as possible. In the same vein, I am also looking & comparison shopping for a hand-held wand scanner to scan magazines, books & other paper media and convert those to digital files as well and donate, sell, or recycle/upcycle the hard-copy versions.At this point, I have now converted maybe a half dozen or so VHS tapes as well as SEVERAL recordings from my TiVo Series 2 single tuner DVR which is hooked up to my home's/family's AT&T U-Verse service (even though our/their U-Verse service includes DVR, after stuff that I'd recorded, was deleted from the DVR by other family members, I decided to get another DVR that was totally under my control) to free up some space on my DVR. Eventually I'd like to completely clear off all the recordings from that TiVo both because its pretty old & becoming very noisy, and also, as such, I want to make sure that the recordings are saved before the TiVo and/or its hard drive crashes completely!Meanwhile, after having converted a half dozen or so VHS tapes and multiple DVR recordings, I have to say that, for the most part, I'm relatively happy with this VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac. It is easy to use and seems to work well. Not necessarily in this order, but you connect the USB cable to your computer and red-white-yellow AV cables and/or the "S-video" cable to your VCR, camcorder, TV/antenna, DVD player, game console or set-top box -- and then (again, not necessarily in this order) depending on whether your Mac has a CD drive or not, you just download or install the included software. If your Mac has a CD drive, there is a provided software CD, and for those without a CD drive, you can download the software from the website (as I did for the MacBook Air [my mom's MacBook Air] which I used/am using to convert the videos, since at the time I started, the MacBook Air had more memory than my MacBook Pro) and install it with the password code written on the sleeve of the included software CD. After the software is installed, and the cables are hooked up, you open up the app, and follow the easy step-by-step process choosing what type of media you are converting (VCR, camcorder, TV/antenna, DVD player, game console or set-top box) and what type of connection (AV cable or S-video) and the duration of the recording and selecting where you want recordings saved to get to the record screen. Once you get to the record screen you just press play on your media and when it starts playing in the preview window, press the record button, and that starts creating the digital file from your video. Also, if like me, you don't necessarily know the duration of the recording you're making, you just select an approximate time longer than what you think it would be, and you can always manually press the "Stop" button to end the recording early if it is longer than you want. Once your recording is finished, there is a variety of options to make use of it, including burning it to DVD or uploading it to iTunes or iMovie or just leaving the saved file as is, as I'm doing for now, until I've gone through all the tapes and decided what to keep & convert and what to dispose of. Because, some of the videos I've converted, which will probably NEVER be available on commercially-produced DVDs/Blu-rays or online streaming in HD, I'll probably upload to my iTunes library, whereas videos that *may* be available later on, in better quality and/or with more features (like DVDs/Blu-rays with "extras") I'll probably just keep as saved files on my hard drive and use QuickTime to see it when I want.Though the video quality is definitely not 1080 HD quality, its still pretty decent, especially for VHS recordings from the 80s, 90s and early to mid 00s, and those videocassette tapes have NOT been stored in the most ideal of conditions. Besides since the majority of the videos I'm converting was just stuff taped off TV (such as episodes of soaps like General Hospital and "One Life to Live" and "All My Children") its not really necessary to have to have top-of-the-line, crystal-clear HD quality. In my opinion, as long as its viewable & audible (and it is, or seems to be, so far!) and it will not deteriorate now (which, as far as I know, it shouldn't, as a digital file on a hard drive) its good enough for me. If that's not good enough for you, then you should probably consider getting an HDMI to USB video capture device instead, in order to be able to have HD video quality -- although if the recording you are converting is from VHS videocassettes, chances are that it wasn't an HD recording anyway!All in all, though I'm pretty satisfied with this device & software, I do have a few minor quibbles (hence the drop of 1 star!)For example, I don't particularly like that the software insists on users selecting the exact duration of each recording instead of giving them the option of whether or not to set the time period of the recording ahead of time, OR just adjust it themselves manually later on. Because with this software, users can STOP it manually before it ends, but they can NOT increase the time later on (if the recording is longer than they thought) without scrapping the whole recording and starting over from scratch!Very irritating!Also, it would have been nice if, along with the AV and S-Video ports, they had also included ports for the red-blue-green component video, and even an HDMI port. Because some of the newer devices may or may not have the red-yellow-white AV port or an S-video port but rather only the red-blue-green component video, or in the case of devices like Apple TV, only HDMI port. So it'd be nice if they had made accommodations for those. But since I mainly got this VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac to convert my numerous VHS videocassette tapes, and my VCR only has the red-white-yellow AV cables, its not that big a deal.Last but not least, I wish that this device/software had a "pause" button option while recording so that users could pause recording for scenes/parts (or commercial ads) they don't want recorded/converted but WITHOUT having to edit it out later on!Other than that, I'm pretty happy with this product so far. It does what I need it to do, and given the amount of VHS videocassette tapes that I need to go through, I'm even considering getting a 2nd, 3rd or even 4th or more VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac software/device, though I only have access to a 2 or 3 Mac computers (including the MacBook Air I'm currently using, I also have MY MacBook Pro, as well as a Mac Mini) and maybe a couple other VCRs, so at some point, it wouldn't matter even if I had more VIDBOXes, because I still wouldn't have enough Macs and VCRs to connect them to! Nevertheless, I like this product enough that I AM considering getting a 2nd, and maybe even 3rd one to hook up to the Mac Mini and MacBook Pro, to be able to go through & convert as many of these tapes at a time as possible!In other words, I really like this product and think its simple way to convert whatever VHS tapes may be clutttering up & deteriorating in your closet or wherever, to a permanent digital file that can be burned to DVD, or uploaded to iTunes to be synced to your iPod, iPhone or iPad or left as is, on your hard drive. GREAT device and GREAT software. Very pleased!★☆★☆ 4 STARS!!!!