Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for Mac

This is an amazing product. Works extremely well at transferring your VHS / C-VHS / BETA / 8mm / DVD and any other media images into a digitized format on your computer -- in this case any Mac OSX. But to do so, whatever device you're using to play those formats must absolutely have either a phono video output with at least one phono audio output... or an all encompassing S-VHS output. This product will not accept a coaxial cable input or any sort of upconverting YPB cable links. It only uses old-school phono plugs and/or S-VHS plug. That said, the product really does produce a high quality digital version of whatever you throw at it. It's also very easy to use -- very user friendly -- without all the bloated useless crapware options that generally confuse the crap out of most end-users. This is a really simple, scaled down, useful and effective device that pretty much just does one thing extremely well... and that is getting your old analog stuff digitized over to your computer with a very small learning curve. There's one negative I'd have to apply to it. There's only 3 conversion settings... High, Medium and Low. Unfortunately, none of these three are really suitable for displaying your movies on widescreen TVs. I say that because the Medium and Low settings produce an image that doesn't make use of your TVs full real estate in an acceptable quality. So you're stuck having to convert to the High setting. But here's the thing... That setting will convert a typical 2 hr VHS tape into a whopping 35 G .mov file. That's totally unacceptable, especially if your computer is only a couple of TB or less because it wouldn't take long to fill it up completely if you're transferring a lot of old home videos. It's not even a workable size for uploading to any cloud services. My recommendation is to use that setting anyways and then just re-convert the finalized version from Roxio into a much more manageable MP4 format using any number of free converters out there (even in iMovie) with manual settings that'll sit it somewhere between Roxio's 'High' and 'Medium'. I've done just that and managed to get that 35 G video file from a simple 2 hr vhs tape converted into a very high quality 7.5 G digital file. Picture and audio remain perfectly synced as well, which I totally attribute to the quality of this Roxio product. Just one caveat to all of this... Make sure the video heads on whatever you're using are really clean, perfectly tracked and generally in very good condition. I've found the Roxio monitor software to be very highly sensitive to video image quality fluctuations, which then tends to cause its monitoring window to drop the fed image from its screen -- as though it was momentarily unable to read the feed. After careful and applied experimentation, I've concluded that that scenario is precisely related to dirty video heads. A simple cleaning of those vcr / camcorder heads using a good alcohol based commercial head cleaner will definitely correct the problem -- that is of course if the video head isn't actually physically damaged - and only just dirty. So anyways, the long and short of it is this... Great product. Works well. Learn how to use it correctly.

I purchased the VHS to DVD early in August 2012. I had originally purchased another brand of product to transfer my family VHS to DVD, but found that I needed another product in order to burn the DVDs. Anyway, Roxio offered this product which INCLUDED the Roxio Toast Basicso I could burn the DVDs. I was happy to have an "all-in-one" item. I ordered it and it came, but I didn't look at the box. Once loaded I found out the version Amazon sent to me didn't include the Basic Toast. So I sent it back and reordered, indicating that in the description and on the box it shows that Roxio Toast Basic is included. Amazon shipped me another one, but that one also did NOT included Roxio Toast Basic, so I shipped it back again. I believe what happened is that when I went shopping for the Easy VHS to DVD I found one that was priced at $49.99. When I was having trouble getting Amazon to ship the one with Toast and I'd go to Amazon and search, all I found was the Easy VHS to DVD with the Toast listed at 69.99. In short... I think Amazon boo-booed at the beginning, when they priced the VHS to DVD with Toast at $49.99, then sent me the version WITHOUT toast because I originally paid $49.99.To make a long story short... I returned the second version, I have not reordered another one with Toast because I was waiting for Amazon to credit my account. Because of this snafu, I truly don't know HOW the software works, but I am assuming it will be fine.Amazon is being GREAT about this and is going to send the original version that I ordered WITH Toast at teh $49.99 price. Thank you Amazon. I do like doing business with a company that understands and is so easy to deal with.

Mi única queja es que el empaque llegó roto!!! Fuera de eso, todo bien!

The software was pretty easy to use, and I liked that you could trim clips within the program. I used the adapter with both an old camcorder and a VCR to convert various tapes. It was a slow process because the tape has to play through but I could start it and walk away, and it would do its thing. Maybe just one note, check the video quality settings when recording - it was set to record a VHS tape in HD, better for professional tapes but our home movies were like 360p with a massive file size. I just reduced them in QuickTime after but found that mildly amusing.

I tried cheaper solutions but nothing worked as easily as this kit. After using a different random free software with this other adapter and some other brand's converter and failing to get it all working properly, I bought the Roxio bundle and couldn't be more satisfied. So easy to use and worked right from the start. Converting all our old VHS-C tapes to digital for my wife for Mother's Day this year. There will be tears. Tech support was five stars because although I didn't use the support, the documentation that came with the kit was more than sufficient.