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.

I purchased the VIDBOX Video Conversion for Mac (2020) (VFM1M) to convert some VHS tapes. The box contains the VIDBOX device, an RCA cable, a USB cable, some download instructions, and a manual for use. Downloading the software on my 2014 15" MacBook Pro (running 10.14.6) was straightforward with the instructions. Using the provided cables, it was easy connecting my Panasonic VCR to the VIDBOX device, then connecting the VIDBOX device to my laptop. The software is lightweight and simple to use: it walks you through the setup each time. I was able to very easily set the storage location to a folder on my NAS. Before recording, it prompts you to estimate the expected length of recording. I've been setting that to a value a good deal longer than my actual tapes are, just to make sure it doesn't stop recording before the tape ends. Note that for converting VHS tapes, recording requires you to play the whole tape at normal speed. The runtime of your tape determines how long it will take to record it. I've only done VHS, so I don't know if the same goes for other media. Once you're ready to record, you just click the record button and press play on the VCR. This step gives you a playback window with a live view of the video as well as a little audio mixer that indicates the levels of the audio is being recorded. You can regulate the audio level in realtime with a slider. Other than that and the ability to select the aspect ratio, the software does not provide any other modification tools. Recording does not stop automatically once a tape finishes playing; you'll either need to manually stop it, or allow the timer to run out (this is the max value you set before you begin recording). Once recording is complete, it offers you the option of opening the recorded file in either the storage folder, iTunes, or iMovie. It creates an mp4 file for converted VHS tapes. At this point you're done! I have converted almost 4 hours of VHS tapes so far and I'm very pleased with how easy and straightforward it has been. Keep in mind: the quality is going to be as good as your source media and the equipment on which you're playing it back. Overall, I'm very pleased with this tool and would recommend it. It's straightforward and does what it claims to do. It doesn't magically improve the quality of your media in any way, nor does it claim to. It simply converts it for you and that's all I was looking for.

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 VIDBOX es, 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!!!!

It’s hard to accept that I may have recently purchased a $70 paperweight disguised to look like a product you would use to convert old videos to digital but it’s looking that way. I’m going to give the company a few days to respond with hopefully some good news but I have a bit of a deadline and I don’t have months or even weeks to sit around on this useless technology. Unfortunately, this incompatibly apparently started literally right after I purchased it and I just wish I had gone onto their website to see the product disclaimer before I updated my mac software to Sonoma earlier today, which ironically is also the same day I have attempted to use this Vidbox for the first time. I suppose it’s at least good that the disclaimer is now on their website but it doesn’t help people that already had purchased the device and there should be a disclaimer that it’s completely incompatible with the latest macOS in the product description on amazon. My Macbook pro air m2 does not recognize the device driver so it seems that for now I’m SOL and may have to consider going ahead and investing in a competitor’s product (which now I’m terrified that other companies might be as incompatible as Vidbox but I have to try something while I wait) and hope there is good news in the next few days or I expect a refund.

I received the VidBox this past weekend, and well, I must say I was very impressed with this way of saving all your home movies from VHS tapes. Quality transferred is as good as the quality that has been preserved on the tape. The older the tape, the less the quality, and that’s no fault of Honestech technology in its little box. A real no brainer. I have saved over 16 hours of video since Tuesday. I’m using a MacBook Air running OSX Yosemite Ver 10.10.5. The Honestech software was easy to install and hookup and loaded without a hitch. After you have installed the software, just plug in the composite cables to the Vidbox, then to the VHS recorder with the yellow, red, and white cables, and you’re ready to go. Just be sure to plug them into the Video out and not the Video In, when connecting to the recorder. The intuitive software walks you through the set up and recording. I love being able to preview the recording before I set it up and while recording. Not knowing exactly how much time I had on each cassette tape, I would put the tape into the recorder, press the fast forward button on the VHS player, write down the time on the display when it reached the end, and I was able to determine the exact time I had to set the recording. Really easy. I could set it up, walk away, and come back later, so I didn’t have to sit and baby it. It, also, gives you many options in which to save the video. Being able to save them to iMovie, gives me the ability to add banners, music, titles, and cut areas out that are bad on the tape, or parts of the video that I didn’t want. Undoubtedly, the easiest and most affordable way to save all your home videos before they are ruined through age. I recommend this to anyone looking to preserve memories on their VHS cassette tapes.

I have a number of older video tapes that I needed converted and I looked around for a reasonably priced option that yielded good results. I decided to give this a try. Previous problems with software not working with certain versions of Macs have seemed to have been solved. You get a link to download the latest version of the software and there is a card in the box with the activation key. You get all the cables you need...a USB to connect the box to your computer and the audio and video combo cable to connect your VCR or other device to the box. If you want better video quality and your device has an S-video output, you'll need one of those since that cable is not provided. I had no problems getting it going right out of the box. The picture quality is pretty good. I had some issues with only audio being recorded and I'm not sure why. I didn't think I was doing anything different but I've solved the issue. Every time I finish one recording, I exit the software completely after saving the video and restart the software from the beginning. I haven't had any of these issues since doing that. Once you have have the file on your computer, you will need additional software to record this to a DVD if you want or just make sure these video files are backed up safe somewhere. I think its a pretty good option for the price point and will get those old movies saved for a good time to come.

I had some 8mm cassette tapes made with a 20 year old Sharp Camcorder, which I wanted to convert to digital format on my computer. The camcorder has only one outlet for a cable connection. I ordered a video converter that was priced around $100 on Amazon, and it was supposed to work with either Windows or Mac computers. I have two iMac computers. I could not get that converter to work on either one and ended up returning it. Later I ordered this Vidbox for Mac. Although there are other converters, somewhat cheaper, that are supposed to work with either Windows or Macs, I was willing to pay a bit more for one that was designed just for Macs. And it works! The instructions are fairly easy to understand and set up was easy. You first download the driver, either from the enclosed CD or from the internet. Since I have a CD reader with my Mac, I used it. Be aware that during the registration process, you might get a message saying you are not connected to the internet. Just ignore it and proceed. I did run into a problem connecting the converter to my camcorder. The cables that come with the converter will not connect into a single outlet, but rather require a three pronged RCA connection. I tried using another cable that converts a one prong connection to a three prong cable, but this would not work. Then I tried the cable that came with my camcorder, which has one prong at one end and two (white and yellow) at the other. This one did work! Of course it carries only one sound channel to the computer, but my camcorder only had one sound channel anyway, so no problem. My tapes are about two hours long, so it takes two hours to convert them. But again, this is no problem, as you can proceed to use your computer for other things while the conversion process is taking place. The only problem here that I ran into was that I had trouble locating where the files were stored on my computer. I didn't pay enough attention to where it was putting them when converting. But I finally found them. This converter does not provide tools for editing your videos, so you have to use iMovie (included on most Mac computers) to do this. I'm in the process of trying to edit some of mine (cutting out blank spaces, joining two segments together, etc.), but that's another story not related to this converter. Overall I am very pleased. I haven't tried using this converter for VCR tapes yet, but I assume it will work just as well with them. If not, I'll later edit this review accordingly.