Easy, Fast, and Cheap Solution That Converted ALL My VHS Tapes.

I had box after box of unused VHS tapes that are now converted to an acceptable mpeg 2 format for use on my media player. Its basic, you aren't going to light the world on fire with this $55 software but you can easily, quickly, and cheaply convert all of your old VHS to DVDs in a snap. And isn't that what life is all about?

Pros: Easy to Install/connect, Cheap: under $60, Fast - as much as real time can be I suppose

Cons: Cheap construction flimsy plastic, Little/No customization of preferences, bad conversion to Quicktime


Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for Mac
Overview:

I had boxes and boxes of VHS tapes, ones that I bought, ones that I shot on camera and many of the purchased VHS I had not intention of replacing with DVD. So I had to find an easy, fast, and cheap solution to convert ALL the VHS tapes I owned. I found Easy VHS to DVD for Mac on Buy.com for about $55 and decided I would give it a try.
Box Opening Extravaganza:

Not much to it actually. You receive a usb dongle with RCA (composite) and S-Video squid cable inputs, a CD for the software,
and a slip of paper that is supposed to pass as a manual of some sort.
The dongle was cheap, light plastic but for $55 I wasn't exactly expecting pig iron with gold-tipped connectors. It is what it is.
Installation:

As with all Mac peripherals and software, its one or two steps and or clicks and away you go. I plopped the CD into my Mac and double clicked the install, pretended to read the licensing blah blah blah, and then selected the destination drive. It took about 30 seconds to install.

I then simply plugged the USB into my mac, plugged the audio composite cables (red and white RCA) from the output of my VCR into the connectors hanging from the dongle, did the same thing for the video/picture output of my VCR to the dongle and then, for kicks, tried to run the VHS conversion software right away to see if it is "smart" enough to find the dongle without a restart. It is not. I needed a restart. Once I did that. It was ready to go. Very easy to install.
The Software:

Yes, Roxio, vanilla called and it wants its flavor back from your software. The provided software is BORING and featureless with a very spartan interface, but for $55 I wasn't exactly expecting Adobe Creative Suite 5 or anything. Its very basic as I mentioned, You get an introduction screen to name your video and to set the approximate length of the video and the quality to set it to.

Easy VHS to DVD for Mac software sets up its own folder deep in your "movies" folder without telling that it has done that. You have to go into the sparse preferences menu to set a different folder for it to capture to.

The estimated lengths of video are on a pull down menu of 15, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 180 minutes which is ok unless you have a 45, 75, 105 (most Hollywood movies), or 145 minute movie, in which case, you will either have to babysit your VHS conversion to manually press "STOP" or be content with a HUGE waste of time and space at the end of your movie. More selections of time allotments please Roxio. The quality selection is High, Medium, or Low which is strange because, you wouldn't want any less quality than the "high" setting: medium is horrible, low quality resembles something shot on a late 90's treo phone.

After you've selected this criteria, you move to the hardware connection screen where it detects where your picture is connected, and it is here that a preview screen is up. I would recommend running the VCR just to make sure you are getting a picture. If you are, click continue.

This brings up the next screen which is the audio hardware connection screen. This can be tricky on a Mac because you have to go into your system preference pane with audio and select the proper input for the entire computer system so that it knows to gather and process the signal from the right place. Macs are not too good in this area even with all the other Mac advantages, audio is NOT one of them, sadly.
If you see the green audio bars resonating across the blue/grey bars at the bottom of this screen, audio is working, click continue and away you go.

This brings up the final screen which is the big fat red recording button and the little button at the bottom which says "Automatically stop recording after ___ minutes" I would use this button religiously unless I came across a video at a length in between the presets and I didn't want a bunch of blank video and dead file space at the end of my movie file. So I toggle that button "on" with a check when I don't want to babysit the conversion process. click the big fat record button and the software and dongle hardware are now converting the VHS tape to an mpeg2 computer file.

When completed, another window pops up allowing you have the option of:

• Sending to Quicktime (converting to an Mp4 - which I DONT recommend)
• Sending to Imovie, which is OK if you want to try to edit your movie • Sending to to Toast (convert straight to DVD through the provided toast basic software.)

I have no interest in DVDs anymore so I just simply took the mpeg2 file that is automatically created by the software and used it on my Seagate Freeagent Home Theater + player (see my review here on Epinions) and that is the highest that the quality gets with this software, otherwise for the MP4 it takes the mpeg2 and FURTHER compresses it to garbage ville and I was dealing with artifacts, digital hits, dropouts, and HATED the final product when exporting to Quicktime on MP4.

If I wanted mp4 I would just bring the mpeg2 into a piece of freeware software called Mpeg Streamclip and convert it there. The Mp4 conversion using Easy VHS to DVD is garbagio.

Its not quite as bad for the DVD conversion, it converts the mpeg 2 to an M2V by transcoding and that is much easier for this software to handle, actually, it is a scaled down version of Toast that burns the DVD, it is very easy to convert and burn a disc, its only a matter of a few clicks and you've now converted 80's technology into 90's technology! Congratulations!
Hardware:

The device itself is cheap plastic that when the weight of VCR cables running into the stubby composite inputs on the dongle cause the plastic device to 'droop' the device doesn't hold up well. Handle it delicately. That being said it set up in a cinch and does EXACTLY what it says it does, it provides an analog ito digital input into your system. I can't argue with that.
Overall Picture/Video Quality:

It has its imperfections. I get acceptable picture with sync'd audio and it seems a fair replication of the poor VHS quality that I started with, so I don't have an issue with it. I am 99% certain that the hardware device is nothing more than a very cheap analog to digital 'capture' card with no compression capabilities whatsoever, but I could be wrong. It appears to me that all conversion to mpeg2 takes place in the few minutes of processing that follows a successful import.
Wrapping It Up:

With everything being said, I don't advocate copyright infringement but in my little post-napster world, I feel that if I purchased videos and/or 'cassettes' and the technology is no longer viable, I can convert it to a current viable technology without violation of conscience so long as I get rid of the old format, which in the case of VHS and Cassette tapes, I do. I just throw them out basically because who would want them? 

So disclaimer aside, I had box after box of unused VHS tapes that are now converted to an acceptable mpeg 2 format for use on my media player. The only tapes I had an issue with were VHS-C home videos that I shot in EP...I just had to give up on those. But even store bought EP VHS (cheapie documentary) tapes gave the device some problems.

If I were still caught up in the DVD world, I would have been fine with the DVDs it made, the software allows for colorful menu themes and neat little tricks that only 2001 could offer. Its basic, you aren't going to light the world on fire with this $55 software but you can easily, quickly, and cheaply convert all of your old VHS to DVDs in a snap. And isn't that what life is all about?
3-1/2 stars out of 5. Its a cheap, fast, and decent conversion app and hardware. Its got its flaws in makemanship, conversion quality, and features. But it does the job.

The Bottom Line: 3-1/2 stars out of 5. Its a cheap, fast, and decent conversion app and hardware. Its got its flaws in makesmanship, conversion quality, and features. But it does the job.

Recommended:
Yes