Digitize VHS with the DIGITNOW USB Video Capture Converter!

in my hand here is the digit now brand video capture device this is a usb 2 device that lets you take analog signals from vhs high 8 etc and then turn them into files that can be played back on your computer your tablet or your streaming device and you can also make dvds out of it i'll check this device out coming up on thrifty av this digit now video capture device is quite affordable especially when you compare it to standalone devices it has both an s video and composite video input as well as left and right audio inputs it is usb 2. it'll work with the usb 3 port and this box comes with software that'll allow you to capture edit and publish that video including author dvd this is already out of the box let's back up and check out the unboxing before we get into the box let's take a look at the outside of the box it says capture analog video for your mac pc system requirements uh mac os 10 10.5.8 or later pc windows 7 8 10 or later two gigahertz inter they probably mean intel amd cpu one gigabyte ram built in usb 2 port so this will be usb 2 package video capture hardware and software composite video rca stereo cable in a manual it says you can capture using mac pc ipad and iphone i will be using a pc in this demonstration and it says the same thing in other languages as well let's get into this box okay here is the rca patch cable here is the video capture device now it says dvd maker on the device but you can use this for more than just making dvds we have a thank you card from digit now and it comes with an 18 month warranty has a rather thick book in multiple languages and here is the video capture software i will be installing this software this is a ryzen 3 2200g running windows 10 i'm plugging in the unit it was recognized setting up a device and now it says the device is ready before i install the video capture software i want to see if the windows camera app will work with this device i'm going to do that by plugging the output of this vcr into the inputs here i'm going to start with the s video connection for the left and right audio i connected the rca cable that came with the digital capture device for the s-video i'm having to use my own cable because this device did not come with an s-video cable device manager shows av to usb 2 installed it also shows usb 2 mic installed so both the video and the audio are installed properly using the windows camera app i am getting video from a vhs tape i loaded here but i'm interested in checking out the software that came with this device so i'm going to install it the software splash screen says usb2 video grabber with audio the name honest tech kind of disturbs me a little bit you shouldn't have to say that you're honest that i'm going to go ahead and accept the terms and conditions and install it the bundled software is not freeware it does require you to type in a product key to use it now on a prior video i use the vhs tape touring new zealand to capture some footage so i'm going to use it again because i was not hit with a copyright strike and i also want to be able to compare it to other devices that do basically the same thing now i just set this thing to record i am not going to try to record a dvd on the fly although that seems to be an option with this software i know that my burner that i use with this computer does not keep up very well so i'm not going to attempt to record directly to dvd the video i was capturing has ended so i'm going to go ahead and click stop i've popped in a different tape to explore the options on this software you can pick what video device you're using and audio device you can switch formats to vcd svcd dvd long dvd or wmv that's windows media under dvd you can pick different resolutions 720 by 480 352 by 480 or 352 by 240. windows media really lacks those options but you can enter some tag information i was a little surprised that the option menu does not have adjustments for black level video level chroma hue or chroma saturation switching over to edit you can pull in your footage and do transitions i'm not going to fully explore the edit software here because i use a different edit program for my videos and then burn will let you burn your project to a dvd looking at the media information for the file that was created it is mpeg video version two the bit rate is 8000 kbps width 720 height 480 43 aspect ratio chroma sub sampling 4 2 0 bit depth 8 scan type is progressive the audio is mpeg audio bitrate 224 kbps two channels 48 kilohertz let's look at some of that vhs footage i captured with the digitech video capture device and the honest tech software steam rises everywhere in people's backyards in parks and on a much larger scale along the steaming cliffs of rotomahana the volcanic blast tore a huge chasm right across mount tarawera and left the area a wasteland tongariro national park with its three great mountains tongariro naruhoy and ruapehu crosses several climatic zens from temperate to alpine from dense forests and ferns to hardy alpine vegetation that footage of new zealand looked a little bit soft but i cannot blame the digit now capture device when my source material was vhs so let's feed some test signals from a dvd into the digit now and see how they look and sound first i want to do a contrast test on the left is the source dvd on the right is the captured video and they are a pretty close match next is a sharpness test on the top is the source dvd on the bottom is the captured video and there are definitely issues when the little bars get closer together next is the color bars test source on the top capture on the bottom some of these hues look a little bit off yellow in particular and the red looks more like a brick red on the capture next i used my nabcd to test for stereo separation channel check left channel left channel right channel right channel there was no stereo separation on those channels the noise floor on this device was at about negative 42 decibels watch the green meter toward the top of the screen both loudspeakers on the frequency sweep there was some tapering on the low end the mid-range sounded pretty good toward the high end there were some artifacts but it did take it all the way up to the top i was concerned that my magnavox vcr dvd player might be mixing the audio down to mono so i hook the inputs up to this tascam recorder and i'm going to record this track left channel left channel right channel right channel so the stereo separation issue is not my dvd player i went into the audio properties for this device to try to troubleshoot why i am not getting stereo and stereo just is not an option for the default format so in conclusion this digit now video capture device is an affordable way to transfer your old home videos to modern file formats i'm not worried about the sharpness issue if i'm transferring vhs the hue was close enough and the fact that it went from stereo to mono is no big deal when you're dealing with old home movies because old vhs camcorders recorded in mono anyway if you enjoyed this video smash that like button thank you to my patrons for supporting this channel and remember stay thrifty everyone

Channel: ThriftyAV

Views: 45,424

Keywords: ThriftyAV, Thrifty AV, Thrifty A/V, ezcap, video capture, capture card, usb capture card, video capture card, capture device, capture card review, DIGITNOW, DIGITNOW!, VHS to DVD, usb video capture, SD video capture, usb capture card review, usb capture card setup, capture card setup, vid cap, S-Video, S-Video capture, stadard definition, VHS, VCR, VHS capture, VCR capture, standard definition

Id: uOfFLfDmKLg

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021