[Old Version] Roxio Easy VHS to DVD 3 Plus Video Converter for PC

I recommend this product 100%. I would say I am a 'moderately tech savvy' person and I had absolutely zero problems installing the software (my computer runs on Windows 10 Home) and it worked like a charm. I bought this product it a couple months ago (in October) to convert all of my family's old VHS home movies as a holiday project for the entire family. It worked great, I converted over 30 VHS tapes with ease, then later copied the files onto flash drives and also uploaded videos to a private family YouTube channel. It was a huge hit, and required only this product and time -- no need to expensive conversion or shipping tapes off to another company. Some additional information that you may find useful:The device itself doesn't have a very long cord (it's a connector) but that is really not a problem because the VCR I used of course had its own RCA cable that was attached to the TV. I just took the VCR and RCA cable (that's the red-white-yellow cable) and set it next to the computer and plugged it in. The adapter has both an RCA (red-white-yellow) connector and an S-video connector, so in addition to using a VCR, any video input that comes through one of those types of connections can be imported.Also, the software can be used to create and burn DVDs (it can make a DVD menu, and you can combine multiple videos into one DVD) or you can simply record the video input directly to a file and save it to your computer. This 'quick edit' mode also gives you the ability to trim the video start and end points (or create multiple pieces of video) and save those to a single video file, which is very convenient. Highly recommend this product, five stars!

Though you can convert a VHS tape directly to DVD with this program/hardware combo, most likely you're going to want to convert your tapes to files on your computer first and then assemble them into a project for burning (or uploading to YouTube, etc.). The dumbed-down interface can be pretty frustrating, so here's a few things I learned which you may find helpful.First: when the program starts up, there's two giant icons. The one on the left is for converting a video directly to a DVD. The one on the right is for starting a project, opening the last project you were working on last time (most programs just do that by default), or you can choose a different project. Create your new project, and then import the video (easy peasey). Now you have a video in your project. There's no "save project" option, but that's ok, it's saved. You can close the program and your project is saved. But let's assume you do that: you close the program and come back later. You start up the program, and there's those two icons. Where's your project? Use the icon on the right, *or* go to File, Open Project. Ah, there it is. A project, by the way, is just a container for your videos. You can convert a bunch of videos into one (or more projects), and when it comes time to burn a DVD or whatever, "import" your files into a project and you're ready to burn.The video files remain on your computer, just make sure you don't check the box that says "and delete the source video while you're at it." Which leads to...Second: where are my files? By default, it puts them in your User/Video folder on your C: drive. Again, go up to File and go into Preferences, and you can select where you want your soon-to-be-huge video folder to be. A 30 minute video tape equals 2GB of file space, and it adds up quickly. If your C: drive is running out of room, change the default directory, under Preferences. It may take the program a few tries to figure out what you did, but it will find the files eventually. (It's not the brightest bulb on the tree, this program.) By the way, a regular single-layer DVD holds about one hour's worth of video (4GB), and a double-layer DVD holds 2 hours (8GB).Third: If you don't title your video BEFORE you start recording, it's too late. You can't change it now within the program.Wait till the recording is converted, close the program, and go to the file itself using File Explorer in Windows. Rename the file. Reopen the program, open your project. It will panic and say "I can't find the file!" It's looking for "My Video" or whatever dumb name it gave your video file. Just use the Import button to re-add the file (with it's new name) to your project. Phew! Wasn't that Easy?Fourth: The program will build a nice title menu on your DVD, using the filenames of your source videos (see above). HOWEVER, if you decide to use the transition option (add wipes/dissolves/etc between videos), the program gives you a menu with just the title of the first video in your project. So, if you burn a DVD with, say, two videos on it and a transition between them, all you'll see on the menu is the first video. DO NOT PANIC. Both are there on the DVD, with a transition between them. Only use the transitions if you want to combine videos into one unit. Oy.The program and hardware work as advertised. No bells and whistles here, just basic convert your VHS tapes before they deteriorate stuff. It does the job. You can edit the video before burning it -- simple clipping of sections, that's all. So when that ex-girlfriend or whoever shows up in the video, you can cut that part out. Not that I would know about that. Heh. The S-Video cable did not fit my old VCR camera, so I had to use the RCA jacks (one for video, one for audio) which resulted in one-channel videos. You can use a Y-adapter, I suppose, to get around that.So, that's it. I hope you find this helpful. By dumbing down the interface and supplying insufficient instructions, this "Easy" program took more work than usual to get to work. But it does work. Good luck!

Corel tech support deserves all the bad ink they’re getting. I contacted them four days ago, and so far all I’ve gotten are emails suggesting I try their knowledge base, which I can’t seem to navigate at all, and a support code allowing me to submit my question on a website that doesn’t list Easy VHS to DVD 3 as one of the programs it supports. So if you want tech support, don’t buy this software. Nevertheless, this software has worked for me except for one confusing glitch, and I think my experience may explain why there is such a wide variation in the evaluations here.First, I had no problems with installation. I’m running Windows 7 in a two year old machine with plenty of speed and memory and hard drive, but it’s no hotrod. I had no problems with overheating of the USB. The converter got warm but not hot.My first project was simply to put a one hour video onto a DVD. To do this, you put the DVD into the optical drive and it burns while you’re running the VCR in real time. So the process took an hour, but the result was a DVD that did play in all my DVD players. The picture quality was horrible, but when I looked at the VHS, I found its picture was just as bad, especially blown up on a 48 inch screen. I didn’t see significant degrade from the VHS to the DVD.But then I wanted to put four half hour videos onto a DVD. To do that, I first recorded the four half hour clips onto my hard drive and then tried to burn them onto a DVD. After an hour and a half, it said twenty percent of the job was done, and nothing had been burned onto the DVD. So, since I’d read all the bad reviews here, I assumed the program was stuck and gave up. That’s when I tried to get tech support unsuccessfully. But eventually I tried to burn a compilation DVD again, letting the process run, expecting an error code. Instead, after two and a half hours, my two hours of videos were burned onto a DVD which has a menu and plays on all my DVD players. The glitch is that the progress bar never got over fifty percent. The DVD was finished when it said it was only 48 percent done. So the progress bar is completely inaccurate and had led me to believe that the program wasn’t working.Because of this, I find I prefer to burn DVD’s of compiled videos using another software. Roxio VHS to DVD 3 Plus did capture the VHS videos and convert them to mpg files on my hard drive. Roxio Creator (I have just the Starter version, but that’s adequate, and I suspect any video burning software would work) will burn the mpg files onto a DVD, and I can watch it doing this in a way that doesn’t leave me wondering what’s going on.So I can see why people who are converting one whole video at a time onto a DVD are perfectly happy with this product. As are people who are putting VHS videos just onto their hard drives to watch from there. But anyone trying, as I did, to burn a compilation of videos onto a DVD gets frustrated, believing that it’s not working and then gets even more frustrated with Corel support.