VGB100 - External USB Video Capture Card - S Video/Composite to USB Transfer Cable - Grabber Lead for Windows 11/10 / 8/7 / Vista/XP

Following August’s video tutorial on YouTube I downloaded the ‘new’ drivers and installed everything quickly and easily. Since then I’ve digitized about 30 VHS tapes without a hitch. I started with the included software which is basic but works fine. Later I started using OBS which is certainly more robust. It took me quite a while to decide on one of these to purchase as the reviews are uniformly bad from the cheapest to the most expensive units. This one seemed to have a higher number of successful users. I watched the August YouTube video they published in May detailing the installation. It was nicely done and featured ‘new’ software. So I figured I could disregard all the older reviews that complained about the software. Also, most said they had success with OBS. With both softwares the video and audio is quite good, not much loss from the VHS tapes. I have encountered one problem though, that occurs every time I shut down the computer. When I open the software (August’s or OBS) it does not connect to the device. I’ve found that all I have to do is unplug the device, and plug it back in. That usually does the trick but sometimes closing the program and reopening it is also needed. In any event, I’ve never failed to get it working in less than a minute’s time. And once up and running it stays connected until the computer is shut down again. OBS has some odd behavior which was noticed by another reviewer. His review helped me figure it out the first time. What happens is sometimes when OBS is opened I will have audio but no video. Other times, video but no audio. Sometimes neither. Here’s what I found works: If no audio, unplug and replug device If no video, go to Video Capture Device/Properties, if checked, uncheck ‘Use Custom Audio Device’ Recheck ‘Use Custom Audio Device’ and make sure correct device is in the pull down below (Analog Audio in (USB 2.0 Video Capture)). Video appears as soon as box is checked. I’m not sure why this works, but it works every time for me. People have mentioned having problems on newer hardware. I’m using an older computer with USB 2.0 ports and haven’t tried it on anything newer.

I read all the negative reviews of this product with listed issues. Guess what, I got everyone of these problems! The fundamental problem with the product is there is no user's manual that gives you guidance to deal what seem to be common problems that everyone faces. The manual that was shipped with the product is a skimpy installation manual! If you are not patient or have sufficient dexterity, this product will be difficult for you. At any rate, here are the listed problems (I have seen each on!) and the recommended action: 1-"Device busy or not available": This does not happen all the time but the fix is as follows. Unplug the USB converter, push refresh button and it will display the computer built in camera output. Now plug the device back, push refresh and select the capture device 2-" Material is copyrighted": It appears in some tapes sometime more than once. Stop capture when the message appears and restart again. At the end of capturing all the tape segments (this problem may occur more than once in one tape), merge all the files in one using MPG-2 (default capture compression) 3- No Audio: Must select the incomprehensible selection "Audio Pin Source" whatever that means 4- No Video: Must select the appropriate video standard under "Device Setting". In North America it is NTSC-M-J. The real work occurs after capture to merge (project), convert into the appropriate standards and produce (DVD, etc. The "raw" files are huge MPEG-2 high quality (1.2 MB/s, almost 4-5 GB per hour). I am still experimenting with the compression choices but it appears that WMV (Microsoft video compressor) may be the most efficient.

I've tried two different operating systems and several different pieces of software, but had no luck getting this to work. I first tried this device under Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, kernel 4.4.0), and it showed a USB ID of 1f4d:0102. It was claimed by the cx231xx driver and appeared as a /dev/videoX node. So far so good. With guvcview, it would not respond to any ioctl()s requesting frame sizes, and manually forcing a frame size didn't work. I also tried both VLC and Cheese, but each of these just showed a blank image -- as if no video signal were detected upstream. Since the manufacturer never claimed Linux support, I managed to put together some spare hardware and install Windows 7 on it. Neither the installation package for the drivers nor the application software included on the CD were very impressive, and they are apparently affected by some critical bugs. The capture software (ArcSoft ShowBiz) would easily get into a state where it would complain about being unable to open the capture device; some other reviews mention this, but I didn't find any of the possible fixes to be helpful. ArcSoft has apparently discontinued support for ShowBiz, so I don't expect these problems to ever be fixed. During the rare moments when the capture device was correctly detected, the software only gave the option of capturing in one of several different PAL or SECAM standards. This was not especially useful, since my input source is NTSC.

Geweldig om oude banden terug te zien en natuurlijk te digitaliseren.

Bad bad bad product not working in any ways

Der Markt für Video Capture Adapter gibt Einiges her - da sich die Geräte scheinbar alle ähneln, ist man als Kunde leicht verwirrt, für welches man sich denn nun entscheiden soll. In technischer Hinsicht unterscheiden sich die angebotenen Adpater alle nicht sonderlich - es sind im wesentlichen dieselben elektronischen Komponenten verbaut. Ich habe zum Vergleich ein deutlich teureres Set von Magix herangezogen - der dort enthaltene USB-Adapter war nahezu identisch mit dem vorliegenden hier, nur viermal so teuer! Der August VGB100 Adapter hat bei mir auf Anhieb sehr gut funktioniert: Aufgabe war es, einige VHS-Videos von "Ausflügen" mit der Bundeswehr zu sichern bzw. letztendlich auf eine DVD zu bringen. Den Adapter habe ich an einem ca. 6 Jahre SONY Vaio Notebook per USB 2.0 unter Windows 7 angeschlossen. Von der Herstellerseite habe ich mit die aktuelle Software heruntergeladen und installiert. Den Adapter habe ich mit einem Thomson Videorecorder verbunden: Composite Video (gelber Cinch-Stecker) und Audio (weißer und roter Cinch-Stecker). Über das Vorschaufenster in der mitgelieferten Software läßt sich das Videobild abrufen, hier kann man auch ganz einfach die Aufzeichnung starten. In der Regel braucht man auch eine besonderen Einstellungen in der Software vornehmen - bereits mit den voreingestellten Standardwerten lassen sich gute Ergebnisse erzielen. Die aufgezeichneten Videodateien lassen sich anschließend recht bequem bearbeiten, z.B. Anfang und Ende zurechtschneiden. Auch der Weg zur DVD ist einfach und weitgehend selbsterklärend, nur die Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten etwa beim DVD-Menü sind überschaubar - aber es ist alles dabei, was man braucht. Die von mir erstellten DVDs ließen sich bisher auf jedem Player problemlos abspielen! Fazit: Ein sehr guter Video Adapter zum Sichern alter DV- oder VHS-Kassetten auf dem PC. Mit der mitgelieferten Software lassen sich die überspielten Dateien leicht auf eine DVD oder in andere gängige Videoformate bringen und somit für die Zukunft sichern. Für wenig Geld bekommt man hier alles, was man braucht, um alte VHS- oder DV-Archive zu retten.

Fournie avec mini-CD, adaptateur Péritel/RCA, câble RCA. En ce qui concerne le mini-CD censé fournir drivers et logiciel d'acquisition : d'une part, il ne fonctionne pas dans tous les lecteurs que j'ai pu tester, et d'autre part, il vient avec un logiciel que je ne souhaite pas utiliser, qui installe probablement tout un tas de cochonneries en même temps (et en plus : il oblige à installer drivers et soft en même temps). Clé installée pour commencer sur une vieille machine sous Windows XP exhumée d'un placard (car je ne voulais pas polluer une machine de travail) : j'ai téléchargé les drivers sur Internet (faire une recherche pour "driver vgb100", et on accède au site d'August qui permet de télécharger les drivers seuls pour Win XP, 7, 8 et 10), installation sans problème après branchement de la clé (il faut tout de même savoir installer manuellement un driver sous Windows, depuis le gestionnaire de périphérique). Après cela, j'ai testé quelques logiciels gratuits d'acquisition vidéo, mais ma machine sous XP était trop lente pour encaisser les débits vidéo. Je me suis donc résolu à installer la clé sur une machine récente sous Windows 10 : après branchement, Windows n'est pas capable d'installer les bons drivers tout seul. Donc, là encore, j'ai utilisé les drivers téléchargés pour une installation "manuelle". Après cela, aucun problème : clé reconnue et fonctionnelle. J'utilise finalement le module d'acquisition intégrée à VLC, cela fonctionne très bien (menu "Media" puis "Capture Device" ; bien choisir "SECAM_L" comme format). Au final, la qualité de mes vidéos reste assez moyenne (surtout pour le son), mais : 1. Cela est probablement plus dû à la qualité des vieilles cassettes VHS + magnétoscope lui aussi vieillot. 2. Cela reste tout à fait potable, et appréciable de récupérer des vidéos qui ne s'abîmeront plus avec le temps.

I have tried a few of these VHS converters from other brands in the past with not much success. But i can finally say that this product does work, and works great for converting VHS videos to PC format! So here are a few tips to make this work perfectly. I repurposed an old Windows 7 PC without any network connection for this task as i did not try this on a Windows 10 PC. I have found that many of these VHS converters have driver and performance issues in Windows 10. That being said, i booted up my Windows 7 machine, plugged the device into the USB port, Windows tried to load the drivers in which it failed (and its supposed too) then i put the included driver/software disk in, loaded the software and the drivers from the disk and everything started working as it should! I rebooted and started copying my first video to the PC with no issue at all. NOTE : you have to have the device already plugged into the PC before trying to install the drivers and software off the disk! This is KEY! If you are running Windows 10, from what i understand you should not use the included disk, you will have to go to the manufactures website to down load the driver software in which i have not tested. If you are trying this to capture HD content over the component out of your device the results are not very good. Do not use this device for HD content, you will need an HDMI capture card for best results. But for plain old VHS/Older Camcorders this device works perfectly!!