ION Audio Video 2 SD/Analog-to-Digital Video Converter to SD USB/RCA/Composite

I got this for the common reason of converting VHS to digital and to send video directly from my old Sony Hi-8 camcorder to a digital file. I thought the process would be simple but it wasn't as easy to get right the first time as I thought.What's good about it is that it can be used as both a MicroSD card reader and as a standalone analog to digital video file saving tool. There are also pass-through ports so you can send the signal that's coming into the box back out to a monitor or TV. It comes with a cable that converts AV input to the Yellow/White/Red RCA connectors and it's meant for output to a TV if you don't have an HDMI cable but it should also work as an input as well. It didn't for me.Here's what went wrong:For whatever reason, on my Sony camcorder I connected an AV to RCA adapter to the camera and then output that to this box. When I went to see the recording it was all jumbled like what you used to see in the 90s when you tried to watch a cable channel you weren't paying for. It looked like scrambled HBO. So I found out that for some reason I have to connect white to white, red to yellow, and yellow to red on my connector for the video to come out right. This only worked with the AV adapter and RCA cables I had at my house. I tried doing the same thing with the included AV cable and just connecting the RCA ends in different configurations but that didn't work.So if you're having issues with the AV to RCA cables giving you scrambled output try ignoring the colors and plugging them in in different orders. I pointed my camera at the box where the cables were connecting, started recording to the SD card, and would say the order of the colors of the cables as they were plugged in from left to right while plugging and unplugging the cables in different orders. That way if one of the configurations worked I would have audio and video of myself saying which order of colored connections worked and have video of it as well to use as a reference later.Once I figured out which connector end of my cable matched the corresponding connector on the Video 2 SD box I took a note of it and took a photo for later reference.Recording direct to the SD is easy. You plug everything in and make sure you have the USB cord connected to a computer or any 5volt USB charging brick (just about any USB wall charger or phone charger will work). Then you hit the button on the box to start recording to the SD card. The light flashes red while its recording. Press the button again to stop recording.IMPORTANT TIP: The manual says not to use SD cards larger than 16GB. I normally only use high capacity SD cards but luckily had a cheap 16GB card laying around to use. The files produced are actually quite small so unless you're recording 50 hours of video in one pass I wouldn't worry about the size limit. I also formatted the SD card to exFAT format using Disk Utility on my Mac before using. FAT32 or exFAT are the formats recommended in the instruction manual.The files that were created on the SD card were AVI format. Normally that's fine and I've never come across a Mac that couldn't play an AVI file but for whatever reason the file was not playable by Quicktime or any app on my Mac. I had to get VLC player (which everyone should get anyway if you don't have it) and VLC was able to play it without issue. In order to share the files with my wife and send them to my iCloud photo library on our phones and Apple devices I used VLC to convert the file to a .TS file. The MP4 conversion didn't work as the video played fine but there was no audio to accompany it.So this thing works but you're going to need to do some initial testing to get the audio and video correctly sent to the box and you'll also need to do a little work up front to ensure that you can play and share the files that are created in a format that works for you. I rate this between a 3 and a 4 but because of the convenience of writing a file directly to an SD card I'm leaning towards a 4 despite all the hassle involved. Without the ability to directly write the video to an SD card you would need an analog to digital video capture box and then you'd need various dongles and connectors to get the digitized video into your computer and then more software to save the incoming video. Because I don't know of any computers that come with HDMI inputs (they're output only) I think that process would be far harder than what this Video to SD box is doing. It's not perfect but it's definitely a lot easier than the alternative.Another thing to note is that this device functions as an SD card reader too. You connect the USB cable to your computer and then hold down the button until the SD card shows up as a removeable device on your computer. You can then eject it normally or press and hold the button again to go back into its normal recording mode. There's really no indicator of what it's doing besides the red button that blinks when you press record so you need to be looking at your computer to see if it notices a new drive attached or not. Honestly, I prefer just ejecting the SD card from the box and using an SD card reader directly on my computer to get the files off this thing. The box doesn't seem to care when you eject the SD card unless its in the middle of recording video in which case your file will become corrupted.The video quality is fine. You're not going to get 4K ultra HD video from your VHS tapes just because it's converting it to an SD card. The output quality of the audio and video is limited by the input quality. You may believe that the quality is actually worse than it is when converted but that's because you're watching it on a digital device. When you see analog video playing on new, digital machines, all the flaws of the analog format stick out like a sore thumb. That's why you can watch a VHS tape on an old CRT or tube TV and think it looks decent but then think that very same video, at the exact same quality, looks awful when played on an HDTV or a computer.So, overall, this thing is a total pain to set up and it's a little annoying to get videos into a sharable format. But it's far and beyond better than almost every other option out there that requires a lot more work, a lot more cabling, and more complex software. Once you've spent the hour or two figuring this thing out initially, it'll pay dividends for years to come. Definitely worth the effort and will save you time in the long run.

Works good.

1- it does not come with a power supply2- The product info seems outdated3- Currently trying to get tech support to see if they can remedy the lip-sync issueThis cheap converter is fine for short home videos but loses lip-sync after about 15 minutes.The audio gets worse as the recording gets longer.The file format is *.AVIThe recordings consume about 1GB per hour.FYI about 15 years ago I tried other cheap converters and they had the same problem.I discovered that Sony DVD recorders can convert old tapes to DVD with perfect audio sync.Then you can convert the DVD data to whatever digital format you want, like mpg2 or mpg4 avi, mov, wmv, etc, etc.==============================update 4/20/22Still no response from tech support regarding lip-sync issue.What a waste of good money.I also have and ION bluetooth speaker.That thing died also. It won't connect via bluetooth any more.I'm done with this ION company.Avoid buying ION products.

Great for my security cameras..it nice at a reasonable price..4 star

The first result was disappointing but after trying some other video tapes it worked surprisingly well. It's easy to use and I'm rather pleased with my purchase. Just be sure to use the proper SD card in the specified format.

IT WORKED FINE WITH VCR. HOW ABOUT DVD?

Got the job done but awkward interface.

Once it's hooked up it will easily record analog video as an .avi file.