FYI: Legacybox is also known as Southtree and Kodak Digitizing. They're all based in the same building in Chattanooga, Tennessee and offer the same services and poor quality, with slightly different pricing and marketing. As confirmed to me by Hayden at Kodak Digitizing, items sent to these three companies "will all be processed the same way by the same technicians."
@securitycountercheck Kodak were among the first to offer digital cameras? I was under the impression that they invented the concept and deliberately patent-trolled it to prevent cannibalisation of their film sales.
@@MixerVMThe first digital camera on the consumer marketplace, the Apple Quicktake 100 of 1994, was made by Kodak. They invested heavily in digital photography in the 1990s, and by 2005, Kodak was the top-selling brand of point-and-shoot digital cameras. But profit margins were low and competition was strong, and they couldn't keep up with the likes of Canon, Sony, and Nikon. Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012, but emerged from bankruptcy in 2013 and is still in business today. They've even resumed making Super 8 film and cameras. Unfortunately, this Kodak Digitizing service run by Southtree has nothing to do with them aside from licensing the use of the name.
@@MixerVM First digital camera was made by a Kodak engineer in 1975. It stored its data on an audiocassette. It's in the Henry Ford Museum's collection now; it turned up on their CBS Saturday morning show _Innovation Nation_ about a year ago.
Hey, first of all thanks for the video. Hopefully it will get over a million views since that company is a total desaster. So i've always wanted to record some N64 footage and already found a proper S-Video cable. I've looked aruond to find a good, cheap S-video capture device but the often recommended Elgato Video Capture for aruond 100$ is just too expencive and since you mentioned a cheap (15$) S-Video recorder at the end of the video i wanted to ask where you got yours and if it works with a PAL N64? I would highly appreciate answer.
Wow, very thorough video explaining your experience with this service! I started converting my own VHS tapes to digital back around 2000 and my father has used services to convert his old 8mm and super 8mm tape reels to digital. I cannot recall the service he used, but it was expensive, yet the results were outstanding. I think reviewing several of the services would be greatly beneficial to the audience, albeit a lot of work as well...
"...will scan every frame..." BS. That was not "scanning every frame" - that was projecting it and filming it with a video camera - not individually scanned frames.
By the look of the crisp edge it's maybe a (cheap) TeleCine box. Looked like that when they "adjusted" it. A decent TC can still be high quality, but this sure aint that. (it is basically videoing the projection, but done properly) I wouldn't be surprised if they just jury rigged an old shoe box in front of the projector and videoed it though. Still an appalling job either way, and they couldn't offer individual scanned service at that cost, so that was a red flag too. I just looked at their Amazon review and the don't even rewind some VHS tapes which would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Exactly lmao. I’ve had films transferred by a random guy in Italy done using a similar process to this and it looked better. No skipping or anything of the such, even with the low quality.
That's exactly what they did. I had a old projector that jumped like that. I took it apart one day and cleaned it and the problem went away. But considering you can buy a digitizer to convert any film size for around $150 bucks these days, I'm thinking this company is a low budget operation.
Classifying the supported noise reduction types and wether they do stereo microcasettes or only mono as "proprietary information" is already raising a big red flag for me - those are not "proprietary", but normal specs, and them saying "we won't tell you because of excuses" might as well mean "no" to me.
There's a free Dolby B software decoding program available on GitHub...I tried it and it worked...it encodes too....and there's source code included...so no, not proprietary...
Unfortunately most people would be sending plain old cassette tapes in, or VHS, maybe a Beta tape. Just because it's tape, most people would simply expect the quality to be bad and would probably be just fine from the outcome they would get. I bet that's how they are getting away with this.
Yeah, I find a lot of people think that VHS tapes disintegrate and are just horrible. If they're stored right, and you have at least a half-decent VCR (not a Kmart special Magnavox from like 2003), you can get excellent results. And disintegration? I have a tape that turned 39 years old today, and one knocking on the door of 40. Both play very well, though the original recording equipment was not great.
@@VectraQS Tape condition is hard to predict. When i was in elementary school a classmate took a home video to class for a show and tell thing, and that tape maybe was just 10 years old but already full of dropouts and bits where it only went black and white. Meanwhile, my own tapes have held up great. TV recordings from that same era play like the day i recorded them. But many people have issues with video tape and reliability.
@@VectraQS I feel if you understand how to take care of a piece of technology no matter what it is, 9 times out of 10 that piece of technology is going to last a long long time. But if you simply don't fully understand how that piece of technology works therefore might not take the best care of it, chances are it's likely to not last as long. Many, many people fall under this category, trust me I work in IT lol.
@@mfbfreak I'd chalk up a lot of these issues to VCR incompatibility. I have a JVC HR-VP412U. My dad bought it back in the '90s. I have to keep it around because the EP recordings from that thing will not play back well in anything else. Your classmate's tape was probably played back in a relatively modern deck. I remember my grade school once got the local TV meteorologist to come give us a talk. He brought along a tape of tornado footage and he couldn't get it to track on the brand new VCR. I have two Sony SLV-N750 machines and they do not like to play any EP recordings but their own. Of course, there are tapes that do in fact degrade (looking at you, Ampex!). But, for the most part, bad VHS quality is because the tape is physically worn out from use, the original recorder sucked, or the playback VCR can't track the tape.
@@mfbfreak that reminds me that a tape which was being played when a sudden thunder storm hit was black and white from then on out.. I guess the EM field strength wiped out the colour subcarrier? PAL territory here, so maybe it just screwed up the phase alternation, idk, I was very young :)
And the worst part is that people who are not expert in the audio/video topics, just receive the box with the digitized files, watch them and probable say "Wow! they really converted my tapes into digital files, this is amazing! what a great company! The picture quality is not very good but that must be because the tapes are too old".
How much deeper can they dig themselves in the "clarifying" hole? They literally claim that they are using "professionals" and "professional scanners", and then later "clarify" that they don't have the resources to do "professional grade" work (30:50).
@@eviloatmeal don’t think there are 200 professionals, maybe 2 in their moms basement with gear they found at a junkyard and don’t know how to fix and use. The cassette tape looks fine to me, guess the cassette player they found on a dump stopped working 😁
@@ingenfestbrems Yup. False advertising comes in many shapes and sizes. But claiming that they are doing professional work with professional equipment, and then "clarifying" that they are not doing professional work, and not using professional equipment, is pretty much as blatantly false as advertising gets.
@Abram Sutton If you can convince them to agree on a definition of "professional", then I'm sure you could take them to court on account of that, yeah.
I'm glad we have people like you Kevin who can hold these idiots to a higher standard. They're scamming people out of hundreds of dollars for shoddy work that ANYONE with a computer can do.
_Actual_ quality work would take hundreds of dollars. Any shmuck can just capture videotape onto a PC with a VCR and a capture card but even I can't imagine actually trying to clean up the picture or scanning film.
Of course they told you that their conversion process is "proprietary". Because they can't say - "We are using the cheapest hardware and just dump everything as is without any deinterlacing with bitrate so low that everything will look like Atari 2600 game."
ya do realize that ya really cant take a low bitrate audio file and maker better than a cd right . when ya see for teh first time ever remastered ... by Buddy Holly cd . that more than likely they located the master tapes and made teh cd from that . they didnt take some old as hell lp that had skips in it and remaster from that . Like MP3 technology . lets say ya rip a CD into a am quality recording cause . lets say ya just dont have a huge 12 TB external / internal hard drive so ya wanna maximize ya 500 gig hard drive . so as you go down to lets say 96 kbps ( ok gonna be nice and give ya fm quality back in the 80s and 90s) as the original file is down converted it removes artifacts in the original recording maybe a small intro leading into teh main music is removed cause its too low it becoems dead air . maybe a small triangle thats played in the original track is kinda blanked out. sounds are removed to help keep that file small . once those artifacts are removed . ya cant take a 96kbps file and bring it back to a 320 file and put items removed back in with out the actual source file being used to re rip the cd at 320 kbps of for that matter a flac file that is enhanced like a lil education of FLAC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC A lil education of MP3 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 even better explained www.quora.com/Can-we-convert-an-audio-of-160kbps-or-192kbps-to-320kbps-How-Will-the-quality-be-any-better when ya down convert ya throwing parts of teh file away and they can not be reclaimed . without teh original source file as i said just rerip teh cd
And amateur probably means someone doing what he/she loves to do. The "ama" part probably stems from the word "love", like the French have (aimer). I didn't have latin in school... Someone less lazy than me might wanna look that up...
The word 'professional' has its roots in medieval trade guilds, whose members could be trusted to tell the truth about their skills. To profess is to tell the truth. Over time the word acquired the connotation of money changing hands for the service, but that is not part of the core meaning of the word. Claiming to be a professional doesn't technically mean they are charging money. It means they are claiming to tell the truth about how they perform their art or craft, and Legacy Box is clearly lying out of their asses.
I have an inexpensive Chinese HDMI capture device that writes directly to a flash drive. One of its biggest issues is the video captures is darker than it should be (crushed blacks.) It also results in audio that is way too low, just as you mentioned. I know there are versions of this cheap box with analog inputs, so I bet that's exactly what they are using for their "professional" service.
wouldn't be surprised of they did. Using super low-end hardware without customizable encode settings and then being reluctant about the "proprietary" work process. lol
I just use Hi8 camcorder and Panasonic DVDR it only takes DVD R- minus discs than I convert DVD with handbrake but quality is pretty good compared to cheap usb video capture devices
That's the difference between the normal TV video range and the full RGB range. It's like 15-224 if handled properly, or 0-255 if handled improperly. I think that box does leave an encoder tag though, so I wonder if those files have that or if they stripped it out.
well there seem to be differences in those HDMI to USB recorders as well. Bought one from China that wasn't that cheap and it actually makes way better recordings, even through a Composite to HDMI converter than what those "trained professionals" could muster. And even then, both devices combined were cheaper than their "service".
I hate these conversion companies, because not only are their prices often insane, but the quality is usually the same or worse than what you could do for a relatively low cost.
Yep. I bought a Digital8 camcorder via Craigslist for $20 that could output down to Video8 over FireWire as if it were a MiniDV camcorder, so every standard movie editing software supports it just fine. It cost more to get the Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter!
Yeah, I have a feeling the VHS to DVD converter at my library can do a better job than they can. (and obviously, that service is free to all town residents)
@@mhmrules I would but we have our own converter that is just as good and I have my own equipment(capture card) that can do more of what I want. The converter at the library can only make DVDs it can't make anything else. If I digitize them I can make them into whatever I want.
A good rule of thumb is that if you see or hear it advertised on a mass media venue (like satellite radio or non-local cable TV), the company is spending far more money on advertising than on their product or service.
Very true. Especially if it’s niche services, etc. They kind of hide under this guise of ‘questionable’ quality, by targeting goods/service to an audience that’s unsure if they’ve really been hoodwinked - so are unlikely to negatively follow up, or talk about their poor service with others.
I recently had a VHS tape transferred by Legacybox, they screwed up the interlacing and it looked horrible. I'm going to send the tape out to someone else, but THANK YOU VWestlife for confirming what I thought was a poor job done. Love your channel, thanks!
I have a feeling that their advertising budget is way above that of their ability. They're either getting tons of work from their adverts, too much for them to convert for actual quality and are instead doing them as quickly as possible just to keep on top of the workload or their 200 trained experts are 16 year old interns who have no idea how to use the equipment they're using. It's a piss take either way.
It is like with cheap Daniel Wellington watches or other product advertised as afordable luxury. Big fake names, big fake history, great website... but watches? Cheap as dirt. Now we have afordable professionals :D
Same story with that company making and excessively marketing "electronic typewriters" which are literally just a modern remake of 1980s word processors... and they've failed to materialize any examples for the two years they've been taking preorders.
Unfortunately that's the business model of the new era today. Mediocre product/shoddy service/Chinese rebranding but with MASSIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES Doesn't matter if you don't have any repeat customers. These are FIRE ADS will make sure you get new people trying your stuff out everyday!
I used a gift certificate my sister gave me to have LegacyBox convert about a dozen 300ft reels of 8mm and Super8 film. After about a month I got the results back on DVD. First, they didn’t convert 2 of the reels, but even what they did convert was VERY poor quality, like what we saw in this video. They had me send the reels back again for a second try and they AGAIN failed to convert all the film! Even though they converted a little of what they missed the first time, I still never got it all converted. And keep in mind each time around takes months! I STRONGLY recommend avoiding this company for converting anything of value!
This makes me angry, because I'm imagining a young person who has no idea what vintage media should look or sound like using this, and not knowing any better that what they got back was shit. I also noticed that the capture of the videotape media was interlaced as upper field first instead of the standard lower field first. I don't know how much difference this makes. Did you press them on the fact that they throw the word 'professional' all over their website while trying to tell you that you shouldn't have expected professional results? I'm actually surprised as hell that they managed the MicroMV tape, particularly after misidentifying it as an audio tape.
Yes, that was my reply to their excuse e-mail, that they shouldn't advertise their service as "professional" if they can't provide professional (or even amateur) quality results.
Indeed. "We're not for professional quality" == we want to just rip off older people who found tapes but no longer have the machine, not be scrutinised by someone who knows what he's doing! Plus it looked like the video transfer was 500kbps, not 1500, in the info box screenshot! Even worse! They crushed all the blacks AND peaked the whites too. Incredible.
Bingo, you nailed it: the youngest generations won't know that they're being ripped off with a low quality conversion. They buy Ion and Crosley turntables FFS and think that's what vinyl sounds like.
@@nazcaplain personally i'd never use the Crosleys due to the tracking force. The AT LP60 is very good for a newish machine. I'm a recovering audiophile so i feel that I should mention that it's a slippery slope. Once you hear the best, everything else can become rubbish. I find that the trick is to see different classes of playback equipment not in terms of better or worse, but as different approaches to sound. Of course there are limits. :-)
As with most of these mail-in service companies nowadays, their so-called "engineering experts" are typically just low pay workers with absolute minimal training who simply follow a basic instruction workflow without applying any real critical thinking to completing their tasks.
During the carnival part you can hear "И ещё вот этот павлиний хвост надо" in Russian, and I think I could hear some Russian in the kindergarten as well.
Its probably one dude in his basement with a bunch of shitty old equipment if he can't support 16:9 and won't answer about Dolby nr or anything - he probably has no idea what you're even talking about and doesn't have the equipment to support any of it lmao. Good video, very in depth consumer review!
After watching the rest of the video I can't believe how bad they messed that up! Barely tried that audio tape, the super 8 film was all messed up, etc., etc. Just wow!
I doubt it's like that. Pretty sure they will have a small industrial unit with minimum wage workers just slapping tapes in machines as fast as possible with very little care. The low bit rates will be just to save their own storage costs.
@@AndyMarsh Their reviews on TrustPilot are all uniformly negative. One person said Legacybox admitted to them that they don't monitor the conversion as it's being done. Compare that to the glowing five-star reviews on their own web site, which I'm _sure_ are legitimate...
@@isaacdantzler so they have a stack of Tape 2 PC shitbox cassette decks, thrift store camcorders/VCRs, and a pile of used Dell Optiplex dual core machines...BFD. It's still an overpriced shitshow with low rent output for relatively high cost. Big box stores like Wal-Mart and CVS yield better quality and lower cost.
Absolute brilliance. Thank you for this logical, easy to follow expose of one of the most over-hyped, underperformed services. I tried having them scan some slides once, it was probably the only thing they could do without screwing it up. A joy to watch.
Like some will do it properly. Like I run a local business, and it is a pain to digitise like 4 tapes individually at the best quality, but what they've done is total garbage.
The more I watch this video, the more I'm pissed off at LegacyBox. This is coming from someone who has transferred old media and mastered programs like Izotope RX for restoration purposes. We need more competition to rid of companies like LegacyBox.
Thank you so much for posting this. I always wondered what "standards" these "professionals" are using, and how my "amateur" work compares to these "professionals".
While it's FAR from a shock that Legacybox's results were rather garbage, it's still a disappointment, as not everyone has the knowledge ("Do I look like I know what a Jay Peg is?") or hardware to do high quality captures and scans of their tapes and photographs, and there isn't a good solution at all for amateur motion picture film scanning. And that's not even including the various accusations that they damage, destroy, or simply lose the media that they receive. I can just imagine someone sending super 8 film of their long-dead relatives and receiving that mess of a scan and a tangled mess of a film in return. Such a disappointment.
I’m beginning to see more of these bad experiences across the board with companies that are advertised heavily on podcasts. I know a lot of that is just affiliate linking, but linking to garbage makes the podcasters look bad. Thanks for doing the legwork on this one!
That's a very thorough review! To me this almost sounds like they outsourced the work to another country for low wage labor. The fancy wasteful packaging and self congratulatory writing make me think it's one of those hipster businesses that pop up everywhere now. All about marketing and "great customer service" but upon closer inspection it's a ripoff.
@@crazyivan030983 Thanks man! I'm seeing it more and more, most of them are subscription services for things like razors, socks, tooth brushes, coffee... the craziest are the loot boxes, they just send you crap you don't need every month. Always with the fancy packaging and logos.
@@Gersberms I signed up for one of those "box" services. Ended up just putting them in my garage and when my wife and I finally opened them, I'm like what am I going to do with all of this junk? Canceled it right then. There was some cool stuff, but not worth all of the stuff I didn't want.
@@ryjelsum Absolutely, I'm sure those business do exist where they truly are as good as they make themselves look. But I think it's pretty rare. I watch their ads on TH-cam every day, and as an online seller I know how much of a culture there is to focus on "find a niche product, create a company identity, start selling and start advertising". It's the new thing to do, with recently the trend to start subscription services.
I generally assume that most, if not all, products advertised on the radio are bunk and actively refuse whatever that product is. Same with TH-cam sponsors. I don't watch network TV, so I am spared those commercials.
I don't know why the Motion Picture Academy uses it, but a number of years ago they bought a Moviestuff scanner and that is the same massive piece of junk that this Legacybox company is using. Everything about your video examples screams the poor quality of Moviestuff's scanners. So they weren't lying about the Academy using it, but it's absolute junk scanning equipment. And by the way, the reason the image is jumping around so much is because the Moviestuff scanner uses a paper clip to create tension on the edge of the film to try and stabilize it. That's what you get when you purchase a scanner made in a guy's garage.
The work you do is incredible, however. I can’t believe the AMPAS would actually use some pie in the sky piece of crap scanner. What a slap in the face to established standards of film and videotape preservation.
Information about the transfer equipment is "proprietary"? That's a crock of bull if I ever heard one. Any good transfer house will tell you what equipment they are using. The "best" method of scanning 8mm film is to use a wet mounting process and scanning it frame by frame, but it ain't cheap. They obviously just ran the film thru a standard telecine box, not surprising given the price point. The video transfers are the usual subpar junk. Looks like composite cables combined with an EZCap! The levels are way off (much too dark) and the compression used is way too much. Macroblocks galore! DVDs get more bitrate for crying out loud! Once again, a good transfer house will let the user specify the output format. Many will even do lossless files if you want it. Not deinterlacing is common. Things like deinterlacing are usually outside to purview of a transfer service as its considered post processing (read, you'd have to pay extra in most cases). Some are sticklers about customer provided media. They don't want to deal with the liability or hassle if you send a bum hard drive.
Yeah i would never demand de-interlacing as that is something i would love to do AFTERWARDS myself, if needed. The digitized files have to be authentic and interlaced just as the original videotape. Heck, even VLC allows you to real-time de-interlace videos if needed and being watched without any other processing.
Depends on the target audience, I guess. On one hand, the proper thing to do for archival is to transfer the media verbatim. No processing of any kind beyond normalization or calibration to suit the destination media type. On the other hand, giving Grandma interlaced raw RGB 4:4:4 files isn't going to be terribly convenient. If you have an 8GB flash drive, perhaps you have room for an archival and shareable version, but that's a lot to ask for a service like this.
@@nickwallette6201 Perhaps, but batch output and file naming is easy enough since the company clearly have an appetite for automation given the bar coding system deployed.
To be honest, for a VHS capture, for example, I would just request a YUY2 Lagarith/UTVideo interlaced AVI capture, and even provide a big external hard drive for the files. I can take care of the software part of things, but I cannot deal with hardware (since I don't own a professional-grade VCR, nor a time base corrector, etc.).
@@mvShooting YUV would always require something better than a USB videograbber or DV box. This why i always avoided the costs of PCIe capture cards (like an AJA Kona) plus additional cables cables and Interface Box and the proper software for it. Also… why Lagarith codec and not just Sony YUV avi? Lagarith would only make sense for capturing lossless videogame footage inside a OBS environment. I would not recommend it for capturing analog video as digital files.
I entrusted Legacybox with digitizing my good quality MiniDV tapes. They came back after a while, and the quality is appalling. I suspect they do not use the Firewire transfer, but instead a cheap RCA connector. Not only that, one of my tapes came back with that red sticker, and the protective flip cover completely in pieces, INSIDE the box. The original sticker with the number was also damaged, and the case was missing. I can only assume that they had a careless employee destroy the tape. The frustrating part however is that they keep claiming that they cannot digitize it, yet when I put the tape in my still functional 25 year old Panasonic DV-Camcorder, it plays back just fine.
@@DoctorWhom From memory (I still have my Sony miniDV cam around somewhere) the "digital" part, is the fact it has an s-video connection(?) and can film in 16:9.
the data on the dv tape is the same, dv did not support 16:9 so they used a trick called anamorphic video. if it's recorded as 16:9, then just copy it from the tape with any dv, reader or device, and stretch to 16:9, it would be the same since its 19:9 squished to 4:3 and then recorded to dv tape
Having converted DV myself, it is a very difficult process to do correctly, especially when all of the hardware required is no longer supported. I would have assumed that the "trained professionals" who do this all day long would be doing the same. Apparently, I was wrong. Thanks for doing this.
I paused to read your scathing review. Damn son, I AM HERE for it. Good job. I shared this video with some of my friends. Hopefully in a small way it will help spread this to others. I've been kinda tempted to do media conversion on the side for some extra cash, and it's shameful how lazy people are with their business
It's a good thing I saw this video, because recently, I've been noticing Legacybox advertising their services, even though it's on cable TV, and I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. I am indeed happy that I don't have to go through the headache converting my cassette tapes, as I can do that myself!
Some people might be as pleased as I was when I scanned a 110 negative taken with a cheap Hanimex camera and found a nice picture of my late parents which I hadn't seen for about 40 years. I probably gave the original print to them.
I was waiting for a good honest review of this company. My gut instinct after hearing their commercials on the radio was how ridiculously expensive they were and that it would be best to avoid doing business with them. Your review more than confirmed my suspicions. I think that radio programs should be ashamed for using sponsors like this on their shows. Legacy Box is just one more modern day equivalent of "snake oil".
Absolutely hilarious to print an email to a dot matrix printer and scan it back in for the video. 😂 Supports the general vibe of this channel (which I dig).
@@Xyspade technically dot matrix paper feeds and ribbons are so obsolete they are waste anyway so him using them is not really changing the outcome of said waste. Besides he recycles a lot...
Strikes me as a bit hypocritical of VWestlife. He complains they use new packaging when he is PRINTING and SCANNING emails, wasting paper!! I get the whole retro tech thing, but come on, don't be a hypocrite.
I'm not really surprised but I am saddened. I do this kind of work for a living and that cine transfer is awful. Wish I could have a try at that film but I'm in the UK.
Yeah, as a super8 fan myself this truly hurt to watch… the jitter was just terrifying and i bet if that film had a magnetic soundtrack it would not have been scanned and digitized as well… almost nobody does it. And having the audacity to scan Super 8 at ONLY 480p in 2020 should be considered a felony.
Send me that Super8. I'll put it through my Wolverine Pro and show how much better it can look for prosumer cost. I can't believe that was a projected recording in 2020. It had to be, right?? Botched. These poor people hiring them.
@@cherylfrydenlund4324 yes, there are different RCA to USB devices that are decent. You can also look for a DVD Recorder which are harder to come by nowaday. I used a Dazzle one many many years ago when I started editing, but got the Diamond one couple years ago and isn't that bad. I mostly use a Sony HDV deck that has rca inputs and capture via firewire. But that is also harder to come by, it's pretty much a dead transfer format now but very high raw quality.
I know I was definitely disappointed with my experience with legacybox. They did nothing to improve my video that’s for sure, when they say an exact duplicate that’s what you’re going to get. They don’t even adjust the tracking control on a VHS tape. I was very disappointed and will never use their service again.
These kind of companies are the reason why i have trust issues. My best buddy made a similar bad encounter with a german digitizing service for video. It seems all these "Professional" services have one thing in common. NONE of them knows WTF they are doing and they think the words "high quality" are a joke. At one point i got myself a Canopus ADVC-110 DV capture box and a good VHS deck. My best buddy did the same and also got a refurbished digital8 camcorder that that used to digitize over 20 years of Video8 material from him and his granddad. So far this is the best combination that is financially affordable since the DV codec of the Canopus box is fantastic and even the audio sounds amazing. Much better than those USB videograbbers. I even use this box for digitizing my Laserdiscs. You just cannot trust such companies with old videomaterial. And it shocks me that over the past 20 years these companies haven't gotten better at all.....
Same here. If i can't digitize something myself, i send it to some hobbyist friends who actually know what they're doing on a technical level. Oddly, even real professional companies often fail. The quality of slide or negative scans you get from the fujifilm plant in the Netherlands, is not great. Just about on par for a 2005-era website. Their photo prints are pretty much flawless for the 20-50 cents a piece you pay, that's amazing. And e6 slide development for 3,50... never had scratches. c41 negative development is not that great, quite often a few scratches.
Only downside of using the Canopus DV box is that DV codecs have "chroma subsampling" where the resolution of the color part of the image is less than the resolution of the luminance part of the image. But even then, this is a detail that is pretty difficult to pick up on (thus why it was implemented in the standard), but thats a reason many choose to use PCIe capture cards that allow uncompressed or HuffyYUV capture
@@tituslafrombois1164 Yup, fair enough. If you wanna transfer analog Videosignals lossless you need something else. However i don't have the capacity nor budget to get SDI video hardware for example. It would make more sense with S-VHS, Betamax and Betacam. But for VHS it may be overkill. The Canopus DV codec still delivers the best results and has its high reputation for a reason compared to the ones from Sony or Panasonic.
I often wonder if I would be able to do a better job than most of these companies (assuming I had the right equipment, as all I can do is cassette tapes, minidiscs (not HI-MD), and slides, maybe negatives as well)
Excellent presentation. I have several items - cassette deck, video converter, scanner, turntable - which I use to convert analog to digital. The quality obviously isn't as good as what you can get on professional equipment, plus I can't do film; so I've wondered about Legacy Box's methods. You provided the answers I needed without me having to experiencing them first-hand myself. You've performed a great service to many consumers this day. Keep up the good work!
SO glad you posted this!, had family members that wanted to send in a bunch of beta tapes to get converted from these people. I'll let them know they'd be better off letting me do it! I've converted some of my own miniDV to digital in the past, just takes a while, because everything has to be done in real-time (with the software I was using anyways, that I cannot even recall the name of now)
Your transfers vs. their transfers is like Criterion Collection Blu-ray vs. chinese pirate DVDs. I wonder they have guts to charge people for such a shitty transfers.
Just like the Pay To Win legal system of class-action lawsuits in the USA...a company misbehaves...so the all the customer gets after the smoke clears is just a coupon for more of the same faulty products and services from the same phrygian company....It's not "The system is broken and needs to be fixed"...it's "The system is working as it's designed to, and needs to be destroyed."
Their video conversions look a lot more noisy than yours, but what really stands out is the audio. Their conversion of the audio sounds like a radio playing over a telephone line and your conversion sounds like CD quality at least. Also they did a terrible job on that Super 8 film. It looks like they didn't even review the footage after conversion.
Agreed. And it is actually not normal at all for super 8 film to be all washed out and red like that. I've got 30-some reels, all of which have beautiful, vivid colors.
This is good information, thank you. I was seriously considering having about 100 items converted. Now I will hold off until a better method comes along.
I'm only part-way through watching this video, but already I'm loving it (thank you for doing this little experiment!). I own/run an *actual* professional video/audio transfer business here in NYC, and frequently get clients who first went to some place such as Legacybox, got *horrendous* results (and often several tapes returned without having been transferred, as they can't cope with any minor "issues"), and then came to me to get it done properly! To do this job properly takes literally decades of experience, high end equipment, and often a LOT of "human interaction". I cannot for one moment see how these big companies can possibly be doing any of that...it'll be low-paid /unskilled staff (mostly, at least), it won't be high-end equipment, and I doubt that there's ANY "human interaction" whatsoever. It'll be "press play, press record" and that's it. I bet most of Legacybox's staff don't even know what Dolby is, let alone the different types of Dolby NR! People are amazed when they come here and see the lengths I (have to) go to in order to do a good job. VHS tapes, especially EP and LP, often need tape path alignment (there are, effectively, 3 tracking adjustments on a vcr, the electronic tracking control can only compensate for one of those adjustments). I literally have to have an oscilloscope hooked up to the VCR and manually adjust tape guide posts to get a decent result on these horrible EP/LP recordings! I can guarantee they're not doing anything like that at Legacybox!!! All the captures here are done with Blackmagic Teranex up-conversion/capture equipment - no need for me to say "sorry, that's proprietary information"! Clients can have ProRes, H.264, or whatever format/codec they require. I don't do ANY transfers at standard-def anymore, unless a client actually needs that - everything gets the professional up-conversion/de-interlacing treatment. What REALLY drives me mad is how Legacybox et al. have cheapened the business to "per tape" pricing. I can't tie up thousands of dollars of equipment for a 6hour EP VHS tape and charge the same as for a 30minute VHS-C tape! That's how I know *for sure* that these places are using garbage equipment! If they don't care how long the tape is...jeez... Unfortunately it makes my life very difficult because potential clients now want per-tape pricing, thanks to places like Legacybox. I literally could talk for hours about how frustrating it is to have to "compete" with these cheap and nasty services, but sadly I gotta get back to work (after watching the rest of this video...dying to see how bad the transfers are!) Believe it or not I'm really NOT touting for business...I'm literally DROWNING in work right now, and especially not looking to do box-loads of consumer format tapes, but I do have a very wide range of equipment, from MicroMV to HDCAM-SR, and everything in between, so if someone reading this is looking for a truly professional job on a treasured tape, shoot me a message. Just not for the next few weeks though, please! ps. Don't judge me by the content that I have uploaded to my own personal TH-cam channel...it's mostly just random old junk from many years ago when all I had was a Canopus ADVC-300 and a laptop! I was, back then, working for Sony, Deluxe, and a bunch of other professional video facilities. Started this business to sub-contract Sony's DVD authoring work after they closed their facility in NYC. Not just some random dude with a few VCRs 😀 30 yrs in the business...and got the lines on my forehead to prove it! and now...back to the video...I hope we get to see the ghastly results! Hehe 😊 -Neil
@@ABCEasyas-- I started as a trainee engineer at Technicolor Videocassette, back in the 1980s. Technicolor was Europe's largest videocassette duplication plant, where pre-recorded VHS tapes were manufactured. For anyone interested, JVC BR-7000 and Panasonic AG-6810 decks were used back then. Tens of thousands of them...all going into record, rewind, or eject all at the same time...quite a sound! Next I spent several years working on Sony BVH-series 1" machines, Betacam-SP, U-matic, etc., and eventually Digital Betacam. Next went into broadcast tv engineering, then into post-production, then into DVD authoring, and BluRay authoring, using Scenarist and Sony Blu-Print. Authored many *many* titles for HBO, Sony, Paramount, etc. As you can probably imagine, technical standards were HIGH! But to go back to your exact point, nobody can possibly do a *really* professional job, even on "simple" formats such as VHS, without a solid understanding of how the machines work inside, since a huge percentage of clients' tapes have "issues" which can only be addressed with intimate knowledge of how the formats and the machinery works. There are *very* few people on this planet who have the required in-depth knowledge of old analogue tape formats (I'm including VHS in that category!) who are still working in the industry. Most, especially in the case of U-matic, are retired or dead by now! Of those who are still around, very few of those analogue tape experts are also equally well-experienced in the digitizing side of things. So, yes, it does take decades of knowledge, and these young guys/girls (who might know a lot about digitizing) will never get to experience those years of experience working with analogue tape on a daily basis. I also have the benefit of starting in the world of PAL and then nearly 20 years in the land of Never Twice the Same Color. I know that without all the knowledge I've gleaned over the years, I'd never be able to do this kind of work as well as it should be done. If I weren't able to service/repair the equipment too, I'd soon go bankrupt on repair bills! I can train someone to be a brilliant DVD author, or whatever, but I can't transplant all those years of videotape experience into someone else's brain...sadly!! My guess about Legacybox is that they're using VERY basic capture equipment, modern/low-quality VHS decks, probably no TBCs (just relying on consumer-grade digitizing gear which is designed to tolerate unstable video), and employing kids on minimum wage, with minimal training. With the 60%/70% of tapes they receive which don't have "issues", and with consumers who tolerate mediocre results, they no doubt get away with it. For that other 30%/40% of tapes that do have issues, and for discerning customers, I bet they fail every time. I honestly do not want to come across as a snob, really, but doing this work "properly", vs. like Legacybox... it's like comparing a chef with a McDonald's cook. Would you want McDonald's for your wedding reception dinner? No? Ok, so why "McDonald's" (Legacybox!) for your Wedding Video conversion? Same thing. You'd want an expert to do it.
@@njm1971nyc This is why I deep dive into the comments on videos like this, what a great backstory, absolutely fascinating! Judging by your videos you used to live in the UK? Such a shame you still don't as I have a pile of VHS tapes sitting next to me on my floor that I said I'd digitise for my parents months ago, but struggling to get anything that I'd consider "decent" with this Sony VHS deck I've got! (The newest video uploaded on my channel gives a rough idea how poor the conversions are!)
@@CalamityJames. Hey James 🙂, yup, Essex born & bred. Then Italy (as u can prob also tell from my uploads!) then NYC since 2003. FYI, mostly I use sony SVO-5800's for VHS, but I needed some extra machines and got hold of a few Sony medical VCRs. Same deck/mech as the 5800, built in TBC, look extremely basic from the front panel, but actually pretty high performance VCRs. Absolutely crammed with electronics inside. Nothing like a modern consumer deck! Only SP single speed, which is a pain, but that's true of all pro VCRs. Best if all, even if they're ten years old they prob only have a couple of hundred hours on the heads. Prob got just a few minutes use per day during some ultrasound scan! Best way to get it to modern specs (on a budget) is a second-hand Panasonic DMR-EZ28 DVD recorder, to convert the composite video to hd/hdmi. Then use something like an Elgato hdmi card to digitize. Well....back to the grindstone. Nearly midnight but busy making in-store advertising DVDs for Nespresso's Xmas campaign. And digitizing 17 hours of unseen 9/11 footage for a new documentary! F***ing exhausted. I need a new life. Anyone wanna swap?? I'm serious!!!!
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Handling the memories of people is indeed a labour of love. That's not only a work of a person who's not capable but it isn't even a work of care. I love when this scammers are exposed! Let us know if they react to your video!!!
If you ever make a t-shirt, it should be: "experts" (with quotes) I did the EasyCap method for all my MiniDV (using Analog Out of HandyCam) and VHS (via a Sony VHS player) few months ago and the results were perfect. PS: use OBS instead of the included (possibly cracked) software, it's far better. I would of been mad to have the results you got. Another great video sir!
Very well done breakdown of the process. The claims that companies are able to fool the unsophisticated consumer with border on criminal. Thank you for all of your time and effort in uncovering this scam of a service.
Thank you, thank you! I've often been tempted to send some tapes (video & audio) of family past and present. BOY am I glad I didn't! You have done a great service for thousands of unsuspecting listeners, not only saving us our hard earned money but saving precious memories that could not ever be returned! Keep up the good work.
I think you did a far more professional review of the whole process than what they claim they can do with the service they provide. Excellently done! Did you do any followup?
Their website states that they convert PAL to NTSC... but I sent an email asking if when they convert PAL tape, will they give me the resulting footage in PAL resolution, and at 50Hz. The response was "we can convert PAL tapes. So, I made a follow up email and detailed it all, and then they just sent me a link to an FAQ page which didn't answer my question.
Doing the conversation yourself is more fun to do, plus you have the actual camcorder (device) for them. It’s also fun to use the camcorders (devices) nowadays!
The nightmares of doing video capture and conversion of all of my family’s media 20 years ago still haunt me to this day, took awhile but it was worth it, though.
If you listen to Legacy Box’s ads they’re so clearly designed to be predatory towards older people who don’t know any better about the technology for converting these films. They create a false sense of urgency talking about how the films are deteriorating, they over hype their “experience” they offer very low prices, and they discourage looking for other options. They’re a really scummy company.
I'm guessing that the 6-8 weeks claimed turnaround time is designed to reinforce the impression that the work is going to be done thoroughly by those 200 professionals, and that in practice the turnaround is always going to be much less, as you experienced.
Turnaround time could still be a while even if doing each individual tape is quick - it depends on how many customers and how many technicians they have at any given time.
Thank you for this video Mr. Kevin!!!. As always it was very educational and informative. And on the positive side, it seems that your knowledge and skills are way bigger than a team of over 200 Legacybox professionals. Final words: I really like the 60 fps!! Please keep this spec in future videos. Best regards from Chile.
Lol, "We are a consumer digitizing company and unfortunately not posed for professional commercial grade transfers." In other words, they expect an average customer to be an idiot, so why put any effort at all. They could transfer the footage on a VHS tape, record it from a TV screen with an old Nokia phone camera, convert it to wmv file with 144p resolution and bitrate of 600 and just call it a state-of-the-art conversion.
That and since when was DV, D8 or 8mm film ever a professional format - so how does their "professional" excuse even hold up? It would be normal to expect the results to at least mimic the originals, not some RealVideo era postage stamp video. A red flag for me was the pricing - unless they had some amazing automation there was no way they could do decent transfers at those prices.
@@askjacob I would think that someone who can find a stack of matching new-old-stock VCRs of reasonable quality could at reasonable cost using modern chips design some electronics that would offer conversions that were of higher quality than could be obtained by capturing a video signal, especially when dealing with damaged tapes (a device that isn't trying to produce video output in real time could try to scan each stripe twice, moving the head by about 1/4 frame between them, and ideally receiving roughly-equal signals on both scans; if one of the scans is stronger, that would suggest a need to vary the spacing between stripes, but the signal from the stronger scan would be clean, thus avoiding 'tracking noise' while trying to auto-adjust tracking.) I'm not sure what kind of automation would be needed to handle video tapes at $10 each, since the labor for each would simply be inserting it into the machine at the appropriate time. Doing films is a little more labor intensive, but shouldn't be too bad.
They used a low bit rate to make sure all the converted files will fit on that overpriced cheapo pendrive. No interest in provide the best quality possible.
Thank you. This video took a lot of work to make. Reviews that do side-by-side comparisons are the only way to go. And it's good to see emphasis placed on the audio.
@@Crlarl Most TV clips posted to TH-cam are done this way. He left out the part where we can clearly see the reflection of the person with the old iPhone on the TV. He also forgot to close the curtains and exit the cable box OSD. There might also be closed captains and they might be in a foreign language.
I was ok with all of their botch ups up until you said they had the L and R audio channels reversed. That is like kind of stuff I learned how to do in grade 3 when setting up the TV and VCR for the teacher because I was the class AV nerd. I mean, come on "team of 200 professionals"...
Just terrible what they did as a "Professional" service that they advertise, but contradict in their resulting products. Let their LEGACY Be their failure.
I run a professional audio and video transfer service in the UK. It properly annoys me when I see the results from some of these outfits. As well as dreadful, heavily compressed video files, I also see "sticky tape" repairs wrapped around video tape. Some businesses have absolutely no technical knowledge and are stumped by even the smallest technical difficulty. On a number of occasions I've ended up re-running work done my some shady outfit, to get really good quality. Generally I provide everything as DV-AVI 13GB/hour and also smaller MPEG4 files of 4GB/hour for easy playback, then for professional formats I offer uncompressed data streams of full broadcast quality.
@@ABCEasyas-- It really is I mean hell I’m usually falling asleep by the time I’m almost through a video. I don’t know they’re just weirdly relaxing to me
Who knew the 'process and technology as the Academy of Motion Pictures' wasn't professional grade... Albeit as far as I can tell they only give out awards, so it's a pretty weird quote.
The Academy share many members with custodians of a number of standards. But there are many 'organisations' that also push out standards such as SMPTE.
OMG that is night and day, your conversion was so much better. I see it all the time, old recordings robbed of all the fidelity they originally contained. These shoddy services make it look like AV quality didn't improve at all before purely digital video. :O
Unfortunately they're a sponsor of most if not all talk radio programs across the country and the show hosts all give them stellar recommendations which is probably why they're still in business or have not upgraded their equipment. It wouldn't hurt to give the Better Business Bureau a heads up about this company because from what you've exposed, they're frauds.
This lack of care and attention to detail is just unforgivable. After reading many of the comments here it seems the knowledge on how to transfer these media sources is out there, accessible, as is the hardware and software required. How could a "professional/consumer" company screw up this badly? If the quality of your product is this poor, why even make the attempt? And apparently they don't even monitor the conversion? Unreal. Thank you for putting in the effort to save the rest of us the trouble.
About the boxes; they may not have recycled the box due to damage during shipping. As someone who works at a tech company, we sort shipping boxes into good, non dinked ones, and bad trashy ones that get sent to the crusher. Yours may have just banged around in the truck before arriving and they didn’t feel comfortable using it again.
20:48 yes TH-cam recommends for upload, but what you get for playback is roughly 1500Kbps. This is what you'll see 480p streams using on twitch, and 5Mbps is what you'll see for 1080p live streams. Very normal bitrates. As I watch further, I'm now realizing they are literally running video through a live encoder. VBR is a huge tell there, I've never rendered a thing outside of live streaming with VBR.
I think they used mencoder and not ffmpeg for video encoding as ffmpeg does not allow h264 interlacing encoding while mencoder does. It can also explains the variable frame rate because if they do not use the harddup video filter, some weird things can happen.
The sticker they put on the cassette was probably a generic, one-size-fits-all and I'd bet they didn't copy it was it's full of copyrighted music. It's very clear in their description they will not record/copy any factory made recordings, or copyrighted materials.
That makes zero sense. It is not against copyright law to convert your owned media into a new format. Doing so is fair use. I worked for Walgreen's a long time ago and they only refused to convert pictures with a studio marks on them. This was not for any kind of copyright, but Walgreens would lie and say they cant copy it for copyright reasons. It was really about not undermining the photographer's business of selling you duplicates. Walgreens did not want to piss off the photographer industry. Now walgreens will just have you sign a copyright release form stating walgreens is not liable for any copyright issues. There is no reason that this legacybox cannot just have you sign a release if they really are scared you may use the copies for commercial purposes.
FYI: Legacybox is also known as Southtree and Kodak Digitizing. They're all based in the same building in Chattanooga, Tennessee and offer the same services and poor quality, with slightly different pricing and marketing. As confirmed to me by Hayden at Kodak Digitizing, items sent to these three companies "will all be processed the same way by the same technicians."
Oh dear, the Kodak brand being used under licence for poor quality services again :(
@securitycountercheck Kodak were among the first to offer digital cameras? I was under the impression that they invented the concept and deliberately patent-trolled it to prevent cannibalisation of their film sales.
@@MixerVMThe first digital camera on the consumer marketplace, the Apple Quicktake 100 of 1994, was made by Kodak. They invested heavily in digital photography in the 1990s, and by 2005, Kodak was the top-selling brand of point-and-shoot digital cameras. But profit margins were low and competition was strong, and they couldn't keep up with the likes of Canon, Sony, and Nikon. Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012, but emerged from bankruptcy in 2013 and is still in business today. They've even resumed making Super 8 film and cameras. Unfortunately, this Kodak Digitizing service run by Southtree has nothing to do with them aside from licensing the use of the name.
@@MixerVM First digital camera was made by a Kodak engineer in 1975. It stored its data on an audiocassette. It's in the Henry Ford Museum's collection now; it turned up on their CBS Saturday morning show _Innovation Nation_ about a year ago.
Hey, first of all thanks for the video. Hopefully it will get over a million views since that company is a total desaster. So i've always wanted to record some N64 footage and already found a proper S-Video cable. I've looked aruond to find a good, cheap S-video capture device but the often recommended Elgato Video Capture for aruond 100$ is just too expencive and since you mentioned a cheap (15$) S-Video recorder at the end of the video i wanted to ask where you got yours and if it works with a PAL N64? I would highly appreciate answer.
Legacybox: WE RECORD PROFESSIONAL VIDEO
Also Legacybox: We are a consumer grade company
Sadly, we'll never know the secrets of their proprietary conversion technologies. What a loss for humanity.
Well in my experience when something is marketed as "proprietary" they're too embarrassed to tell what it actually is.
They probably don't know, it's whatever came with the capture device they imported from China
Psst... It's the cheapest crap they could order in bulk from China.
@@rwdplz1 the cheapest chinesium hot garbage that they could get 10000 pieces of.
Even my turds could probably do a better job than LegacyCrap...
Wow, very thorough video explaining your experience with this service! I started converting my own VHS tapes to digital back around 2000 and my father has used services to convert his old 8mm and super 8mm tape reels to digital. I cannot recall the service he used, but it was expensive, yet the results were outstanding. I think reviewing several of the services would be greatly beneficial to the audience, albeit a lot of work as well...
Surprised to see you here! Love your channel!!!!
"...will scan every frame..." BS. That was not "scanning every frame" - that was projecting it and filming it with a video camera - not individually scanned frames.
Just like they do it in Hollywood! ;)
By the look of the crisp edge it's maybe a (cheap) TeleCine box. Looked like that when they "adjusted" it. A decent TC can still be high quality, but this sure aint that. (it is basically videoing the projection, but done properly)
I wouldn't be surprised if they just jury rigged an old shoe box in front of the projector and videoed it though. Still an appalling job either way, and they couldn't offer individual scanned service at that cost, so that was a red flag too.
I just looked at their Amazon review and the don't even rewind some VHS tapes which would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I just wrote the same :D greetings from Poland :)
Exactly lmao. I’ve had films transferred by a random guy in Italy done using a similar process to this and it looked better. No skipping or anything of the such, even with the low quality.
That's exactly what they did. I had a old projector that jumped like that. I took it apart one day and cleaned it and the problem went away. But considering you can buy a digitizer to convert any film size for around $150 bucks these days, I'm thinking this company is a low budget operation.
Classifying the supported noise reduction types and wether they do stereo microcasettes or only mono as "proprietary information" is already raising a big red flag for me - those are not "proprietary", but normal specs, and them saying "we won't tell you because of excuses" might as well mean "no" to me.
Proprietary anything is just gross. This is the kind of stuff that happens. Hardware, software, practices, etc.
There's a free Dolby B software decoding program available on GitHub...I tried it and it worked...it encodes too....and there's source code included...so no, not proprietary...
Unfortunately most people would be sending plain old cassette tapes in, or VHS, maybe a Beta tape. Just because it's tape, most people would simply expect the quality to be bad and would probably be just fine from the outcome they would get. I bet that's how they are getting away with this.
Yeah, I find a lot of people think that VHS tapes disintegrate and are just horrible.
If they're stored right, and you have at least a half-decent VCR (not a Kmart special Magnavox from like 2003), you can get excellent results.
And disintegration? I have a tape that turned 39 years old today, and one knocking on the door of 40. Both play very well, though the original recording equipment was not great.
@@VectraQS Tape condition is hard to predict. When i was in elementary school a classmate took a home video to class for a show and tell thing, and that tape maybe was just 10 years old but already full of dropouts and bits where it only went black and white.
Meanwhile, my own tapes have held up great. TV recordings from that same era play like the day i recorded them. But many people have issues with video tape and reliability.
@@VectraQS I feel if you understand how to take care of a piece of technology no matter what it is, 9 times out of 10 that piece of technology is going to last a long long time. But if you simply don't fully understand how that piece of technology works therefore might not take the best care of it, chances are it's likely to not last as long.
Many, many people fall under this category, trust me I work in IT lol.
@@mfbfreak I'd chalk up a lot of these issues to VCR incompatibility. I have a JVC HR-VP412U. My dad bought it back in the '90s. I have to keep it around because the EP recordings from that thing will not play back well in anything else.
Your classmate's tape was probably played back in a relatively modern deck. I remember my grade school once got the local TV meteorologist to come give us a talk. He brought along a tape of tornado footage and he couldn't get it to track on the brand new VCR. I have two Sony SLV-N750 machines and they do not like to play any EP recordings but their own.
Of course, there are tapes that do in fact degrade (looking at you, Ampex!). But, for the most part, bad VHS quality is because the tape is physically worn out from use, the original recorder sucked, or the playback VCR can't track the tape.
@@mfbfreak that reminds me that a tape which was being played when a sudden thunder storm hit was black and white from then on out.. I guess the EM field strength wiped out the colour subcarrier? PAL territory here, so maybe it just screwed up the phase alternation, idk, I was very young :)
And the worst part is that people who are not expert in the audio/video topics, just receive the box with the digitized files, watch them and probable say "Wow! they really converted my tapes into digital files, this is amazing! what a great company! The picture quality is not very good but that must be because the tapes are too old".
Even some "professionals" are thinking this way…
Just looking at the Google maps of their facility, and the number of cars parked in front. No way do they have "over 200 trained technicians" .
Let us know when their PR dept contacts you to "clarify" their experience for you.
How much deeper can they dig themselves in the "clarifying" hole? They literally claim that they are using "professionals" and "professional scanners", and then later "clarify" that they don't have the resources to do "professional grade" work (30:50).
@@eviloatmeal don’t think there are 200 professionals, maybe 2 in their moms basement with gear they found at a junkyard and don’t know how to fix and use. The cassette tape looks fine to me, guess the cassette player they found on a dump stopped working 😁
@@ingenfestbrems Yup. False advertising comes in many shapes and sizes. But claiming that they are doing professional work with professional equipment, and then "clarifying" that they are not doing professional work, and not using professional equipment, is pretty much as blatantly false as advertising gets.
@Abram Sutton If you can convince them to agree on a definition of "professional", then I'm sure you could take them to court on account of that, yeah.
It would be in the UK. We have the advertising standards authority (ASA).
I'm glad we have people like you Kevin who can hold these idiots to a higher standard. They're scamming people out of hundreds of dollars for shoddy work that ANYONE with a computer can do.
_Actual_ quality work would take hundreds of dollars. Any shmuck can just capture videotape onto a PC with a VCR and a capture card but even I can't imagine actually trying to clean up the picture or scanning film.
Nobody wants to do this though. Yes, you can do this, who wants to do this?
Of course they told you that their conversion process is "proprietary". Because they can't say - "We are using the cheapest hardware and just dump everything as is without any deinterlacing with bitrate so low that everything will look like Atari 2600 game."
That's not fair to the Atari 2600....
More like - "I have no idea what you are talking about, it's not in our wiki."
A pong console would produce better video quality.
I could propably render something way better using Play-Doh being back tied and blindfolded standing on one leg...
ya do realize that ya really cant take a low bitrate audio file and maker better than a cd right . when ya see for teh first time ever remastered ... by Buddy Holly cd . that more than likely they located the master tapes and made teh cd from that . they didnt take some old as hell lp that had skips in it and remaster from that .
Like MP3 technology . lets say ya rip a CD into a am quality recording cause . lets say ya just dont have a huge 12 TB external / internal hard drive so ya wanna maximize ya 500 gig hard drive . so as you go down to lets say 96 kbps ( ok gonna be nice and give ya fm quality back in the 80s and 90s) as the original file is down converted it removes artifacts in the original recording maybe a small intro leading into teh main music is removed cause its too low it becoems dead air . maybe a small triangle thats played in the original track is kinda blanked out. sounds are removed to help keep that file small . once those artifacts are removed . ya cant take a 96kbps file and bring it back to a 320 file and put items removed back in with out the actual source file being used to re rip the cd at 320 kbps of for that matter a flac file that is enhanced like
a lil education of FLAC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC
A lil education of MP3
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
even better explained
www.quora.com/Can-we-convert-an-audio-of-160kbps-or-192kbps-to-320kbps-How-Will-the-quality-be-any-better
when ya down convert ya throwing parts of teh file away and they can not be reclaimed . without teh original source file as i said just rerip teh cd
Reminder: "professional" means "paid to do", not "very good at"
"professional" is WHAT they do, not HOW they do it
And amateur probably means someone doing what he/she loves to do. The "ama" part probably stems from the word "love", like the French have (aimer). I didn't have latin in school...
Someone less lazy than me might wanna look that up...
@@senilyDeluxe Ama is actually to love in portuguese.
Their work is unprofessional.
@@senilyDeluxe It does. It comes from Latin amator, a lover.
The word 'professional' has its roots in medieval trade guilds, whose members could be trusted to tell the truth about their skills. To profess is to tell the truth. Over time the word acquired the connotation of money changing hands for the service, but that is not part of the core meaning of the word. Claiming to be a professional doesn't technically mean they are charging money. It means they are claiming to tell the truth about how they perform their art or craft, and Legacy Box is clearly lying out of their asses.
I have an inexpensive Chinese HDMI capture device that writes directly to a flash drive. One of its biggest issues is the video captures is darker than it should be (crushed blacks.) It also results in audio that is way too low, just as you mentioned. I know there are versions of this cheap box with analog inputs, so I bet that's exactly what they are using for their "professional" service.
wouldn't be surprised of they did. Using super low-end hardware without customizable encode settings and then being reluctant about the "proprietary" work process. lol
I just use Hi8 camcorder and Panasonic DVDR it only takes DVD R- minus discs than I convert DVD with handbrake but quality is pretty good compared to cheap usb video capture devices
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 Ah, but it *IS* proprietary... to the company they bought their cheap crap-ass equipment from.
That's the difference between the normal TV video range and the full RGB range. It's like 15-224 if handled properly, or 0-255 if handled improperly.
I think that box does leave an encoder tag though, so I wonder if those files have that or if they stripped it out.
well there seem to be differences in those HDMI to USB recorders as well. Bought one from China that wasn't that cheap and it actually makes way better recordings, even through a Composite to HDMI converter than what those "trained professionals" could muster. And even then, both devices combined were cheaper than their "service".
I'm so glad to find people on the internet with the same level of appreciation for analogue media preservation
I hate these conversion companies, because not only are their prices often insane, but the quality is usually the same or worse than what you could do for a relatively low cost.
Yep. I bought a Digital8 camcorder via Craigslist for $20 that could output down to Video8 over FireWire as if it were a MiniDV camcorder, so every standard movie editing software supports it just fine. It cost more to get the Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter!
@@AnonymousFreakYT Wow, I wish I could find Digital8 camcorders for $20.
Yeah, I have a feeling the VHS to DVD converter at my library can do a better job than they can. (and obviously, that service is free to all town residents)
@@jamiemarchant And for free? TOTALLY GO FOR IT!
@@mhmrules I would but we have our own converter that is just as good and I have my own equipment(capture card) that can do more of what I want. The converter at the library can only make DVDs it can't make anything else. If I digitize them I can make them into whatever I want.
Thank you for putting together this video and saving consumers money from these “professionals”.
A good rule of thumb is that if you see or hear it advertised on a mass media venue (like satellite radio or non-local cable TV), the company is spending far more money on advertising than on their product or service.
I heard it advertised on a local radio station on AM radio!
**cough** ITT Tech before they went under....
Or TH-cam...
Very true. Especially if it’s niche services, etc.
They kind of hide under this guise of ‘questionable’ quality, by targeting goods/service to an audience that’s unsure if they’ve really been hoodwinked - so are unlikely to negatively follow up, or talk about their poor service with others.
I firmly believe that the more something is advertised the worst the product. good products almost always sell themselves
I recently had a VHS tape transferred by Legacybox, they screwed up the interlacing and it looked horrible. I'm going to send the tape out to someone else, but THANK YOU VWestlife for confirming what I thought was a poor job done. Love your channel, thanks!
I have a feeling that their advertising budget is way above that of their ability. They're either getting tons of work from their adverts, too much for them to convert for actual quality and are instead doing them as quickly as possible just to keep on top of the workload or their 200 trained experts are 16 year old interns who have no idea how to use the equipment they're using.
It's a piss take either way.
It is like with cheap Daniel Wellington watches or other product advertised as afordable luxury. Big fake names, big fake history, great website... but watches? Cheap as dirt. Now we have afordable professionals :D
Same story with that company making and excessively marketing "electronic typewriters" which are literally just a modern remake of 1980s word processors... and they've failed to materialize any examples for the two years they've been taking preorders.
Unfortunately that's the business model of the new era today. Mediocre product/shoddy service/Chinese rebranding but with MASSIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES
Doesn't matter if you don't have any repeat customers. These are FIRE ADS will make sure you get new people trying your stuff out everyday!
Just like how Gamestop mentions their retro game 'experts' I assume they're only experts in that they were given a one-hour OTJ training course.
@@devikwolf Funny how many people nowadays are not aware of the 80's word processors. I remember seeing one from Olivetti.
I used a gift certificate my sister gave me to have LegacyBox convert about a dozen 300ft reels of 8mm and Super8 film. After about a month I got the results back on DVD. First, they didn’t convert 2 of the reels, but even what they did convert was VERY poor quality, like what we saw in this video. They had me send the reels back again for a second try and they AGAIN failed to convert all the film! Even though they converted a little of what they missed the first time, I still never got it all converted. And keep in mind each time around takes months! I STRONGLY recommend avoiding this company for converting anything of value!
This makes me angry, because I'm imagining a young person who has no idea what vintage media should look or sound like using this, and not knowing any better that what they got back was shit.
I also noticed that the capture of the videotape media was interlaced as upper field first instead of the standard lower field first. I don't know how much difference this makes.
Did you press them on the fact that they throw the word 'professional' all over their website while trying to tell you that you shouldn't have expected professional results?
I'm actually surprised as hell that they managed the MicroMV tape, particularly after misidentifying it as an audio tape.
Yes, that was my reply to their excuse e-mail, that they shouldn't advertise their service as "professional" if they can't provide professional (or even amateur) quality results.
Top field first is a standard. Bottom is a standard for DV camereas only.
Indeed. "We're not for professional quality" == we want to just rip off older people who found tapes but no longer have the machine, not be scrutinised by someone who knows what he's doing!
Plus it looked like the video transfer was 500kbps, not 1500, in the info box screenshot! Even worse! They crushed all the blacks AND peaked the whites too. Incredible.
Bingo, you nailed it: the youngest generations won't know that they're being ripped off with a low quality conversion. They buy Ion and Crosley turntables FFS and think that's what vinyl sounds like.
@@nazcaplain personally i'd never use the Crosleys due to the tracking force. The AT LP60 is very good for a newish machine. I'm a recovering audiophile so i feel that I should mention that it's a slippery slope. Once you hear the best, everything else can become rubbish. I find that the trick is to see different classes of playback equipment not in terms of better or worse, but as different approaches to sound. Of course there are limits. :-)
As with most of these mail-in service companies nowadays, their so-called "engineering experts" are typically just low pay workers with absolute minimal training who simply follow a basic instruction workflow without applying any real critical thinking to completing their tasks.
Hm, interesting that the video tape had markings written in Russian. "Южная Каролина" means South Carolina.
Sleeper cell spies :-)
I thought I heard some Russian in some of that footage.
the kids in first clip look very russian
During the carnival part you can hear "И ещё вот этот павлиний хвост надо" in Russian, and I think I could hear some Russian in the kindergarten as well.
Probably a George Soros production
Thank you for this. You've probably saved many people money experimenting. I see them advertising on TV still 2.5 years after this video was put up.
Its probably one dude in his basement with a bunch of shitty old equipment if he can't support 16:9 and won't answer about Dolby nr or anything - he probably has no idea what you're even talking about and doesn't have the equipment to support any of it lmao. Good video, very in depth consumer review!
After watching the rest of the video I can't believe how bad they messed that up! Barely tried that audio tape, the super 8 film was all messed up, etc., etc. Just wow!
I doubt it's like that. Pretty sure they will have a small industrial unit with minimum wage workers just slapping tapes in machines as fast as possible with very little care. The low bit rates will be just to save their own storage costs.
I actually live in the same town as their base of operations and it’s a really big facility. Shocked to see the results are this bad.
@@AndyMarsh Their reviews on TrustPilot are all uniformly negative. One person said Legacybox admitted to them that they don't monitor the conversion as it's being done. Compare that to the glowing five-star reviews on their own web site, which I'm _sure_ are legitimate...
@@isaacdantzler so they have a stack of Tape 2 PC shitbox cassette decks, thrift store camcorders/VCRs, and a pile of used Dell Optiplex dual core machines...BFD. It's still an overpriced shitshow with low rent output for relatively high cost. Big box stores like Wal-Mart and CVS yield better quality and lower cost.
Absolute brilliance. Thank you for this logical, easy to follow expose of one of the most over-hyped, underperformed services. I tried having them scan some slides once, it was probably the only thing they could do without screwing it up. A joy to watch.
"How dare you actually expect the services we advertise!" *snort*
@Stella Hohenheim - Doubtful... The returned files speak for themselves. I certainly won't trust them after seeing this.
@Shoenheim LOL, he has channel with hundreds of videos and active since years, but it turns out it was all a front set up by a legacy box competitor.
Never use a service that requires sending irreplaceable media "away" to another place.
Like some will do it properly. Like I run a local business, and it is a pain to digitise like 4 tapes individually at the best quality, but what they've done is total garbage.
The more I watch this video, the more I'm pissed off at LegacyBox. This is coming from someone who has transferred old media and mastered programs like Izotope RX for restoration purposes.
We need more competition to rid of companies like LegacyBox.
Thank you so much for posting this. I always wondered what "standards" these "professionals" are using, and how my "amateur" work compares to these "professionals".
While it's FAR from a shock that Legacybox's results were rather garbage, it's still a disappointment, as not everyone has the knowledge ("Do I look like I know what a Jay Peg is?") or hardware to do high quality captures and scans of their tapes and photographs, and there isn't a good solution at all for amateur motion picture film scanning. And that's not even including the various accusations that they damage, destroy, or simply lose the media that they receive. I can just imagine someone sending super 8 film of their long-dead relatives and receiving that mess of a scan and a tangled mess of a film in return. Such a disappointment.
You know things are going to be bad when their “fancy box” can’t even center the film reel and picture icons in their respective little circles.
How is "what noise reduction methods do you support?" and "can you handle stereo microcassettes" proprietary information?
It's "proprietary" because they don't know the answer.
@@SenileOtaku That explains it!
@@SenileOtaku I can’t believe these dumb hillbillies haven’t been shut down.
I’m beginning to see more of these bad experiences across the board with companies that are advertised heavily on podcasts. I know a lot of that is just affiliate linking, but linking to garbage makes the podcasters look bad.
Thanks for doing the legwork on this one!
That's a very thorough review! To me this almost sounds like they outsourced the work to another country for low wage labor. The fancy wasteful packaging and self congratulatory writing make me think it's one of those hipster businesses that pop up everywhere now. All about marketing and "great customer service" but upon closer inspection it's a ripoff.
Hipster business. Never heard better name than this. Greetings from Poland :)
@@crazyivan030983 Thanks man! I'm seeing it more and more, most of them are subscription services for things like razors, socks, tooth brushes, coffee... the craziest are the loot boxes, they just send you crap you don't need every month. Always with the fancy packaging and logos.
People love to feel like they are treated personally rather than getting a quality, standardized process.
@@Gersberms I signed up for one of those "box" services. Ended up just putting them in my garage and when my wife and I finally opened them, I'm like what am I going to do with all of this junk? Canceled it right then. There was some cool stuff, but not worth all of the stuff I didn't want.
@@ryjelsum Absolutely, I'm sure those business do exist where they truly are as good as they make themselves look. But I think it's pretty rare. I watch their ads on TH-cam every day, and as an online seller I know how much of a culture there is to focus on "find a niche product, create a company identity, start selling and start advertising". It's the new thing to do, with recently the trend to start subscription services.
I'd send in a Pixel 2000 cassette.. yeah, that'll show 'em.
They'll probably mark it as "broken" and that they weren't able to transfer it.
Ill send them a Telefunken Teldec disc
@@audiodood I’ll send them a Tefifon tape, that will really show those assholes 😂 😂.
Edit: tip of the hat to Techmoan.
@@firewalker1372 ahaha I will send them a 8.3rpm Talking Book record, Sanyo V-Cord cartridge, Betacam tape, and a 4-track cartridge
@@firewalker1372 I thought it was a Techmoan reference. Flippin' 'eck! :)
I always heard about this on the radio and immediately knew it was a scam- thanks for taking the bait and exposing them
I generally assume that most, if not all, products advertised on the radio are bunk and actively refuse whatever that product is. Same with TH-cam sponsors. I don't watch network TV, so I am spared those commercials.
@@TechGorilla1987 the heavier the advertising the greater amount of bullshit and shit in general.
That goes for TH-cam sponsors in general.
Tech Gorilla | That could extend to advertising on just about every platform.
@@Xyspade Indeed. I don't use social media thankfully and I employ a PiHole to block entire domains on the DNS level.
ran into these guys at a farmers market. Glad I didn't use their service.
I don't know why the Motion Picture Academy uses it, but a number of years ago they bought a Moviestuff scanner and that is the same massive piece of junk that this Legacybox company is using. Everything about your video examples screams the poor quality of Moviestuff's scanners. So they weren't lying about the Academy using it, but it's absolute junk scanning equipment. And by the way, the reason the image is jumping around so much is because the Moviestuff scanner uses a paper clip to create tension on the edge of the film to try and stabilize it. That's what you get when you purchase a scanner made in a guy's garage.
The work you do is incredible, however. I can’t believe the AMPAS would actually use some pie in the sky piece of crap scanner. What a slap in the face to established standards of film and videotape preservation.
Information about the transfer equipment is "proprietary"? That's a crock of bull if I ever heard one. Any good transfer house will tell you what equipment they are using. The "best" method of scanning 8mm film is to use a wet mounting process and scanning it frame by frame, but it ain't cheap. They obviously just ran the film thru a standard telecine box, not surprising given the price point.
The video transfers are the usual subpar junk. Looks like composite cables combined with an EZCap! The levels are way off (much too dark) and the compression used is way too much. Macroblocks galore! DVDs get more bitrate for crying out loud! Once again, a good transfer house will let the user specify the output format. Many will even do lossless files if you want it. Not deinterlacing is common. Things like deinterlacing are usually outside to purview of a transfer service as its considered post processing (read, you'd have to pay extra in most cases). Some are sticklers about customer provided media. They don't want to deal with the liability or hassle if you send a bum hard drive.
Yeah i would never demand de-interlacing as that is something i would love to do AFTERWARDS myself, if needed. The digitized files have to be authentic and interlaced just as the original videotape. Heck, even VLC allows you to real-time de-interlace videos if needed and being watched without any other processing.
Depends on the target audience, I guess. On one hand, the proper thing to do for archival is to transfer the media verbatim. No processing of any kind beyond normalization or calibration to suit the destination media type. On the other hand, giving Grandma interlaced raw RGB 4:4:4 files isn't going to be terribly convenient. If you have an 8GB flash drive, perhaps you have room for an archival and shareable version, but that's a lot to ask for a service like this.
@@nickwallette6201 Perhaps, but batch output and file naming is easy enough since the company clearly have an appetite for automation given the bar coding system deployed.
To be honest, for a VHS capture, for example, I would just request a YUY2 Lagarith/UTVideo interlaced AVI capture, and even provide a big external hard drive for the files. I can take care of the software part of things, but I cannot deal with hardware (since I don't own a professional-grade VCR, nor a time base corrector, etc.).
@@mvShooting YUV would always require something better than a USB videograbber or DV box. This why i always avoided the costs of PCIe capture cards (like an AJA Kona) plus additional cables cables and Interface Box and the proper software for it. Also… why Lagarith codec and not just Sony YUV avi? Lagarith would only make sense for capturing lossless videogame footage inside a OBS environment. I would not recommend it for capturing analog video as digital files.
I entrusted Legacybox with digitizing my good quality MiniDV tapes. They came back after a while, and the quality is appalling. I suspect they do not use the Firewire transfer, but instead a cheap RCA connector. Not only that, one of my tapes came back with that red sticker, and the protective flip cover completely in pieces, INSIDE the box. The original sticker with the number was also damaged, and the case was missing. I can only assume that they had a careless employee destroy the tape. The frustrating part however is that they keep claiming that they cannot digitize it, yet when I put the tape in my still functional 25 year old Panasonic DV-Camcorder, it plays back just fine.
The lack of 16:9 support is annoying - I started recording in 16:9 back in 2002 with my Sony MiniDV camcorder, when I discovered it had that setting!
minidv is digital. What does the digital output look like? I know sometimes I've had to tell a video program to stretch a video out to 16:9
@@DoctorWhom From memory (I still have my Sony miniDV cam around somewhere) the "digital" part, is the fact it has an s-video connection(?) and can film in 16:9.
@@mickschnabel S-video carries anolog video.
the data on the dv tape is the same, dv did not support 16:9 so they used a trick called anamorphic video. if it's recorded as 16:9, then just copy it from the tape with any dv, reader or device, and stretch to 16:9, it would be the same since its 19:9 squished to 4:3 and then recorded to dv tape
Having converted DV myself, it is a very difficult process to do correctly, especially when all of the hardware required is no longer supported. I would have assumed that the "trained professionals" who do this all day long would be doing the same. Apparently, I was wrong. Thanks for doing this.
I paused to read your scathing review. Damn son, I AM HERE for it. Good job. I shared this video with some of my friends. Hopefully in a small way it will help spread this to others. I've been kinda tempted to do media conversion on the side for some extra cash, and it's shameful how lazy people are with their business
It's a good thing I saw this video, because recently, I've been noticing Legacybox advertising their services, even though it's on cable TV, and I'm from Trinidad and Tobago. I am indeed happy that I don't have to go through the headache converting my cassette tapes, as I can do that myself!
Unfortunately most people wouldn't know the difference and wouldn't care.
Some people might be as pleased as I was when I scanned a 110 negative taken with a cheap Hanimex camera and found a nice picture of my late parents which I hadn't seen for about 40 years. I probably gave the original print to them.
I was waiting for a good honest review of this company. My gut instinct after hearing their commercials on the radio was how ridiculously expensive they were and that it would be best to avoid doing business with them. Your review more than confirmed my suspicions. I think that radio programs should be ashamed for using sponsors like this on their shows.
Legacy Box is just one more modern day equivalent of "snake oil".
Absolutely hilarious to print an email to a dot matrix printer and scan it back in for the video. 😂 Supports the general vibe of this channel (which I dig).
Yeah, I really loved that!!
Except that piece of paper and the ink was environmentally wasteful! /s
@@Xyspade technically dot matrix paper feeds and ribbons are so obsolete they are waste anyway so him using them is not really changing the outcome of said waste. Besides he recycles a lot...
Strikes me as a bit hypocritical of VWestlife. He complains they use new packaging when he is PRINTING and SCANNING emails, wasting paper!! I get the whole retro tech thing, but come on, don't be a hypocrite.
@@supergeekjay They are doing it on a massive scale, a scale where they could make a tangible difference, and possibly save some money too....
Now, THIS is why I love your channel!
You got so much in depth and leave no stone unturned.
Your channel is what TH-cam is made for!
I'm not really surprised but I am saddened. I do this kind of work for a living and that cine transfer is awful. Wish I could have a try at that film but I'm in the UK.
Yeah, as a super8 fan myself this truly hurt to watch… the jitter was just terrifying and i bet if that film had a magnetic soundtrack it would not have been scanned and digitized as well… almost nobody does it. And having the audacity to scan Super 8 at ONLY 480p in 2020 should be considered a felony.
Drew do you process Super 8 as well? I have a proper old school super 8 video camera ...
Send me that Super8. I'll put it through my Wolverine Pro and show how much better it can look for prosumer cost. I can't believe that was a projected recording in 2020. It had to be, right?? Botched. These poor people hiring them.
@@akatimo84 is there equipment to change my VCR tapes into CDs
@@cherylfrydenlund4324 yes, there are different RCA to USB devices that are decent. You can also look for a DVD Recorder which are harder to come by nowaday. I used a Dazzle one many many years ago when I started editing, but got the Diamond one couple years ago and isn't that bad. I mostly use a Sony HDV deck that has rca inputs and capture via firewire. But that is also harder to come by, it's pretty much a dead transfer format now but very high raw quality.
I absolutely love your attention to detail in all your videos. You often ask questions that I would ask and sometimes questions that I _should_ ask.
Some libraries will have the tools to digitize a lot of things at a low cost if you find yourself in a pinch.
I know I was definitely disappointed with my experience with legacybox. They did nothing to improve my video that’s for sure, when they say an exact duplicate that’s what you’re going to get. They don’t even adjust the tracking control on a VHS tape. I was very disappointed and will never use their service again.
These kind of companies are the reason why i have trust issues. My best buddy made a similar bad encounter with a german digitizing service for video. It seems all these "Professional" services have one thing in common. NONE of them knows WTF they are doing and they think the words "high quality" are a joke. At one point i got myself a Canopus ADVC-110 DV capture box and a good VHS deck. My best buddy did the same and also got a refurbished digital8 camcorder that that used to digitize over 20 years of Video8 material from him and his granddad. So far this is the best combination that is financially affordable since the DV codec of the Canopus box is fantastic and even the audio sounds amazing. Much better than those USB videograbbers. I even use this box for digitizing my Laserdiscs. You just cannot trust such companies with old videomaterial. And it shocks me that over the past 20 years these companies haven't gotten better at all.....
Same here. If i can't digitize something myself, i send it to some hobbyist friends who actually know what they're doing on a technical level.
Oddly, even real professional companies often fail. The quality of slide or negative scans you get from the fujifilm plant in the Netherlands, is not great. Just about on par for a 2005-era website.
Their photo prints are pretty much flawless for the 20-50 cents a piece you pay, that's amazing. And e6 slide development for 3,50... never had scratches. c41 negative development is not that great, quite often a few scratches.
Only downside of using the Canopus DV box is that DV codecs have "chroma subsampling" where the resolution of the color part of the image is less than the resolution of the luminance part of the image. But even then, this is a detail that is pretty difficult to pick up on (thus why it was implemented in the standard), but thats a reason many choose to use PCIe capture cards that allow uncompressed or HuffyYUV capture
@@tituslafrombois1164 Yup, fair enough. If you wanna transfer analog Videosignals lossless you need something else. However i don't have the capacity nor budget to get SDI video hardware for example. It would make more sense with S-VHS, Betamax and Betacam. But for VHS it may be overkill. The Canopus DV codec still delivers the best results and has its high reputation for a reason compared to the ones from Sony or Panasonic.
Did the same with a Canopus ADVC300 and Adobe Premiere, outstanding results
I often wonder if I would be able to do a better job than most of these companies (assuming I had the right equipment, as all I can do is cassette tapes, minidiscs (not HI-MD), and slides, maybe negatives as well)
Excellent presentation. I have several items - cassette deck, video converter, scanner, turntable - which I use to convert analog to digital. The quality obviously isn't as good as what you can get on professional equipment, plus I can't do film; so I've wondered about Legacy Box's methods. You provided the answers I needed without me having to experiencing them first-hand myself. You've performed a great service to many consumers this day. Keep up the good work!
I literally noticed that the Hi8 Tape has "South Carolina" written on it in Russian at 10:11 . How odd.
Also you can hear Russian language at 25:33. We need an explanation!
To be completely honest, I did hear some, though the noise of the amusement ride made it difficult to get a coherent sentence
Why odd? Russians can't live in SC, too.
@@jamesplotkin4674 they're probably on vacation or somehing, they must've been pretty rich to afford it though...
Южная Каролина - авг. 2002г. = South Carolina august 2002.
russian language at 25' is too bad
SO glad you posted this!, had family members that wanted to send in a bunch of beta tapes to get converted from these people. I'll let them know they'd be better off letting me do it! I've converted some of my own miniDV to digital in the past, just takes a while, because everything has to be done in real-time (with the software I was using anyways, that I cannot even recall the name of now)
I'd rather get something transferred on Fiverr (not to mention I might eventually become a seller by restoring audio) than LegacyBox.
Your transfers vs. their transfers is like Criterion Collection Blu-ray vs. chinese pirate DVDs. I wonder they have guts to charge people for such a shitty transfers.
17:35 I hate when companies do this....
"Oh sorry, we erased all your data? *_Here, take a store credit!_* "
Just like the Pay To Win legal system of class-action lawsuits in the USA...a company misbehaves...so the all the customer gets after the smoke clears is just a coupon for more of the same faulty products and services from the same phrygian company....It's not "The system is broken and needs to be fixed"...it's "The system is working as it's designed to, and needs to be destroyed."
Their video conversions look a lot more noisy than yours, but what really stands out is the audio. Their conversion of the audio sounds like a radio playing over a telephone line and your conversion sounds like CD quality at least. Also they did a terrible job on that Super 8 film. It looks like they didn't even review the footage after conversion.
Agreed. And it is actually not normal at all for super 8 film to be all washed out and red like that. I've got 30-some reels, all of which have beautiful, vivid colors.
@@michaelcrowley8339 Any color film from that era with integrated dye couplers (so not Kodachrome) will have color shifting.
This is good information, thank you. I was seriously considering having about 100 items converted. Now I will hold off until a better method comes along.
I'm only part-way through watching this video, but already I'm loving it (thank you for doing this little experiment!). I own/run an *actual* professional video/audio transfer business here in NYC, and frequently get clients who first went to some place such as Legacybox, got *horrendous* results (and often several tapes returned without having been transferred, as they can't cope with any minor "issues"), and then came to me to get it done properly! To do this job properly takes literally decades of experience, high end equipment, and often a LOT of "human interaction". I cannot for one moment see how these big companies can possibly be doing any of that...it'll be low-paid /unskilled staff (mostly, at least), it won't be high-end equipment, and I doubt that there's ANY "human interaction" whatsoever. It'll be "press play, press record" and that's it. I bet most of Legacybox's staff don't even know what Dolby is, let alone the different types of Dolby NR! People are amazed when they come here and see the lengths I (have to) go to in order to do a good job. VHS tapes, especially EP and LP, often need tape path alignment (there are, effectively, 3 tracking adjustments on a vcr, the electronic tracking control can only compensate for one of those adjustments). I literally have to have an oscilloscope hooked up to the VCR and manually adjust tape guide posts to get a decent result on these horrible EP/LP recordings! I can guarantee they're not doing anything like that at Legacybox!!! All the captures here are done with Blackmagic Teranex up-conversion/capture equipment - no need for me to say "sorry, that's proprietary information"! Clients can have ProRes, H.264, or whatever format/codec they require. I don't do ANY transfers at standard-def anymore, unless a client actually needs that - everything gets the professional up-conversion/de-interlacing treatment. What REALLY drives me mad is how Legacybox et al. have cheapened the business to "per tape" pricing. I can't tie up thousands of dollars of equipment for a 6hour EP VHS tape and charge the same as for a 30minute VHS-C tape! That's how I know *for sure* that these places are using garbage equipment! If they don't care how long the tape is...jeez... Unfortunately it makes my life very difficult because potential clients now want per-tape pricing, thanks to places like Legacybox.
I literally could talk for hours about how frustrating it is to have to "compete" with these cheap and nasty services, but sadly I gotta get back to work (after watching the rest of this video...dying to see how bad the transfers are!)
Believe it or not I'm really NOT touting for business...I'm literally DROWNING in work right now, and especially not looking to do box-loads of consumer format tapes, but I do have a very wide range of equipment, from MicroMV to HDCAM-SR, and everything in between, so if someone reading this is looking for a truly professional job on a treasured tape, shoot me a message. Just not for the next few weeks though, please! ps. Don't judge me by the content that I have uploaded to my own personal TH-cam channel...it's mostly just random old junk from many years ago when all I had was a Canopus ADVC-300 and a laptop! I was, back then, working for Sony, Deluxe, and a bunch of other professional video facilities. Started this business to sub-contract Sony's DVD authoring work after they closed their facility in NYC. Not just some random dude with a few VCRs 😀 30 yrs in the business...and got the lines on my forehead to prove it! and now...back to the video...I hope we get to see the ghastly results! Hehe 😊
-Neil
What do you during the first few years of the profession if it takes decades to do properly? Are you an apprentice all those early years?
@@ABCEasyas-- I started as a trainee engineer at Technicolor Videocassette, back in the 1980s. Technicolor was Europe's largest videocassette duplication plant, where pre-recorded VHS tapes were manufactured. For anyone interested, JVC BR-7000 and Panasonic AG-6810 decks were used back then. Tens of thousands of them...all going into record, rewind, or eject all at the same time...quite a sound! Next I spent several years working on Sony BVH-series 1" machines, Betacam-SP, U-matic, etc., and eventually Digital Betacam. Next went into broadcast tv engineering, then into post-production, then into DVD authoring, and BluRay authoring, using Scenarist and Sony Blu-Print. Authored many *many* titles for HBO, Sony, Paramount, etc. As you can probably imagine, technical standards were HIGH! But to go back to your exact point, nobody can possibly do a *really* professional job, even on "simple" formats such as VHS, without a solid understanding of how the machines work inside, since a huge percentage of clients' tapes have "issues" which can only be addressed with intimate knowledge of how the formats and the machinery works. There are *very* few people on this planet who have the required in-depth knowledge of old analogue tape formats (I'm including VHS in that category!) who are still working in the industry. Most, especially in the case of U-matic, are retired or dead by now! Of those who are still around, very few of those analogue tape experts are also equally well-experienced in the digitizing side of things. So, yes, it does take decades of knowledge, and these young guys/girls (who might know a lot about digitizing) will never get to experience those years of experience working with analogue tape on a daily basis. I also have the benefit of starting in the world of PAL and then nearly 20 years in the land of Never Twice the Same Color. I know that without all the knowledge I've gleaned over the years, I'd never be able to do this kind of work as well as it should be done. If I weren't able to service/repair the equipment too, I'd soon go bankrupt on repair bills! I can train someone to be a brilliant DVD author, or whatever, but I can't transplant all those years of videotape experience into someone else's brain...sadly!!
My guess about Legacybox is that they're using VERY basic capture equipment, modern/low-quality VHS decks, probably no TBCs (just relying on consumer-grade digitizing gear which is designed to tolerate unstable video), and employing kids on minimum wage, with minimal training. With the 60%/70% of tapes they receive which don't have "issues", and with consumers who tolerate mediocre results, they no doubt get away with it. For that other 30%/40% of tapes that do have issues, and for discerning customers, I bet they fail every time. I honestly do not want to come across as a snob, really, but doing this work "properly", vs. like Legacybox... it's like comparing a chef with a McDonald's cook. Would you want McDonald's for your wedding reception dinner? No? Ok, so why "McDonald's" (Legacybox!) for your Wedding Video conversion? Same thing. You'd want an expert to do it.
@@njm1971nyc This is why I deep dive into the comments on videos like this, what a great backstory, absolutely fascinating!
Judging by your videos you used to live in the UK? Such a shame you still don't as I have a pile of VHS tapes sitting next to me on my floor that I said I'd digitise for my parents months ago, but struggling to get anything that I'd consider "decent" with this Sony VHS deck I've got! (The newest video uploaded on my channel gives a rough idea how poor the conversions are!)
@@CalamityJames. Hey James 🙂, yup, Essex born & bred. Then Italy (as u can prob also tell from my uploads!) then NYC since 2003.
FYI, mostly I use sony SVO-5800's for VHS, but I needed some extra machines and got hold of a few Sony medical VCRs. Same deck/mech as the 5800, built in TBC, look extremely basic from the front panel, but actually pretty high performance VCRs. Absolutely crammed with electronics inside. Nothing like a modern consumer deck! Only SP single speed, which is a pain, but that's true of all pro VCRs. Best if all, even if they're ten years old they prob only have a couple of hundred hours on the heads. Prob got just a few minutes use per day during some ultrasound scan!
Best way to get it to modern specs (on a budget) is a second-hand Panasonic DMR-EZ28 DVD recorder, to convert the composite video to hd/hdmi. Then use something like an Elgato hdmi card to digitize.
Well....back to the grindstone. Nearly midnight but busy making in-store advertising DVDs for Nespresso's Xmas campaign. And digitizing 17 hours of unseen 9/11 footage for a new documentary! F***ing exhausted. I need a new life. Anyone wanna swap?? I'm serious!!!!
Handling the memories of people is indeed a labour of love. That's not only a work of a person who's not capable but it isn't even a work of care. I love when this scammers are exposed! Let us know if they react to your video!!!
If you ever make a t-shirt, it should be:
"experts" (with quotes)
I did the EasyCap method for all my MiniDV (using Analog Out of HandyCam) and VHS (via a Sony VHS player) few months ago and the results were perfect. PS: use OBS instead of the included (possibly cracked) software, it's far better.
I would of been mad to have the results you got. Another great video sir!
Why would you use analog out on a MiniDV?
Very well done breakdown of the process. The claims that companies are able to fool the unsophisticated consumer with border on criminal. Thank you for all of your time and effort in uncovering this scam of a service.
Why can’t we just get quality items instead of junk...Laziness that’s way
Lazybox
Armanelgtron lol
@@armanelgtron4533 S**tbox more like.
Anything for a. Quick buck!
People are price sensitive. Hard for people to tell shit from good from all the marketing.
The difference in the picture quality of the two MicroMV conversions is so noticeable, it's actually embarrassing.
Thank you, thank you! I've often been tempted to send some tapes (video & audio) of family past and present. BOY am I glad I didn't! You have done a great service for thousands of unsuspecting listeners, not only saving us our hard earned money but saving precious memories that could not ever be returned! Keep up the good work.
I think you did a far more professional review of the whole process than what they claim they can do with the service they provide. Excellently done! Did you do any followup?
The down votes are the two guys in a basement that scammed you for your hard-earned cash.
I'll have you know I'm in the attic, and my 199 colleagues are here too!
Their website states that they convert PAL to NTSC... but I sent an email asking if when they convert PAL tape, will they give me the resulting footage in PAL resolution, and at 50Hz.
The response was "we can convert PAL tapes. So, I made a follow up email and detailed it all, and then they just sent me a link to an FAQ page which didn't answer my question.
Doing the conversation yourself is more fun to do, plus you have the actual camcorder (device) for them. It’s also fun to use the camcorders (devices) nowadays!
Yeah i would also never wanna send away my ORIGINAL videotapes or filmreels via mail and risking that it gets lost somewhere on its way....
KRAFTWERK2K6 Many of the tapes would probably be more valuable than the service, so if they were lost, both the footage and tapes would be gone.
The nightmares of doing video capture and conversion of all of my family’s media 20 years ago still haunt me to this day, took awhile but it was worth it, though.
If you listen to Legacy Box’s ads they’re so clearly designed to be predatory towards older people who don’t know any better about the technology for converting these films. They create a false sense of urgency talking about how the films are deteriorating, they over hype their “experience” they offer very low prices, and they discourage looking for other options. They’re a really scummy company.
"But I couldn't resist interjecting a little bit of Druaga1 in response to this."
I love this channel so much
I was waiting for him to install an SSD drive in the cassette deck
Yess the
Druaga1 references were great
>goanimate channel
Thanks for sharing - you confirmed my worst suspicions about that company. The 8mm film to digital transfers were horrible.
I'm guessing that the 6-8 weeks claimed turnaround time is designed to reinforce the impression that the work is going to be done thoroughly by those 200 professionals, and that in practice the turnaround is always going to be much less, as you experienced.
Turnaround time could still be a while even if doing each individual tape is quick - it depends on how many customers and how many technicians they have at any given time.
Turn around for the 10 VHS tapes I sent in was 4 months!
Thank you for this video Mr. Kevin!!!. As always it was very educational and informative. And on the positive side, it seems that your knowledge and skills are way bigger than a team of over 200 Legacybox professionals. Final words: I really like the 60 fps!! Please keep this spec in future videos. Best regards from Chile.
Lol, "We are a consumer digitizing company and unfortunately not posed for professional commercial grade transfers." In other words, they expect an average customer to be an idiot, so why put any effort at all. They could transfer the footage on a VHS tape, record it from a TV screen with an old Nokia phone camera, convert it to wmv file with 144p resolution and bitrate of 600 and just call it a state-of-the-art conversion.
That and since when was DV, D8 or 8mm film ever a professional format - so how does their "professional" excuse even hold up? It would be normal to expect the results to at least mimic the originals, not some RealVideo era postage stamp video. A red flag for me was the pricing - unless they had some amazing automation there was no way they could do decent transfers at those prices.
@@askjacob I would think that someone who can find a stack of matching new-old-stock VCRs of reasonable quality could at reasonable cost using modern chips design some electronics that would offer conversions that were of higher quality than could be obtained by capturing a video signal, especially when dealing with damaged tapes (a device that isn't trying to produce video output in real time could try to scan each stripe twice, moving the head by about 1/4 frame between them, and ideally receiving roughly-equal signals on both scans; if one of the scans is stronger, that would suggest a need to vary the spacing between stripes, but the signal from the stronger scan would be clean, thus avoiding 'tracking noise' while trying to auto-adjust tracking.) I'm not sure what kind of automation would be needed to handle video tapes at $10 each, since the labor for each would simply be inserting it into the machine at the appropriate time. Doing films is a little more labor intensive, but shouldn't be too bad.
@@askjacob DV was professional in the context of television and documentaries
@@feelingevaporated2912 sure, I was really referring to miniDV, rather than DV
@@askjacob RealVideo. That takes me back. #TheInternetIsOld
"Legacybox...send us your precious memories and we'll ruin them forever"
They used a low bit rate to make sure all the converted files will fit on that overpriced cheapo pendrive. No interest in provide the best quality possible.
Thank you. This video took a lot of work to make. Reviews that do side-by-side comparisons are the only way to go. And it's good to see emphasis placed on the audio.
I convert lots of media and it takes a bit of time to get it right for each batch. They just hit record.
You should send your conversions back to them on a SSD (to keep with the Druaga1 theme) along with a note saying "That's how it's DONE bucko"
Just hearing the prices and the usual "package deals" I could already tell these guys are a con.
What an outstanding study/report and service to the community. Extremely well done and a huge Thank You Sir!
at least they did not film with an old iPhone from the CRT while a dog is barking in the backyard.
Do you have experience of someone doing this?
@@Crlarl that is the only way i could think of to obtain lower quality than this "professional service".
@@Crlarl Most TV clips posted to TH-cam are done this way. He left out the part where we can clearly see the reflection of the person with the old iPhone on the TV. He also forgot to close the curtains and exit the cable box OSD. There might also be closed captains and they might be in a foreign language.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353
Please, stop. That sounds atrocious. I'm going to be sick.
*HARDCODED* closed captions!
I was ok with all of their botch ups up until you said they had the L and R audio channels reversed. That is like kind of stuff I learned how to do in grade 3 when setting up the TV and VCR for the teacher because I was the class AV nerd. I mean, come on "team of 200 professionals"...
It turns out that none of them are 3rd graders. They're mostly 2nd graders.
Just terrible what they did as a
"Professional" service that they
advertise, but contradict in their
resulting products. Let their
LEGACY Be their failure.
I run a professional audio and video transfer service in the UK. It properly annoys me when I see the results from some of these outfits. As well as dreadful, heavily compressed video files, I also see "sticky tape" repairs wrapped around video tape. Some businesses have absolutely no technical knowledge and are stumped by even the smallest technical difficulty. On a number of occasions I've ended up re-running work done my some shady outfit, to get really good quality. Generally I provide everything as DV-AVI 13GB/hour and also smaller MPEG4 files of 4GB/hour for easy playback, then for professional formats I offer uncompressed data streams of full broadcast quality.
I bet the "100 experts" is one kid with a capture card and a handycam
I sure.I convert mini dv with firewire on my thinkpad with better quality from legacy box.
Yep, probably a couple of dudes in a basement with some cheap chinese cables
And a big box of excuse stickers, don't forget the excuse stickers. For any format they are confused with.
You can somehow make a video feel like it’s from the 2000s and I love it. Keep doing work like this, you’re doing great
His style hasn’t changed over the last 12 years or so. He may have upgrades his camera equipment but he’s awesome
@@ABCEasyas-- It really is I mean hell I’m usually falling asleep by the time I’m almost through a video. I don’t know they’re just weirdly relaxing to me
Who knew the 'process and technology as the Academy of Motion Pictures' wasn't professional grade...
Albeit as far as I can tell they only give out awards, so it's a pretty weird quote.
The Academy share many members with custodians of a number of standards. But there are many 'organisations' that also push out standards such as SMPTE.
OMG that is night and day, your conversion was so much better. I see it all the time, old recordings robbed of all the fidelity they originally contained. These shoddy services make it look like AV quality didn't improve at all before purely digital video. :O
Unfortunately they're a sponsor of most if not all talk radio programs across the country and the show hosts all give them stellar recommendations which is probably why they're still in business or have not upgraded their equipment.
It wouldn't hurt to give the Better Business Bureau a heads up about this company because from what you've exposed, they're frauds.
This lack of care and attention to detail is just unforgivable. After reading many of the comments here it seems the knowledge on how to transfer these media sources is out there, accessible, as is the hardware and software required. How could a "professional/consumer" company screw up this badly? If the quality of your product is this poor, why even make the attempt? And apparently they don't even monitor the conversion? Unreal. Thank you for putting in the effort to save the rest of us the trouble.
About the boxes; they may not have recycled the box due to damage during shipping. As someone who works at a tech company, we sort shipping boxes into good, non dinked ones, and bad trashy ones that get sent to the crusher. Yours may have just banged around in the truck before arriving and they didn’t feel comfortable using it again.
20:48 yes TH-cam recommends for upload, but what you get for playback is roughly 1500Kbps. This is what you'll see 480p streams using on twitch, and 5Mbps is what you'll see for 1080p live streams. Very normal bitrates.
As I watch further, I'm now realizing they are literally running video through a live encoder. VBR is a huge tell there, I've never rendered a thing outside of live streaming with VBR.
Wtf, this company is straight up a scam. My old dvd recorder with firewire input can produce better quality video...
I think they used mencoder and not ffmpeg for video encoding as ffmpeg does not allow h264 interlacing encoding while mencoder does. It can also explains the variable frame rate because if they do not use the harddup video filter, some weird things can happen.
The sticker they put on the cassette was probably a generic, one-size-fits-all and I'd bet they didn't copy it was it's full of copyrighted music. It's very clear in their description they will not record/copy any factory made recordings, or copyrighted materials.
That makes zero sense. It is not against copyright law to convert your owned media into a new format. Doing so is fair use.
I worked for Walgreen's a long time ago and they only refused to convert pictures with a studio marks on them. This was not for any kind of copyright, but Walgreens would lie and say they cant copy it for copyright reasons. It was really about not undermining the photographer's business of selling you duplicates. Walgreens did not want to piss off the photographer industry. Now walgreens will just have you sign a copyright release form stating walgreens is not liable for any copyright issues. There is no reason that this legacybox cannot just have you sign a release if they really are scared you may use the copies for commercial purposes.