Terratec Grabster AV300MX Video Editing Card, Hardware Encoder

I purchased this little box of tricks back in Apr 2012 and although I haven't used it a lot I am very happy with the results I've got. I did try a few other USB video encoders and found them at best poor so spent a little more and ended up with this one.The box itself is quite sturdy and has the look of a reasonable piece of kit.Video-in is on one side with video-out and power (through USB) on the other.Inputs include: 4 pin s-video in, and 3 phono connectors: Left & Right Audio and composite video.Outputs include: USB type B, 4 pin s-video and 3 phono connectors: Left & Right Audio and composite video.I had no problems with installation on Win7 (64bit).Whilst the box istelf works fine I have had difficulties finding software that will capture the video stream from the USB port. Windows installs it as a 'Sound, Video and Game controller'. My expectation was that once it was installed any software that can take a video feed would be able to capture the Grabster feed, just as it can capture a webcam feed, this is not the case. The supplied software, "MAGIX Movies on DVD", a reasonable video capture and DVD authoring tool, but I already have Sony Vegas Studio video editing suite so don't want any other video capture sofware installed on my machine.I did contact Terrtec about this and whilst the response was reasonably quick it didn't solve my problem: "our driver has no restrictions, so it depends on the software you are using if it works or not. We do have a standard BDA (WDM) Driver. It seems your software expects other drivers...."So for now I have to use MAGIX to capture the feed and create a video then other software to edit the resulting video. Interesting I did try a trial of COREL video studio x5 and Corel detected and handled the feed without issue. So whether this is an issue with the driver or the software remains to be seen.All in all I'm very happy with the Grabster and frustrated with the software to read it!

It arrived. I tried to download the drivers and got the "Installation Interrupted" warning. I tried to download from the site and got the same warning. I tried it on an old laptop running XP, an old tower running Windows 8 and a brand new laptop running Windows 10. Same result. The company was very helpful but nothing worked. I am sending it back. I would have rated it no stars but that way I couldn't have written this diatribe. Thank you for asking!

Software supplied is dreadful. Will not capture video to hard drive on the vast majority of occasions even though the system states that it is being transferred and saved. Editing software is short of useless. Emailed Terratec support 3 times and did not get a reply. Much better and cheaper solutions on the market. When it does save a file it has a .mxv extension which is not recognised by the majority of players.

This is a superb little VHS-VHS-C capturing device for my computer, works great, no complaints, fast postal delivery and very well packaged, i HIGHLY RECOMMEND AVIDES for a great buying experience, and of course, Amazon for their part.