LegacyBox rip off!

[chazdo2]

THINK TWICE ABOUT USING LEGACY BOX. i SENT THEM 5 VHS AND 4, 8 mm TAPES. After 6 months and over 200 dollars paid I get 2 VHS tapes and 1 , 8MM done with a grand total of 15 minutes of crappy video on a thumb drive!! I requested a refund and they sent me back 70 bucks!!! The remaining 3 VHS and 3 , 8MM tapes labeled cant do these. What a rip off!!

[latreche34]

We've been warning about them for years, You should have done your home work before putting your memories at risk.

[Aya_Rei]

They sure aren't getting better, and are only getting worse and worse. Quality was certainly never their strong point.

Thankfully this site on the other hand is a valuable resource when it comes to digitizing these tapes the right way and I am forever grateful for it. At least this could be considered a learning lesson for the OP to try and find a more reputable service.

[chazdo2]

Can you suggest a good site for the service?

I have a cheap VHS player its old and plays every one of the 5 VHS tapes I sent them with little to no distortion!

[NJRoadfan]

I have been getting quite a few recommended videos on YouTube from various digitizing services showing their "behind the scenes" operations. Most of them don't have the recommended equipment, likely due to it being expensive (ex: TBCs and high end SVHS decks). All of them get media that LegacyBox rejected and/or damaged.

The problem is the analog-to-digital transfer process doesn't scale well and its hard to do a volume business, maintain high quality, and charge a reasonable price. A place like LegacyBox can't babysit any capture. If a tape doesn't immediately play and produce a picture, the workers likely stop it, flag it as "unplayable" and move to the next tape in the giant queue.

[BmacSWA]

I was curious how the quality came back using one of these services. Anyone care to post horror story samples?

[NJRoadfan]

vwestlife on youtube sent some mixed media over to them as a test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSj3RbdhjzA

[lordsmurf]

Let me transfer these tapes for you, as I've long wanted to do a head-to-head showing how overly crappy LegacyBox is. At this time, I'm not accepting new projects. But I'll make an exception for this.

PM me.

[aramkolt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJRoadfan

vwestlife on youtube sent some mixed media over to them as a test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSj3RbdhjzA

I recall watching that - He didn't really disclose how he did his own captures though that he used to compare to Legacy Box's. in terms of hardware chain/software in the video.

My guess is that he used the process here that he did in comparison to the cloner alliance pro box here which he terms his "normal capture method" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dehmSV2CxDc

Spoiler - It's passed through a miniDV camcorder to Firewire and then deinterlaced with QTGMC - essentially that's the ADVC-110 pathway which gets a lot of hate around here haha.

I still think DV has its strengths (ease of use, no audio sync issues, multiplatform, not too unwieldy file sizes), but I'll eventually have my testing posted of like 10+ different capture methods on the same starting source material so others can decide for themselves. Mainly lacks in the chroma subsampling department and that's probably the one thing I'd change if only allowed to change one thing.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

essentially that's the ADVC-110 pathway which gets a lot of hate around here haha.
I still think DV has its strengths (ease of use, no audio sync issues, multiplatform, not too unwieldy file sizes),

I take issue with this.

"hate" is an excessive and emotion dislike of something. Hate is adjacent to love, another strong emotion. (The opposite of love is indifference, not hate.)

Now then, many of us don't like the ADVC boxes, but it's because of facts. Not emotions. Boring, unemotional, indifferent facts. Those facts include: 1990s video encoding quality, altering colors, macroblocks -- ie, worse than DVD-Video MPEG (with adequate bitrate), far worse than lossless. Now, you can have the weak opinion of "good enough", but it's really more of an excuse, simply being an apologist for a lousy outdated/ancient tech/device from 25+ years ago.

Sometimes being accused of "hate" is more a statement about the accuser having a weak standing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

I still think DV has its strengths ... no audio sync issues,

This is myth, false, not accurate whatsoever. DV boxes are not magic, and can/do drop frames (thus also have audio sync issues). Same reason = lack of proper TBCs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

a lot of hate... haha.

To bring the conversation back on topic, for most of us, dislike of LegacyBox is simply because they do a crappy job. A lot of my work in the past decade was fixing what places like this had screwed up.

I personally get tired of seeing their stupid ads on CNBC during morning hours. I'm not sure what's worse, them or the "gold mine" life insurance ads.

Unfortunately, it can get emotional for people who have their precious memories destroyed or lost by this company.

[Gary34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chazdo2

THINK TWICE ABOUT USING LEGACY BOX. i SENT THEM 5 VHS AND 4, 8 mm TAPES. After 6 months and over 200 dollars paid I get 2 VHS tapes and 1 , 8MM done with a grand total of 15 minutes of crappy video on a thumb drive!! I requested a refund and they sent me back 70 bucks!!! The remaining 3 VHS and 3 , 8MM tapes labeled cant do these. What a rip off!!

Southtree / Legacybox / Kodak Digitizing Box are all the same. All work is done in their facility located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A lot of people don’t get any money back. Legacybox doesn’t really charge much because there gear is way cheaper and they don’t put any work into it. Lordsmurf is top of the line with thousands of dollars in gear being used on your tapes. It’s a big difference people have to look into to appreciate. In this stuff the super cheap people are the ripoff. https://youtu.be/9iQc_qomHiI?si=VsIPW2_r2gO-srMm The crazy thing to me about that video is how much he says those videos are worth to him then when it comes time to digitize then he goes with the cheapest people possible.

Quote:

I have a cheap VHS player its old and plays every one of the 5 VHS tapes I sent them with little to no distortion!

Digitizing them is different than playing them on a VCR. Digital is a signal represented by 1s and 0s. It’s either on or off and you have to have a perfect signal to capture correctly.

Quote:

The problem is the analog-to-digital transfer process doesn't scale well and its hard to do a volume business, maintain high quality, and charge a reasonable price. A place like LegacyBox can't babysit any capture. If a tape doesn't immediately play and produce a picture, the workers likely stop it, flag it as "unplayable" and move to the next tape in the giant queue.

Gotmemories thinks that legacybox doesn’t have a monitor on every transfer and they just rip everything from a stack of DVDs afterwards. I’m not sure but they create unreasonable price expectations.

-- merged --

Look at the indeed.com ex employee reviews and the Better Business Reviews from Legacybox customers. That whole thing is just all marketing. It’s them dumping money into marketing to get more people in. They aren’t charging enough to worry about quality. They worry about quantity.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary34

Look at the indeed.com ex employee reviews and the Better Business Reviews from Legacybox customers. That whole thing is just all marketing. It’s them dumping money into marketing to get more people in. They aren’t charging enough to worry about quality. They worry about quantity.

I've mentioned this multiple times. Look at both Indeed and Glassdoor reviews, from both current and former employees.

... but also realize that companies can pay Indeed/Glassdoor to remove posts. So given the large % of bad, it's got to be really bad there. And then some companies have been caught giving bonus payments to drown out legitimate negative reviews with fake paid positive ones.

Based on multiple reviews I've read in the past (and hopefully are still posted there), LegacyBox employees are not "video people" and usually have zero education/experience/background in video. All you need are the same qualification as the person that asks "do you want fries with that?"

So that's who you're trusting your videos with.

LegacyBox is what you refer to as a "conversion mill". And these "mills" really are not much different from actual mills. At a mill, stuff is not refined. Raw material is put in, and it's rough processed.

At places like this, you and your memories do not matter. You're a number. You're cattle.

If all you want is "something digital" -- and not quality -- well, there you go! But if you want your tapes to be properly archived, stay far away from these places. You're not getting what you deserve.

Mill gear is generally consumer fodder, the same items you can buy yourself from a thrift store. The sort of gear sold at Best Buy, Amazon and Walmart, either current or past. This isn't advice to buy that low-end junk, but rather a warning of the low-end schlock generally being used at these places.

[chazdo2]

THANKS!!! What do you make of the " do it yourself " kits on Amazon?

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chazdo2

THANKS!!! What do you make of the " do it yourself " kits on Amazon?

Complete BS garbage. Amazon is 100% Chinese junk for video capture hardware. That's the sort of crap that content mills use. You want to trade up the quality of work, not recreate the bad work at home.

[Haunted_TBC]

Partially off-topic, but considering this is the company that made an entire advertisement suggesting it’s perfectly fine to dispose of or burn your original media after they “transfer” it… not at all surprising:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz_7cD-WnQo

[Gary34]

When I first starting trying to digitize my videos I made some bad decisions because I didn’t know any better and I didn’t look into anything. Looking back that was my fault.

I feel bad that for you for Legacybox screwing you over but in my personal opinion that was partly your fault also because you didn’t really look into that and you were trying to do it the cheap easy way. You have to look past the marketing.

You are still using the same mindset that lead you to Legacybox. This stuff just isn’t supposed to be that cheap. Don’t look at google reviews from people that dismiss everything as "well that’s just VHS". Look into the gear that they use and if they don’t tell you what gear they use then don’t use them. There’s a reason they won’t tell you. Legacybox won’t tell you what they use.

Look into what a Timebase error is. Understand that Clearclicks and all that have nothing to prevent timebase errors. There are many other reasons those are bad.

The codec digitalfaq people use prevents loss during deinterlacing and other things.
There software is designed specifically for VHS.
Everything is specialized.

The VCRs used by Lordsmurf and some other members here give them a huge quality boost. The gear they use is from a time when the world cared about this task and it’s the best ever made. Really this is a professional trade.

[Haunted_TBC]

Mostly agree with what’s been just explained, but it’s my understanding that deinterlacing does technically damage the video, and even the best, currently used deinterlacing filters only minimize the damage. Upscaling the video also damages it, but like with deinterlacing, proper precautions can and should help minimize it.

If there’s ways to deinterlace and/or upscale the files/footage resulting from the tape ingest/capture without damaging anything, I would love to hear it, although I suspect when assessed and negated properly, the damage done to the footage from either action is about as noticeable as the signal degradation introduced by external Time-Base Correctors (which is to say negligible due to the benefits outweighing the damage).

[Gary34]

There isn’t a way to prevent loss during deinterlacing. You’re right. I typed that wrong. Huffy minimizes losses during deinterlacing. Deinterlacing is always throwing out information. I saw that later on but i couldn’t edit it then. Some TBCs are more transparent than others. That is another good thing about this forum though. If you say something incorrect it is corrected. Anyways I just wanted to encourage him to look into it more before he buys anything else. The resale on the do it yourself kit he’s talking about is probably not good so you most likely will be stuck with it.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haunted_TBC

but it’s my understanding that deinterlacing does technically damage the video,

Correct, deinterlacing is damaging.

Interlacing is how the video exists, and it should be retained when possible (which is almost always).

Modern HDTVs still accept interlaced content, and deinterlace only on playback. And this is the desired way. The deinterlacing happens at playback, not by molesting/damaging the source to force it to an ephemeral need.

And the reason modern TVs stil support interlacing is because modern broadcasting signals are still interlaced, as interlace exists for bandwidth reduction. We'd have far less TV channels without interlace (which may be a good thing? )

Quote:

Upscaling the video ... damages it,

Correct.

Quote:

If there’s ways to deinterlace and/or upscale the files/footage resulting from the tape ingest/capture without damaging anything,

Impossible. Damage can only be mitigated.

Quote:

although I suspect when assessed and negated properly, the damage done to the footage from either action is about as noticeable as the signal degradation introduced by external Time-Base Correctors (which is to say negligible due to the benefits outweighing the damage).

It fully depends on the quality of the TBC. All TBCs add some % of processing noise/artifacts/affects, which is why "transparency" matters. Some TBCs are crap, should not be used. Some so-called "TBCs" are not TBCs whatsoever -- including mislabeled TBCs, such as Tenlab junk, and well as the half-wit (mis)use of random mixers, DVD recorders, etc.

Furthermore, damage from interlace/upscale, even "proper", tends to have vastly more obvious side effects, compared to the suggested TBCs with reasonable to excellent transparency.

... and to bring this back on topic...

You could never have these sort of discussions with the low-knowledge workers at these transfer mills. It'd be a total "deer in headlights" moment if you tried!

[Haunted_TBC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

No.
(Or perhaps you just made a typo?)

Yes, that is exactly what happened, my keyboard (or device, not sure which) removed it because it doesn’t know the word “deinterlacing” (but it does know “interlacing).”

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordsmurf

Impossible. Damage can only be mitigated.

That is my point, no one can tell me of such a method(s), because there isn’t one. I should have made the ironic/rhetorical quality of that a bit more clear