Magix Rescue Your Videotapes review

If you have a collection of VHS home videos gathering dust, transferring them onto shiny DVDs might sound an attractive proposition.

Figuring out how to do it is another matter. Rescue Your Videotapes promises to make it easy by supplying the hardware and software in one box. Is it really as easy as they reckon? We dusted off our VCR to find out.

The kit allows you to transfer video from almost any analogue or digital video source to your PC. It includes a USB video digitiser, which looks like a large USB memory drive with four cables running from it. Three of these have composite plugs that either connect directly to your VCR, if it has that kind of output, or to the supplied SCART adapter. The other is a female S-video plug, which connects to analogue devices such as video cameras. The supplied Movies on DVD application enables you to download and edit the video input on your PC, then burn it to DVD. You can also capture any video that's currently playing on your PC's screen.

Setup involves installing the software, plugging the video digitiser into a free USB port, and connecting the cables to your video source. You can then preview your video and record it to hard disk. Once the video is digitised, you can edit it. The software makes it very straightforward to cut scenes and add transitions, background music, animated text or cartoon speech bubbles and objects. If you're feeling less than creative, you can use one of the preset editing templates to apply transitions, effects and background music based on a chosen theme. We were particularly amused by the 'funky' 70s party theme, which bathes your subjects in disco ball lights with music to match.

We were impressed with the speed, user friendliness and flexibility of the software and with the high quality of the resulting DVD. Rescue Your Videotapes is a great way to revive those precious (if sometimes embarrassing) home videos.