It’s a small featherweight unit -- feels like an empty box actually. But it sets up quick. I was out of the box and converting tapes to DVD in about an hour. I’ve not done the DVD interface prior and my experience has all been in the video tape field. In fact, my project was to convert my old SVHS masters to DVD.

Capwiz is a streamline program designed to get you up and converting fast. It’s simple and does the job, plus gives you six menu screens to choose from. I liked the choices, however, I would have preferred a menu screen that held more than 5 chapters. As simple as it is, it still allows some basic color/contrast/brightness manipulation. Initialization of a disc is quick but the closing of it takes several minutes. Still, if you’re converting an hour of video -- it’ll make a disk in an hour and five minutes. That said, you’ll probably screw up a few disks right out of the box as you get used to its way of starting to record.

The conversion itself was painless and the results acceptable, but not without blemish. I was hoping the transfer would look nearly as good as the original in resolution -- but in fact it looked like a tape generation might. Additionally, the moving video suffered dropped frames from time to time. I shut down Norton and still got the dropped frames. They’re annoying to us video guys, but truly, most people won’t notice.

The product is bundled with VideoStudio 9 from Ulead. Useage isn’t too tough. I haven’t mastered the program, but was able to make some quick assemblages. I like the test titles and some of the wipes are cool. As is par for the course, far more wipes than you’ll ever need. It’s definitely a solid starter, you’ll not need anything more powerful save for the professional. However, I wasn’t impressed with the visual quality of SVHS that I captured via this software. It had far more dropped frames and was subject to unacceptable pixalization -- especially around complicated movement, you can see the size of the pixels increase momentarily.

To compensate, I used Capwiz to capture either on DVD or on the home drive. Then imported the clips to Video Studio -- the results were better this way. I also noticed though, that assemblage in VideoStudio increased the size of files substantially. 1.8 hours of video was twice too much for the normal DVD. VideoStudio will allow you to capture to still image on the fly (a great time saver). Though you’ll more likely get better images if you first capture the video in Capwiz then make stills from that clip within VideoStudio.

I’d read older reviews about the DVDexpress that found it running hot. I didn’t have that problem at all, however, I could not disconnect the SVHS cable from the box -- it’s still in there. I just gave up and wrapped it around the box for storage. Don’t know if that’s the fault of the cable or the port.

If you absolutely need high quality image you may need to spend more money. However & overall, the DVDexpress is a nifty inexpensive unit that’ll get the job done without too much hassle and at a great price for most users.

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