An important notice: those white boxes are made by numerous Chinese manufacturers and come with a multitude of different conversion chips inside. VWestlife have one of the "older" ones with better chipset thus it can provide such nice quality, a lot of the modern ones that you can buy today are much cost-cutted and have miserable image quality. The worst part - they are absolutely indistinguishable by their appearance

This channel is home.

Pro tip: you can open command prompt/cmd directly on current directory of explorer by selecting top address bar right after location, then edit and type "cmd" on address bar and press enter. This very handy as you don't need change directory by manually "cd" to target directory.

I would suggest using OBS studio for capturing the image and set the image to a 4:3 aspect ratio. You can fix the source aspect ratio before capturing as well 👀

If the video has playback problems at 720p60, try switching to 480p, or watch it on Odysee instead: odysee.com/@VWestlife:3/cheap-composite-video-to-hdmi-converter:b

I have used a website for converting old stretched 4:3 baseball games back to their original aspect ratio, but the max file size was 100mb. Thanks for suggesting a few alternatives so I won’t have to split the video into multiple parts anymore!

A quick shortcut in VLC to change aspect ratios - just press the 'a' key (I remember it by 'a' for 'aspect ratio') and it will cycle through the most common types. Very useful if you want to fix an aspect ratio and you don't know which one is right and/or if you're full screen and don't want to search through the menus. There's also 'd' for de-interlace too. :)

Wow, that's way better quality than I was expecting. I didn't know composite video could look that good.

The chip it uses is intended to handle scaling and analog input for an LCD TV. They just take the output and route it to an HDMI transmitter instead. That’s why it works with Macrovision protection and why it doesn’t properly support 240p (no off-the-shelf TV image processors do).

Ffmpeg is one of the greatest pieces of software ever. Trimming video or changing formats without losing quality or re-encoding. It can also make videos network optimize, again without re-encoding.

I have an almost identical converter called the Sewell Manta -- the only difference is that it has a VGA input instead of composite. It also always outputs the image as 16:9, though it seems to have somewhat decent support for input resolutions (at least, among the common ones).

I've had a couple of these converters and inverted audio channels seems to be a standard issue for them. I think it falls into the "you get what you paid for" category and isn't that big of a deal as long as you keep it in mind in the future. (Sticker label as a reminder helps a lot)

Good that in the instructional video they talk about the importance of having the car on an even and flat ground. Of course, while standing on a sloped driveway. I just love this channel and your choice of media.

The performance of those $10 composite to HDMI adapters is higher than most (consumer) dedicated composite capture devices. Technology Connections actually made a video about it a few years ago.

I have the HDMI to composite one and use it on a CRT. With the resolution and aspect ratio set properly in Windows, the picture is so clear I can actually read all the text!

Nice a new video just on time before bed about an RCA to HDMI Kevin you rock and love your videos always watching them

Oh my. When I saw the thumbnail for this video in my KZfaq subscription feed, I was immediately reminded of a HDMI to composite A/V adaptor I have that uses the same shell and was likely made by the same ODM. I bought one to use with the in-flight entertainment systems on older Singapore Airlines aircraft that had composite A/V inputs next to each screen. They had since refurbished their aircraft during the pandemic and upgraded to newer systems, so I never had a chance to use the adaptor in practice, but I did test it at home and it did work if I set the display output resolution to somewhere around 800×480 or 1024×576.

The absolute timing on this video! I spent hours messing about with one a few hours ago and then i start youtube to find this 😂😂

When you hooked the camera directly into it, that told the story. That's excellent video quality, and much better than what you see on most people's KZfaq channel, in fact, what I saw on my tv was exactly what I see with my camera plugged directly into my tv

I've used a few different composite video converters over the years and I've never been a fan of them. Either the image is blurry, washed out or over exposed, they crop the image in too much or have that aspect ratio issue. At the moment I'm capturing and archiving all my old VHS tapes using an HDMI VCR (Panasonic DMR-EZ45V) going into my HDMI capture card using OBS. I've found this to have the results I like the best. There was a big audio drift issue that I believe was a windows issue that I had to sort out and now longer (6hr+) tapes dont drift noticeably. Love videos like this ^_^

I have one of these things, and when paired with a cheap HDMI capture device, the results are pretty good! Beats any AV capture devices!

Thanks for this excellent video! Again something learned while having a laugh during the video. The use of the advertising videos is great and helps lighten up the topic while not making the video bloated. I love it!

the white box might be a mystery, but taking care of my 80s VW Jetta is no mystery now

This RCA to HDMI usually works better than connecting the RCA cable directly onto its port inside LCD TVs. Images usually clears a little bit, however still have some blurry effects.

If it helps, there are lots of transcoding programmes that are basically front ends for ffmpeg, they write the command strings for you then ffmpeg does the heavy lifting. This is thanks to the mysterious "GPL" part of the file name GNU Public License and the beautiful open source community

I bought one years ago to hook up my SNES to a tv without composite. Worked great. Still got it!

The aspect ratio change is lossless because the only thing ffmpeg does is change a flag on the file about the aspect ratio. A flag not every player might obey. Your mileage may vary. If you choose to reencode the actual stream, it will most certainly not be lossless.

Considering the price, it’s not bad at all! Certainly not ideal for high quality archival type backups, but it’s still good for testing and to easily set something up. It would be nice if it also had S-Video, but it still works well. It won’t achieve the same look as composite on a CRT, but then again it isn’t designed with things like that in mind. Great review!

13:00 The NSYNC running gag kills me every time

I'm thankful you were only trapped in that well for about 30 seconds. Well done on not letting it distract you from the typic at hand.

I love the little bits of humor peppered in there.

9:45 - That's pretty impressive for a CATV recording in EP mode. 13:04 - Here We Go, Tearin' Up My Heart again. I Drive Myself Crazy, No Strings Attached, This I Promise You. Do Your Thing until The Game Is Over (or until you Pop). I blew a subwoofer in my car once, playing "Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)." Volkswagen: "Hey, we got rid of the transmission dipstick. And, to make the oil dipstick easier to locate, we made it the _same color as everyone else's transmission dipstick_ for the ultimate Fahrvergnügen."

I'm sure the analog video transfer purists are going to bemoan doing things this way, but I've been interested in going this route for quick down and dirty analog video transfers, ever since Technology Connections did his video on using one of these--and showing how good the results ended up being for so little time and money invested. I'm really impressed with the quality and results, especially considering how long the deinterlacing (to 60p) and upscaling (to either 720p or 1080p) process takes using other methods like QTGMC or Video Enhance AI. Is using something like this HDMI converter the right way to do things? Absolutely not, but the results more than make up for it when time is limited or the material being captured doesn't warrant going all out (like old VHS tapes of TV commercials).

I'd give up all my modern advances to live in the world of a 1997 Jetta instructional video.

this is very comprehensive and I appreciate it I just wish you had included some test patterns or maybe throw a pixelated video game in the mix to see the before and after. converting a signal where the source is a vhs video it's hard to expect it to look much worse

The biggest issue with these sort of things for me is that you can buy a decent 15 year old Home theatre amp with HDMI 1.4 & decent deinterlacing DSP and multiple input switching and composite/svideo out and component in etc for like 80USD. And then you have a home theatre amp with audio DSP too.

I would be really happy if these had S-Video. There is a composite NTSC PAL converter that shares the same design. I have a feeling that these are all made by the same company, or at least, come off of the same assembly line. They cheap and cheerful, and they do the job.

I've had occasion to use one of these and came to a similar conclusion -- it's not bad at all. VHS on a huge screen doesn't look majestic, but it's better than nothing. Unfortunately, those that go in the other direction don't perform nearly as well. I'd hazard a guess that the conversion chip is from Macrosilicon.

With stuck heatsinks, if it's a silicone like thermal transfer material, it's usually possible to "cut" it using some strong fishing line, used like a cheese cutter / rope saw. Depending on how tough the "glue" is, use a few bits of wood instead of wrapping the fishing line around your fingers.

I really enjoyed the video. Just wanted to suggest an alternative to ffmpeg for this sort of capture, cause I've used a very similar device to record gameplay from older consoles. If you record using Open Broadcaster Software you could apply the aspect ratio correction before the file is even written, as well as potentially get some more fine grained control over the bitrate of the captured footage (depending on the device drivers). Thanks for the informative video!

I used one of these recently. I needed to convert old NTSC VHS tape to PAL DVD. I had a PAL/NTSC compatible VHS player, but when I connected it to my capture card, it was only recording black and white. I had a convertor box which would make the signal colour but it only had scart input and HDMI output, and my capture card only had composite input. I knew my dad had one of these boxes so I borrowed it and it bridged the gap between HDMI and composite and enabled me to back up those old NTSC VHS tapes in colour to MP4, which I then converted to DVD and burned successfully. Convoluted way of doing it, but given the format constraints I was working to, it got the job done.

Great video as always! One thing that helps a lot in the analog to digital conversion is a TBC (time base corrector). Full frame stand alone TBC is becoming more and more difficult to find and ridiculously expensive but one could get away either with a high end VHS device that includes a digital TBC, or a DVD recorder that has TBC: There were selected models like Panasonic DMR-ES10 and Panasonic DMR-ES15 that had line TBC and the best thing is that you can use those as passthrough, no need to burn VHS to DVD!

Yay Callie popping the hood on the Jetta again! LOL 😅

So much gold in that VW Jetta video.

Walmart has these under their ONN brand, they’re not bad quality. USB-mini b for power is my only complaint

They do have problems overheating it seems fme, so long-term use (for a TV) is not advised.

I bought a similar AV to HDMI adapter few months ago, because I just want to be able to play older video game consoles and VHS tapes on an HDMI only computer monitor, I mostly recommend it for playback purposes, not for recording and digitization since there’s better capture devices. But for HDMI input-only displays, and it’s simple hook up, I say it’s great for a cheap price and if you got lots of LCD monitors, because they’re easy to plug in for analog video!

I have used the reverse version (HDMI2AV) in the past, and it works all right.

I have something like that but something that converts HDMI to SD. It even has a PAL / NTSC switch and it actually works quite well for the few times i actually need something like that. I once even got a dedicated PAL / NTSC converter in such a little box too and that thing actually disappointed me a lot as the PAL signal had some really nasty artifacts from the format conversion, resulting in a pretty uneven framerate conversion that even has some nasty ghosting here and there. SO yeah these little boxes are sometimes hit or miss.

i fkn love this channel man

Dude, I bought one or two of these from Amazon last year! They were cheap and I loved the idea. I can't remember if I tried them yet.

On the HDMI to composite adapters, they don't require that Mini-USB connector as the power it needs to operate was supplied via HDMI (despite having the port), yet the composite to HDMI adapters require it. I came across a lot of these of either type, including one that can do BOTH. I've seen other variants which is more streamlined (I use one of those to connect to my HDMI-only TV to my A/V switch box). I've seen them sold at Micro-Center for around $14.

Pretty good guide. Would be neat if it had a native format 480i/240p or at least 480p mode, though.

I use Freemake for changing aspect radio of videos. After selecting the target video type, select the screen size to change it to (e.g. 640x480 for your 4:3 video) and make sure the STRETCH option is selected. The converted video will now be the correct size by default.

I bought 4 of these from a supplier, same brand and supposedly same batch. The audio on these are reversed in 2, and normal on the others. Opening it, it comes with 3 visually different boards. They do last, however, been using them for 10+ years and are still kicking.

I wish these boxes had a way to output the direct 480i or 576i resolution and some configuration rather than being forced to one of two setting sthat both upscale, deinterlace and crop off the edges as the actual analog to digital part in many of them seem to do a much better job than the av->usb2 dongles you get these days. Those often output in the original resolution losslessly but the analog to digital part in them is usually crap and with no sort of buffering. I've generally landed on passing the video using various dvd-recorders from the mid 2000s when capturing vhs, as some of them (but far from all) had some excellent hardware in them built to handle videotape input well.

That NSYNC gag was insane :)

Thanks for the video. Tip: Use "Handbrake" as an encoding solution, it's free and easy to operate.

Every single generic (both cheap and better quality/higher price but still generic) miniplug to RCA cable that I bought in the last several years has the channels reversed (red as left and white/black as right, one even has "L" and "R" stamped and is still backwards). Interesting to see that they're reversing them on other stuff too.

I was thinking about getting one of these for capturing video from my Wii and VHS VCR to my MacBook Air M1, using an HDMI Capture card!!! Thanks for sharing this video!!!

im happy you made this video vwestlife i was wondering about this item, and you always provide so much info

The best thing would be a capture/conversion card that captures video at whatever aspect ratio, resolution and framerate is put into it. Letting a cheap low-power black (or white) box deinterlace and upscale a signal for you rather than doing it yourself *will* be significantly worse in terms of detail preservation. Also, you can use any directshow software with those capture cards (virtualdub being the most common), I don't know why you would use the built-in windows software which will re-encode it to what is likely a pretty bit-starved and inefficient encode.

"And if you're wondering if the audio and video are in sych..." * Shows NSync disc, haha, nice!

I have the HDMI to composite version of this box and it's works great. Audio channels are correct. I use it to record from Chromecast to DVD recorder for commercial skipping in apps that have ads.

If you're afraid of command line, I recommend FFmpeg Batch AV Converter. It's not much more than an FFmpeg GUI, but you don't really need much more.

Ah yes... a nice nightcap and VWestlife.

I've used something that looks like it but actually converted hdmi to composite and not vice-versa, because I was using it on an old TV. It even runs without external power, taking all it needs through hdmi. By disassembling it I discovered that the chip used also supports rgb. Unfortunately, these manufacture doesn't seem to care about doing a SCART version with rgb support, I think the video quality would be

I use one of these (looks like the exact same animal, bought it off Amazon for $9 a couple years ago) for connecting 80's-vintage home computers and my homebrew video experiments to an LCD monitor when I'm too lazy to drag out a CRT, and I can't complain about it. It does a perfectly readable job converting 12mhz monochrome video that's generated straight off of 7400 series logic with very ad-hoc termination, and it also handles non-interlaced (The 240p not-according-to-Hoyle NTSC that was used by most home computers and video game consoles from the 1970's through the mid-1990's) video better than the integrated composite inputs on the cheapo 8" LCD monitor I keep on my bench. (It seems to be a common problem with cheap LCD TVs and monitors that they don't like non-interlaced video and give you a kind of line-flickery comb distortion.) Also occasionally used it with one of those cheap USB3 HDMI capture devices to capture stuff with OBS and, likewise, the results were perfectly acceptable considering how cheap the whole mess is.

8:45 "The engine oil dipstick is marked in red for easy identification. And if you look for a dipstick to check the automatic transmission fluid level, well you're not going to find one..." ...Now basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced by the modial interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive diractance... IT'S THE 'ROCKWELL RETRO ENCABULATOR' GUY!

The jetta audio and music is so good.

Just $6-10 for this piece of technology? Wow, that's amazing!

There's an easier way to change the aspect ratio of a video. Use a program called avidemux, keep the video and audio set to "copy," set the output format as the same as the input (ex: mp4) then go to Configure, and the option to force the aspect ratio is right there. No re-encoding or command line stuff needed.

These "el cheapos" weren't even meant for working with video. They were primarily built for "upscaling" classic gaming consoles who had composite output (RCA) to something that a modern television could basically work with. It works ok with say NES/SNES/Genesis/GameCube/N64. Basically anything with Composite. The earlier HDMI enabled televisions had a full suite of inputs in the back for just this kind of work (HDMI/YPbPr/VGA/SVideo/Composite). Now these cheapie tvs are lucky to have more than two HDMI inputs and little to nothing else. I have an older Sanyo 19in HDMI with the full input suite I use as a test monitor. If you can find one of these, even though the picture isn't fabulous, I highly recommend them for testing, as opposed to these crappy upconverters.

Some of those Chinese converter boxes have a switch choose 16:9 between 4:3 aspect ratios. If you want a higher quality converter with other analog inputs like component, S-Video, or SCART a XRGB Framemeister, OSSC 1.6, or Retrotink 5X Pro. All these options are quite expensive and come with long list of advanced options and have little or no input lag. These scalers and converters were created with gaming in mind. Other KZfaq channels have covered scalers pretty well when it comes to gaming and video capturing/editing.

I have a device in the same plastic shell, only it's black. But on the inside, it's completely different. I haven't had a chance to use it since finding it in a thrift store bin, so I don't know how well it works, but it looks like the chip dates that I can see are from 2017. (Your chips might be from 2013!) It has a brand name, I guess... the plastic case says "GANA MINI AV2HDMI UP Scaler 1080P", but there is no identifying text on the circuit board. I would expect similar aspect ratio problems, but hopefully they got the audio channels right! (I will be sure to check.)

I have the VGA version of this white box. I got this in order to play SNES/other composite video on my flat screen CRT monitor. A few years back, a family friend retired and was cleaning out their office and they had it sitting in storage brand new in box.....They said "Do you want it?" You better believe I said yes! It works, but you can still tell you have a composite signal....still not bad overall. It works for my purpose.....I want to test my L/R audio channels now for reverse signals....LOL

Very informative video, I enjoyed it. I also have a converter box like this, except it's for SCART input. It was a similar price as the one in this video and also does the job alright, although the picture is slightly darker than it should be. Can't complain though.

All of these mini converter boxes in this style seem to do a good enough job now. Tested an AV to RF one and an HDMI to Composite one - both do the job fairly well. But, yeah, the 4:3 thing is a bummer. Supposedly there WERE versions of this out there that had a 4:3 / 16:9 switch, but seem to have gone out of production. Wonder if there's a pin on that HDMI output chip you could wire a switch to restore this functionality. Another problem with this thing is that it does not support the PAL60 format at all.

ffmpeg is probably my favorite program. If you have some audio or video, and you want something done to it, ffmpeg can probably do it 3 different ways. I even used to use ffmpeg to stream my desktop AND a webcam to Twitch before I got OBS! I've been really impressed by all these no-name Aliexpress boxes in recent years. They used to all be really crappy, but I guess HDMI devices are pretty easy to make these days. I got a 1080p capture device for $60 a couple years ago and it works basically perfect. I bet you can get a 4K one now for even less.

That guy in the TV show busking playing "La Campanella" and he just gets reduced to "Street Performer" lol I haven't heard many "Street performers" play Paganini so cleanly.

I bought one of these for my SEGA Dreamcast but it looked awful on a 23.5" 1080p computer monitor. Then I bought a Kaiko all in one VGA cable and used that instead. HUGE difference even if it was only 640 x 480p. Then down the road I got a VGA-2-HDMI box and it still looks pretty sharp on a 43" 1080p TV. But I guess you have to work with what's available. I could have dealt with it if it were Master System or Genesis. Maybe.

VLC got it right years ago. And Quicktime Pro 7 - in terms of lightness and ease of use with pro features.

G'afternoon Wes 🤠 . I had to put 1 of these between my Sony VCR & my 56" Visio TV to scale the signal from 480 to 720/1080 so the TV would recognize jt & it worked great 🤠 .

If it’s stretched out using 4:3 ratio then all you do is change the ratio on whatever monitor you’re playing back on. That’s why the option is there.

This looks similar to what I have at home but I got it from Best buy. It was called vid box . The one I have has S-Video and RCA analog and then you can use it to exported through USB into the software that they give you. The only thing I didn't test with it yet is if I could do recording from a VHS tape that was pre-recorded and it has the copyright on it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have an issue with the type of VCR that I have at home. The only downside is you can't do it through HDMI unless you have a special adapter otherwise it does the job.

Sometimes it can be more about how long it will work for rather than if it will work at all.

I got given one of these, and I've used it with my 1998 Sony Handycam to connect to my TV. Works really well, but much better in 720 otherwise it's too sharp/harsh. Switching mode whilst powered with a signal doesn't seem to work. Thanks for the heads up on the reversed audio channels, and I must get a Y splitter. On mine it says on the top Mini AV2HDMI UP Scaler 1080P. 4:3 ratio is handled by the TV.

I can smell the carpet glue from that Jetta..

Came to watch video about an A/V converter, left with an inexplicable desire to purchase a 1997 VW Jetta...

I've got one similar that converts HDMI to RCA. I've got it set up on an older TV in the shed that only has RCA inputs. It means I can plug in my Chromecast and stream to it. It's not the greatest picture quality, but it's good enough for the shed.

looks really good!! the advantage is that you don't need to de-interlace it and you automatically get a 60p or 50p video feed, big disadvantage is needing a separate (and expensive) hdmi capture card...another disadvantage, not useful with playing with video game consoles in your flatscreen

I don't even have HDMI but I watched this one. Unfortunately, the latency is too high to use it with a PS2 and play some games using a modern monitor. For those video transcoding jobs we preferred Handbrake, you can select multiple codecs, custom resolutions (with or without following an aspect ratio) and compression levels to suit. Also doesn't show some scary things on a command prompt!

I use one of these for some of my older video equipment for the newer TV. Works fine, the aspect ratio on the tv is adjustable too.

That rocket ship on the cleaner tape looked rather phallic

Nice to learn more about ffmpeg uses. That was cool.

Back in 2014, I bought the Playstation 3D Display to replace my old composite-only CRT, and finally enter the HD era. As the PS 3D Display has no composite inputs, for a while I used this exact converter as my way of watching TV through my cable box and playing old video games (it could handle 16 KHz signals!)... The forced 16:9 was annoying, and the lag made games annoying to play, but it served me very well, especially for the affordable price. I barely need it for anything nowadays, but I also replaced it with a RetroTink, which fixes all the aforementioned problems (though at a much higher price).

I was lucky enough to buy a Sony HDD-DVD recorder two years ago for $50 with HDMI output. It also has S-Video input, video noise reduction which is adjustable separately for luma and chroma, adjustable brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness, plus a built in Time Base Corrector of some kind, so even damaged tapes can be captured with a relatively steady image. I only use it to capture through its HDMI output with a $22 Aliexpress USB3.0 HDMI capture device.

There's also the opposite version available for going from HDMI to composite, and the switch on that unit switches between NTSC and PAL.

Do you think the couple from the Jetta video are an item? I think I am falling in love with the woman. 😂 Great video as always!

god I'm drunk and eating street corn Cheetos right now but i love this channel and he sounds he is like DingDongVG's dad i swear to god