LifeFlix Importer & Editor 3.5

Have about 50 DV tapes that I needed to digitize before it was too late. App works as claimed - easy to use and results look great.

Tried a few other free apps. LifeFlix does exactly what I needed. Rewinds, grabs MiniDV, breaks clips into scenes. Leaps over breaks in timecode (big win).

I could not believe how simple and fast the transfer process was once I figured out how to daisy chain connections from my Sony handycam to my MacBook air. I put the clips on a peripheral hard drive to save space on my MacBook Air- LifeFlix allowed me to download directly to that drive. I will say, it is frustratingly slow to edit directly in NetFlix; I moved clips to iMovie for that task. Very satisfied with LifeFlix overall.

did the job

Excellent product and I’ve tried a number. Only one that would not stop import and detection of break in data.

Just what I was needing for the hundreds of precious camcorder tapes I have taken over the years. Imported three so far and delighted at how easy it is, so far so good.

Very easy to do tape imports and basic edits and clip organization. Especially appreciate the option to compress on import.

I absolutely love this program. To be able to import and digitize my 8mm cassettes, and have it separate out the scenes so I can trim and go from 2 hours to 10 minutes is amazing!! However, sometimes, it does import the whole video in one file, and I need to use "Split" function in the scene(s). Wherever I put the cursor to split, it always does the cut way before the place I indicated, which is extremely problematic, because it has to prepare the leftover video each time, and because it's a large file, it's takes time - not to mention, I never get the right cut. I've looked in the Help section (much to be added to the help questions) but nothing on "split." If you could improve this feature - that would be so helpful. Also, once I rename the files on my hard drive, I can't pull them up in LifeFlix (can't find them), and when I try to reimport them from the files, it doesn't work for some strange reason. So, the program is perfect for importing, separating out the scenes, trimming and combining the scenes, and that's it. From there, I go to my hard drive, rename the files, and upload them to dropbox.

LifeFlix is absolutely marvellous in terms of making importing DV tapes easy and hassle free. It's especially worthwhile because it preserves the original shooting date from the tape. However, it appears LifeFlix only set the shooting date in the file creation date metadata; not in the EXIF metadata. That results in Apple Photos not recognising the shooting dates, and attaching the import date to the moving, effectively loosing the shooting date.
Fortunately there are some automating option to files EXIF dates with files date (I used GraphicConverter for that).
Also the resulting video quality could be improved by being a little more aggressive on decombing an deinterlacing de original DV-files while importing. LifeFlix does already a pretty good job, but with Handbrake you can get better results. Maybe adding some extra options to be able to manipulate deinterlacing and decombing?
And last but not least, adding H265 import would be al real benefit, making LifeFlix more future proof.

This software worked great to transfer my old DVs. I highly recommend.