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Author
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Topic: Wolverine Moviemaker-Pro thoughts and issues
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Jaeson Koszarsky
Junior
Posts: 3
From: State College, PA, USA
Registered: Mar 2018
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posted March 27, 2018 11:28 AM
I have a lot of family home movies on 8mm & Super8. I decided to give the Wolverine Moviemaker-Pro a try. It offered some improvements over the original model such as increased resolution from 720p to 1080p, larger reel accommodation, and 20fps capture rather than 30fps.
It has done a fairly decent job when things are working smoothly.
I may do 2 passes on some reels because a greater area of film was exposed. So I do a 4:3 size zoom and a zoomed out pass with sprocket holes that can be cropped later into a 16:9 framing.
I recommend inspecting, cleaning and repairing the film reels before scanning. And then a good blasting of compressed air on the Wolverine after each pass.
Although the pro model can accommodate up to 9" reels, I don't recommend using anything larger than 5". A 3" reel takes about 30min to process, a 5" takes about 2hours. As you work with larger reels, there's greater chance of something going wrong and wasting a lot more time. Dust and dirt will accumulate more with longer reels too. Another problem I've experienced with larger reels is the unraveling reels. The source reel on the wolverine has very little friction and spins quite freely, too freely sometimes. If left unattended, you may come back to quite a mess. A similar problem can happen on the take up side as a large reel fills up, it sometimes gets too heavy and the take-up reel may cease its duties and you get a mess on the other end. Bypassing a spindle on the take-up side might help with this.
I recommend rewinding your reels by hand. The wolverine isn't that powerful. It will really bog down with larger reels.
The Wolverine has a small LCD screen built-in. I think this is fine for general menu navigation, but I don't like it for doing frame adjustments. For more accurate frame adjustment, you should connect your Wolverine to a larger display monitor that accepts a composite input. If you are using a CRT monitor, use one with an underscan option so you can see the entire frame.
The single claw is the only thing advancing the film past the scanner. If you have worn sprocket holes, or badly damaged ones, the wolverine pro will hang up. Thick splices and warped film can also cause problems. Splice tapes may help with sprocket hole damage. I've done a few reels successfully this way. Read their online FAQ for some other tips & trips. The folded paper trick has also been helpful. Another suggestion is to run your reel through the scanner backwards so the claw it grabbing the less used side of the sprocket holes. Then you need to reverse the recorded MP4 in your computer's video editor.
The 20fps capture of the pro model is better than the 30fps of the predecessor but it's still not quite the usual 16fps & 18fps playback rate. I wish they could just plug a more correct value into the MP4 meta-data, even if the hardware capture is fixed at another rate. To get around this, you can look for an interpret-footage-framerate-as option in your favourite NLE. Is there a simpler option available to tweak the meta-data without transcoding the MP4?
The SD card size is limited to 32GB. That's quite sufficient for most cases I guess. I'm on my 3rd card now though.
If you read carefully through the manual, it says your warranty will run out after it's internal reel count exceeds 200. That might seem generous at first glance, but you can use up a half dozen counts per reel through experimentation with settings, framing adjustments, multiple passes at different zooms, redoing a troublesome reel, etc. Warranty is also voided if the unit is used for professional work.
The few times that I contacted tech support, they've been helpful. If your problem can't be resolved, you can send the Wolervine to them for servicing.
For the price, you get a pretty decent unit. It's unfair to compare it to transfer options that cost in the $1000+ range. They improved over the first Wolverine model. I think there's still some room for improvement with the new model. But overall it's good for the price.
I'd be interested in hearing from other user experiences with the Wolverine Moviemaker Pro. Especially solutions to problems encountered. Or what kind of software you use afterward to process the MP4s. Are there better alternatives to the Wolverine in its price range?
Jaeson
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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler
Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017
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posted March 28, 2018 10:49 AM
for sorting out the 20fps issue, if you have a read thro the linked wolverine posts, you will find a path to a very useful tool called MyMP4Box GUI
This will demux your video file, then re mux it at any frame rate you like, without any re encoding.
Frankly, I couldn't live with out it!
I find some films really benefit from being even slower, perhaps 16fps for a super 8, depending on the content, this free tool allows you to choose custom frame rates, and as I say, no re encoding.
If you do decide to use it and have any problems, pm me, happy to help.
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Ken Abruzzo
Junior
Posts: 12
From: Winter Garden, FL, USA
Registered: Nov 2017
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posted March 28, 2018 06:35 PM
Mark, if you choose "view" and enable "edit command line" you'll be able to enter any frame rate you want. With it set to "edit" a dialog pops up when you start the remuxing.
Jaeson, I have the Pro model as well. For the reels, I now have no trouble using a 7 inch reel. I've noticed that it's very loose on the take-up so what I do is use a larger take-up reel than my supply reel. For 200', I use a 400' take-up. For 400', I use a 600' take-up. I have noticed that the 400 and 600 foot reels are a little wobbly and would scrape the case when they're closer to full. I taped a couple of rubber hose washers to the case to help keep the take-up reel stable.
Definitely try running that troublesome reel through backwards. Easy enough to do if you have manual rewinds. In your editing program, you'll need to reverse it, flip it over 180 degrees AND mirror image it. I forgot to do that last part and had some text showing up backwards on a project. Oops.
As for the 200 scan counter, I was told by Wolverine not to worry about it. Their recommendation for 7" reels is to stop scanning every 50' and adjust the framing. They're aware that this would blow through the counter fast and said it wouldn't hurt my warranty.
As for software, I'm using Powerdirector 16 in conjunction with Colordirector (I think version 6). This is on a Windows 7 system. I've been pretty pleased with the results...... other than it being slow to process, but that's partly because it's an older computer. If I don't use Colordirector, it goes more quickly.
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