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Author Topic: Review Wolverine Reels2Digital MovieMaker 8mm film digitizer
Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 10, 2018 07:27 AM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
I did a focus and exposure test this morning which you may like to see.

This example is Low and High focus and exposure adjustment on a daylight and very dark indoor scene.

I purposely used a bit of out of focus film to see how it would cope.

Wolverine setting tests at YouTube 1080p

[ April 10, 2018, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Mike Spice ]

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Kev Morrison
Film Handler

Posts: 76
From: Land of the Mouse, USA
Registered: Feb 2018

- posted April 10, 2018 10:12 AM      Profile for Kev Morrison   Email Kev Morrison   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mike, nice job on your comparison video, and the other information you've provided on the Wolverines. This is valuable stuff to us newbies that are in the process of doing a film-to-digital conversion.

I've just spliced together my first 400 ft reel of Super 8 film to convert via my Wolverine Pro (Janice, thanks for an excellent how-to video for the Kodak Universal Splicer!). I'm going to tinker a bit more with the settings before I start an estimated 216 minute conversion run....

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 10, 2018 10:41 AM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Good Luck Kev, and thank you for the kind words....

The default exposure is probably the best bet, but worth trying the focus settings.

In my focus setting test, my Facebook super8 group decided the sharp setting gave the best blacks, but some slighly jagged edges.

I still consider myself a newbie in this film scan malarkey......

400ft! good luck. I hope your take up motor copes, if not, I can lend you a very nice cardboard box!

-

Mike's super8 rescue at Facebook

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 11, 2018 05:08 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mike

I just saw your exposure test on your YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_2kf2uQjYE Clearly the -2 exposure has much more details in it. Thanks for sharing.

Your -2 exposure doesn't have the blueish color cast like in my exposure test for the SOMIKON HD-XL: https://youtu.be/BKzIzcnspJs Did you do any color corrections in this test-cilp?

I'll repeat my test for -2 / -1 / 0 / +1 / +2 with some actual 8mm footage and post the comparison very soon on YouTube

Kev

quote:
I've just spliced together my first 400 ft reel of Super 8 film to convert via my Wolverine Pro (Janice, thanks for an excellent how-to video for the Kodak Universal Splicer!). I'm going to tinker a bit more with the settings before I start an estimated 216 minute conversion run....
Good luck with your first 216 minute scan run, I'm very curious what your results and findings will be with/about the PRO version of the Wolverine.

[ April 11, 2018, 02:46 PM: Message edited by: Berend De Meyer ]

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Cheers | “I am an advocate of the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" modus operandi!”

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 11, 2018 09:41 AM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Berend the test clips had nothing done to them other than being put side by side in a video edit and exported as 1080p mp4

I also notice some strobing effect on the focus test at six seconds, on the sharp focus, that is not there on the low focus side.

I did intend to do a -2 and +2 exposure, but the +2 was so washed out it was pointless.

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 12, 2018 03:56 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mike Thanks for your reply!

Werner Thanks for all your input here in this thread. I'm now experimenting with your FCPX - 60p Optical Flow - settings. Your clips look really amazing, thanks for sharing.

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Werner Ruotsalainen
Film Handler

Posts: 97
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Dec 2017

- posted April 12, 2018 10:49 AM      Profile for Werner Ruotsalainen   Email Werner Ruotsalainen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
I'm now experimenting with your FCPX - 60p Optical Flow - settings. Your clips look really amazing, thanks for sharing.
I'll keep posting additional reports after testing the other motion estimation-enabled video editors. Prolly there are even better ones (given that FCPX often produces unnatural-looking results).

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Kurt Froberg
Junior
Posts: 18
From: Vasteras, Sweden
Registered: May 2017

- posted April 12, 2018 11:18 AM      Profile for Kurt Froberg   Email Kurt Froberg   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi guys,

Did anyone test this software Film9 which I think is amazing and can do nice smooth interpolations from 18 fps to 50 and lots of other things too, and it´s free. It uses Avisynth and VirtualDub but with a userfriendly interface.
http://contact41766.wixsite.com/film9/home-1

Kurt

PS I sold my Somikon HD-XL and went for a RetroScan Universal 2k from Moviestuff. Much more money, but...

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 12, 2018 03:30 PM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Kurt

Thanks for the link!

quote:
PS I sold my Somikon HD-XL and went for a RetroScan Universal 2k from Moviestuff. Much more money, but...
Yes, that's the way to go! Great machine, but way out of my league... Congrats and good luck and enjoy it.

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Cheers | “I am an advocate of the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" modus operandi!”

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 14, 2018 05:38 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Kurt

Would you be so kind to start a new thread for the RetroScan Universal 2k from Moviestuff here on the 8mm film-tech forums? I'd love to read your - and others - review(s) and be able to watch some sample footage - raw and edited - from that scanner. It would be a great additional contribution to the forums.

Thanks in advance and much appreciated!

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Werner Ruotsalainen
Film Handler

Posts: 97
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Dec 2017

- posted April 14, 2018 04:26 PM      Profile for Werner Ruotsalainen   Email Werner Ruotsalainen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Just posted some (prolly) interesting examples of the different legacy color film stocks to http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=011449;p=5 .

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Dino Motti
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Birmingham, UK
Registered: Apr 2018

- posted April 15, 2018 04:41 AM      Profile for Dino Motti     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi everyone,

Still haven't read an answer to my questions... is there a way to extract the single frames from the scanner before they are blended together into a movie?

I would be very interested in knowing if the compression happens at the single still frame level or when the video is encoded.

If we could prevent the step from happening we could possibly also export the pictures (JPGs?) to a computer and encode the video at better quality with lower artefacts.

Does anybody know? I read somebody reverse engineered the firmware.

DM

PS: as an alternative if at a certain point it became apparent that the above is limited by hardware... one could also consider plugging in a different camera... even a cellphone camera would certainly do better then the present one... and save the images directly into a solid state drive. The lens would probably be alright...

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 15, 2018 07:06 AM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Kurt I have been using Film9 for a couple of weeks now. I love it.

Dino I really don't think it will be possible to extract individual frames

I would like to explore using the GoPro to capture and image sequence.....

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Dino Motti
Junior
Posts: 14
From: Birmingham, UK
Registered: Apr 2018

- posted April 15, 2018 02:23 PM      Profile for Dino Motti     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Why do you think it is not possible? The device clearly has to cache still frames before composing the whole video... it is certainly a question of saving them separately and interrupting the video rendering routine before it starts...

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Dan Esmond
Junior
Posts: 16
From: Lawrence, KS, USA
Registered: Oct 2013

- posted April 17, 2018 04:41 PM      Profile for Dan Esmond   Email Dan Esmond   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Dino, Werner replied to you on 8 April (right underneath your post) saying that he had tried pulling the card during a transfer and there was nothing written on the card.

I think many of us had this same thought when these devices were first announced. I remember before I bought my unit in April of 2017 reading discussion about whether individual jpegs existed and people saying they do not.

I agree with you it would be interesting to know if the compression artifacts were due to the MPEG4 bitrate or were present on the images before they were even assembled into the mp4. Given the experience of those running the hacked firmware which increased the mpeg compression bitrate substantially (their findings are that artifacts are reduced but not eliminated) I would speculate that perhaps both the underlying still images and the mpeg compression codec are contributing to the problem.

I do not have enough technical understanding of the chip used in these units to know exactly how they create the movie file. But it seems quite possible that it doesn't write out each frame as an image and then assemble the movie. Rather it writes out the current image (probably to memory) and then the mpeg compression process immediately processes that image--thus it builds the mp4 file as it goes, not at the end of the process. I'm not sure but I think that's how most digital cameras which shoot movies work. I know that on my DSLR, if I shoot in video mode, at no point are there any individual frames on my memory card, and the finished mp4 file immediately appears on the card after I stop the camera.

Believe me, I really wish these devices could give us a folder of jpgs like the moviestuff devices and the Reflecta Super-8 scanner. But unfortunately I very much doubt that we will ever get that ability from them.

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 18, 2018 03:37 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
FWIW: I recently sent Winaid an e-mail about the MP4 compression and artifacts and asking for the possibility to save each frame as a JPG. To be continued...

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Cheers | “I am an advocate of the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" modus operandi!”

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 18, 2018 10:18 AM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Berend if they give you a half decent solution I will buy you all the champagne you can drink!

In other news, I have now added an on/off switch to the take up motor on my Wolverine.

My drop box/hand rewind from said box, for the films is proving such a success, I think having the take motor running is pointless, so now at the flick of a switch.....

I have yet to work out what value potentiometer to use, but that will be seen to soon, so I can 'turn down the volume' on the take up motor as well as turn it off.

Fully modded Wolverine! photo's when I get the time..

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John Milano
Junior
Posts: 1
From: New York, NY, USA
Registered: Apr 2018

- posted April 18, 2018 02:02 PM      Profile for John Milano   Author's Homepage   Email John Milano   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Hi everyone. Just purchased the Wolverine MovieMaker Pro, and did my best to read all the posts on this thread. Some great advice and tricks. My question is in regard to the “hacked” firmware. Will it work/improve/be beneficial on the moviemaker pro version, or just the original? Sorry if this was answered and I missed it. Again, it was a lot of reading. Thank you.

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Johnny M.

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 19, 2018 02:50 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
John Welcome to the forums! I own the Somikon and I am still using the original firmware - 30 fps - because of what I've read from others regarding that the sharpness setting is overruled and not adjustable anymore. My advice to you is to just scan some reels and get accustomed to your new scanner. What post processing software are you using so you can adjust the framerate and perhaps do some color grading and cleanup? Good luck and enjoy your new scanner!

Mike
quote:
if they give you a half decent solution I will buy you all the champagne you can drink!
Haha, even without the champagne it would be mind blowing [Big Grin]

Fingers crossed so they'll at least send me a reply to my questions and requests.
quote:
I have yet to work out what value potentiometer to use, but that will be seen to soon, so I can 'turn down the volume' on the take up motor as well as turn it off.
That is a great idea! Love to see the pictures of your Wolverine 3.0. Good luck on the engineering!

UPDATE: reply from Winaid:
quote:
Good day,
1. this one is home use one , not profeesional
2. for the format can not change, it is only can be MP4, so the quality of video will be compressed
3. by not can not change the effect of vidoe out put format
Disappointing...

[ April 19, 2018, 04:57 AM: Message edited by: Berend De Meyer ]

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Cheers | “I am an advocate of the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" modus operandi!”

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Mark Davies
Film Handler

Posts: 65
From: Stourbridge, UK
Registered: Jan 2018

- posted April 19, 2018 08:24 AM      Profile for Mark Davies   Email Mark Davies   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Ask him for the source code and we'll do it ourselves.

I did have a thought, but I am pretty sure that it stores the individual scans in memory before building the MP4 and then saving it to media. I think this is proven by removing the card before the scan is finished and there is nothing there.

But I wondered if there was such a thing that could plug into the Scanner and into a card reader / port on a PC at the same time. So the scanner would actually use a file system on the PC. I don't know if such a thing exists, also there may be complications if the PC did anything with the file system at the same time. I don't know.

I do suspect that the hard ware inside 'maybe' based on the Raspberry Pie. I say this because I was looking at the files for my Reflecta's firmware and noted something called Platform=PIE, again, only guessing at the moment.

Kind Regards Mark

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Werner Ruotsalainen
Film Handler

Posts: 97
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Dec 2017

- posted April 19, 2018 03:18 PM      Profile for Werner Ruotsalainen   Email Werner Ruotsalainen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
1. this one is home use one , not profeesional
At least they answered you - they didn't bother answering my Standard-8-related mail sent back in December.

You should mention to them they could consider producing a professional model for, say, $1000...$2000. Obviously without wobbling. No need to be sprocketless (as long as there's no wobbling). RAW support is a must. And preferably a better sensor with better dynamic range.

I'd gladly pay even $2000 for a really professional scanner. But no more - after all, this is a 8mm scanner, while the Moviestuff can also scan 9.5 / 16mm and, being based on post processing-based frame identification, can be inherently better at eliminating wobbling and the likes.

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 19, 2018 03:53 PM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Oh well, No still frame 'image sequence' is to be expected.

I bet it could be written in to firmware, to tell the camera to output at least a jpeg image....

I am loving my 'take up reel' switch.
0630 this morning I was drill in hand, wolverine in peices, with wire snip...black coffe...

-

[ April 20, 2018, 03:29 AM: Message edited by: Mike Spice ]

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Berend De Meyer
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 140
From: Leek, The Netherlands
Registered: Apr 2017

- posted April 20, 2018 05:04 AM      Profile for Berend De Meyer   Email Berend De Meyer   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
Mark
quote:
Ask him for the source code and we'll do it ourselves.
I send in a reply requesting for the source code! For the Somikon there's also a new firmware update for the 20 fps tweak: https://www.pearl.de/support/product.jsp?pdid=NX4294&catid=1301

Werner I'm convinced they won't ever make a $1000 - $2000 device based on the Wolverine/Somikon.

Mike I'm also afraid NOT! Nice little switch btw. Glad you like it and is worth the trouble.

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Cheers | “I am an advocate of the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" modus operandi!”

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Werner Ruotsalainen
Film Handler

Posts: 97
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: Dec 2017

- posted April 20, 2018 09:52 AM      Profile for Werner Ruotsalainen   Email Werner Ruotsalainen   Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
For the Somikon there's also a new firmware update for the 20 fps tweak: https://www.pearl.de/support/product.jsp?pdid=NX4294&catid=1301
Just remember sharpness setting doesn't work in this version. Therefore, as a lot of us recommend scanning in the "Low" sharpness mode, I recommend the "hacked" firmware.

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Mike Spice
Master Film Handler

Posts: 421
From: none of your business
Registered: Jun 2017

- posted April 20, 2018 04:23 PM      Profile for Mike Spice     Send New Private Message       Edit/Delete Post 
It's 22.20 Friday night, and the Wolverine has been chugging away since 10am.

-
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[ April 21, 2018, 02:54 AM: Message edited by: Mike Spice ]

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