Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[Bruce Davis]

Thank you Friedemann, sorry did not want to put you to any trouble, this resistor and pot would be an easy way to adjust the amount of torque on the take up reel, easier than modifying the slip clutch, as the problem still remains anyway. This could also be implemented with the Hawkeye electronics.

With the adjustable pot the amount of torque on the take up real can be easily changed. The designers of the Wolverine put in place a torturous path for the film to try and reduce the changing influence of the take up reel, but it is actually not very successful.

The problem I have found is that as the diameter on the take up reel increases (using 7 inch reels) the torque reduces and so the positioning of each frame in the gate constantly changes over time, this means that adjustments have to be made in the ICcapture software and that is a pain due to the bugginess in the program (this may have been rectified in the latest version, not sure).

Thanks for the reply
Regards - Bruce

[Friedemann Wachsmuth]

Hey Bruce,
the sprocket wheel was extracted form some old projector ages ago, if I remember correctly, it was a Noris... but such wheels can also be found in viewers or viewer accessories (like frame counters).
The polishing was done with a cheap 3-step nail file I stole from my daughter. Not very scientific, but i was using a microfibre cloth for testing if it still was edgy... and it definitely helped.
For the Pot and the Resistor, I have to open up my wolverine again and check... didn't take notes. I did start with a spindle pot I had siting around and adjusted it to a sorta reasonable range, than measured its resistance, took the next lower value as fixed R and added a pot with rather few Ohms to make it adjustable. Will unscrew it tomorrow and check...

[Bruce Davis]

Hi Friedemann, I would also like to thank you for sharing your improvements. Three things I would ask more information about, the white toothed film sprocket wheel, is it your design or is it a commercially available item. The skid polishing, done in situ or did you remove them, how fine was the emery cloth used. "3. Modification: Take-up pull" could you provide more detail, parts used etc.
Thanks and regards - Bruce

[David Brown]

Thanks for the link and mods to your Wolverine Friedemann.

Wow! 250 grams to pull the film thru the gate! I measured only 130 grams on my unit. I tightened the three screws in the top of the gate until they bottomed out and got it down to 67 grams. Then I used paper in the gate folded 4 times. I never measured the final resistance, but the take up reel would pull the film thru the gate while the claw was low.

With Hawkeye v.12 the take up has been tamed and now it's all good. There is little consistency across Wolverine units.

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks Friedemann for sharing. Very useful mods. Film scratching is definitely a big issue and some of your mods can be actually combined with the Hawkeye mods. With Hawkeye I used a short pulse instead of the continuous pull which seems to work pretty well now but your idea is also good and simple to implement. Very nice work.
Here is some more info on USB3.
We already have one solution that I mentioned in my previous post. Started looking at another solution. Thee idea is to use a type A to type C adapters and mount it on the board.
I tried this product:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JHYKF3T
It behaves the same as my mod. Connects at 5 FPS and then drops out.
After opening it up I found out that they basically use the same design as mine, two layer board with no ground and power planes.
Looks like there are many adapters like this on the market and many unhappy customers judging by the customer reviews.
But anyways we at least have one good solution, so I am not complaining.
Here are some teardown pics:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jVgb79hskJM1peDQA

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WdR44GVJWDh8qwyo7

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FVtecp84jD8hJWRWA

[Friedemann Wachsmuth]

Just in case someone does not want to change all the innerts to make their Wolverine scanner better, I finally wrote up the mods that I applied to mine, especially to make it be nicer to film.
Happy reading: https://www.filmkorn.org/modificatio...anner/?lang=en

[Bruce Davis]

Hi Stan and everyone, this is a sensible solution, it does away with one extra connector and a far more, unnecessarily, complex board. Each extra connector introduces loses. Stan you have come up with a solution that I am be very happy with. I see you mentioned there is no reduction in transfer rate, that's excellent. As always thanks for the simple and useful solution to a complex problem.
Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks David. This will save me lots of time.

[David Brown]

Looks like a good solution. I first thought I could find a chassis mount connector instead. No luck, and I stopped looking when I realized the back cover could not be removed without a longer cord than this.

My current connection is loose and can be pushed inside. It's not as slick as a plug. You can easily dril the new hole by measuring from the power receptacle. I've covered the old holes with a piece of electrical tape.

I still have not tried the single cable I bought. This new option will also work for me if my new cable proves to be tedious.

Good idea Stan.

[Stan Jelavic]

V13 board update.
The USB3 design proved to be a challenge and would require a 3 or 4 layer board which is more expensive and beyond the capability of Eagle free version.
So here is a potential compromise.
It may be possible to retrofit the V12 with this solution. Would require removal of the USB
type A and removing the solder from the mounting holes.
I will tweak the V13 for this solution. Will require some components to be moved to the left to clear the cable.
I tested it and the solution does work.


Here is the cable info:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DY3YVLQ/

[David Brown]

Marco, I felt the more I zoomed out, the more pixels could be used to capture detail. Everything looks a little sharper when it is smaller and the artifacts are smaller too. I never measured or checked to see if their size actually shrunk. Captures just looked better.

Capturing the sprocket holes might even help with the color balance. I don't remember seeing any lens flare with the Wolverine, but we have since noticed it with the Hawkeye mods and sprocket holes showing. You can mask some of the light with a piece of tape on top of the gate if it becomes a problem.

In the end, if the captures you have look good, your able to enjoy the old pictures. I am distracted by the noise, my kids just think it is part of the film look!

This capture goes WELL beyond the resolution of 8mm film so it should be easy to see the best detail that can be had. Taken with a Nikon D810 with a reversed 20mm lens + a few extension tubes. I don't think the 8mm camera used was anything more than a budget unit.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17dL...ew?usp=sharing

[Stan Jelavic]

Very good observations Marco. For me Wolverine resolution was never a big issue. But here is a catch. Wolverine resolution seems to be acceptable because they use pretty aggressive sharpening so in certain scenes it may look even better that Hawkeye but that is misleading because there are artifacts associated with the edges. Have a look at this early SMTE test that Kamel did.

See what happened to the edges and in between the dark areas. That is my main complaint about Wolverine. And for many people that is not a problem and Wolverine is probably a good and cost effective solution for them.
Some Wolverine reviews are actually pretty positive. Here is an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj9rApV_Yx4

Mike Spice also managed to do some post processing with Wolverine using Film 9 with some pretty decent results.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-q...LRxBEhwI0z6XdQ

[Marco De Vitis]

Thank you Stan,
I'll have a deeper look into the gears as soon as I can, I need to find time again.

In the meantime, my modest take on image quality.
I have good eye (yet! ) and can spot details, also on a laptop screen.
Indeed, after looking at your movie samples and after my own tests I confirm that resolution is not the main issue with Wolverine. I'm not an expert in 8mm films so I do not know if some can contain more details, but as far as I can tell my Wolverine clone actually captures almost all detail from my standard 8mm movies. This is also visible in your samples IMHO, where the Hawkeye does not reveal hidden details, but I also did my own comparison on a frame detail from my movies:

The upper image is the Wolverine capture, while the lower one is taken directly from the film frame with a small digital magnifier.
You can see that very little is missing in the Wolverine capture after all, most of all if you think that the final output will be a moving picture and such small differences will hardly be noticeable. Well ok, the two persons on the left have been transformed in white-headed zombies , but this can be caused by MPEG compression too.

Indeed, I agree that Wolverine's main issues are movie compression and image sharpness and contrast - which in turn generate more compression artifacts.
Even with sharpness set to low, images are too sharp, causing hard edges with too much contrast; the clock at the end of Stan's sample video is a good example, but also some details of the boy at 2:00 in Mike's comparison. What a pity. Maybe a capture with low exposure setting might be merged with the other exposures, but the presence of jitter would make a frame-by-frame match very hard.

Regarding sample videos, Stan, the last you posted - hawk-wolv-compare1.avi with postpro Hawkeye - is slowed down. And the Wolverine side also seems to have too low FPS, while the Hawkeye side sometimes appears to have ghosting during camera movements.

@David, regarding your suggestions: I already zoom out to see the full frame with a bit of borders. But I understand you recommend to fully zoom out. I thought that zooming in Wolverine was just cropping the frame, to avoid capturing useless information. But I now understand it is actually using digital zoom! This is terrible. I'm now trying converting at full zoom out, but I have a couple of doubts about it:

1. Why do you say that this helps with compression artifacts? If image details are smaller (when zoomed out), I would expect that MPEG compression is going to spoil them more easily.
2. This has important effects on automatic exposure: all images will contain very dark and very light areas from the film holes, which will be used as reference. On one side, this is good because exposure will be much more consistent throughout the whole film, with no suddenly washed or darkened areas. But on the other side, auto camera exposure adjustments can be useful sometimes, e.g. in dark scenes, so I'm afraid details in dark scenes can be lost. Did you ever look into this?

Thanks!

[Stan Jelavic]

Not sure if your machine is different from Wolverine, but I remove the front bezel by undoing the small screws from the back. Then pull the sync cables out to the front through the front panel hole. Then you can slide the whole stepped assembly out to the back.
If the large gear is ok then check the small gear and cam (both on the same shaft). If binding then check the takeup gears on the other side. They are on the same shaft as the cam. Possibly something binding there.
If not then pull both hears all the way out. Watch for a small plastic washer under the large gear.
Inspect the cam as shown in the following picture. Make sure the optical sensor tab is going into the slot without binding and the cam is free to move laterally and vertically. There is a small spring under the cam, so when you push down on the cam you will feel the spring pressure which is OK. One remote possibility is the stop adjustment. That is on the opposite side from the optical coupler. The stop is critical for synchronization of frames and the adjustment is sealed. But if there is some issue there it could cause the claw to bind.

[Marco De Vitis]

Any suggestions on how to properly remove the assembly from the device, to make things easier?
Thanks.