Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[David Brown]

Jonas the camera is just a sensor, you will need a lens. I have a 16mm lens, but use a DFM-37ux226. That might not matter, you should wait for Stan to chime in on lens choice.

Stan, just a note. I made some mods to my wolverine/hawkeye. Most users won't share my configuration and this information is not widely useful. I added the

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...e?ie=UTF8&th=1

a 16' long cable as I had 4 connection points before. This new cable is usbc direct to usbA. I found today that the right angle usbc end that plugs into the camera, is 5mm longer that my original and I could not connect it without;

1. first removing the circuit board. Once plugged in it would have had clearance.
or
2. modifying the wolverine's metal face plate. It would have to be notched. Safety would have me remove the circuit board anyway to cut the notch.

I decided to leave the short internal plug. Now I have lots of length to connect to the computer with fewer connections.

I tied it down.



Question about YUV. I understand that Green and Luminance are combined in the Y. Red and Blue are in the U/V. Not necessarily in that order! That seems more complex to adjust than RGB, especially when unseen until render .

I agree that Davinci Resolve or similar is a better place to adjust colors than the AVIsynth script.

[Marco De Vitis]

Stan, David, believe it or not, I initially tried DaVinci Resolve (the free version) for postprocessing my Wolverine outputs, but did not feel at ease with it. I can't even remember why I decided to try AviSynth (maybe for VideoFred scripts), but I feel more in control when using it now .

Anyway the selective color correction feature is very interesting, it is also possible in AviSynth with the Tweak filter (and, again, you can have a live preview) but does not seem to be so effective. I'll give DaVinci a second chance. Thanks.

The Y component is only luminance, so it affects all colors the same. Chrominance is only encoded in U and V components, but they are two parameters for three components, which makes it crazy to master .

[Stan Jelavic]

You need the lens Jonas. But when ordering the camera from IS I recommend to get a quote for the camera with the holder without the lens. Get the 16mm lens from Aico.
https://aico-lens.com/product/16mm-f...ns-ach1622mac/
They will ask you for the camera specs. Here is what you send them:

sensor size 2/3"
resolution, 10MP
focal length 16mm
F no 5.6
D/H/V of object 5.79x401mm D = 7.04
FOV - should be able to cover 80% of sensor based on the above specs for object size and sensor.
The sensor used is Sony IMX226CQJ

David, thanks for sharing, I used the following setup:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/xEqFxJnJouF478eWA
https://photos.app.goo.gl/FGNaeu3oWbQkpJoQ9
https://photos.app.goo.gl/e7fME3ah7je2iVjo8
This worked out very well.

Good point Marcus regarding the YUV color space. Just want to add a note that YUV has some advantages as well. By tweaking the U and V values you change the chroma without affecting luminance whereas with RGB you affect the luminance. Luminance change can make the color tweaking difficult because the perceived color can appear different at different luminance settings. One way around the color guessing in U-V is to convert it to RGB. For example you want less red without affecting the green and blue. Convert to rgb, reduce red and then back to YUV. This can be done in the script.

[Stan Jelavic]

Starting a new thread - Hawkeye-DSLR. Here is the Mark2 triggered by Hawkeye.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2VrLHaUyEQ5SUkn56

[Marco De Vitis]

Wow Stan,
I'll be curious to see the results.

Good point about YUV and luminance.

Anyway, apart from color correction, another point of my thread regarding Wolverine post processing (https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...sult#post26134) was about the blur+sharpen trick to remove the digital noise and feel, it's trivial but I think it works fine, even without supersampling. I only have an issue with sharpening artifacts on frame edges, maybe I should try other sharpening filters.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Marco. It is coming together. May have a test clip this weekend.
Good work with the scripts. The colors are definitely nicer. The blur/sharpen filter may be running out of samples when it is at the beginning and end. In another words the filters run over a bunch of pixels surrounding the current pixel. At the border it will run out of surrounding pixels and a good filter will take that into account. Oversampling could possibly fix that issue. I could have a look at the source code since I did some filter design in my work days (my past life).

[Bill Putt]

Hello folks. Newbie to this project, so forgive me if this was some where else. I've tried to follow along, but there are SO many posts here. I have a wolverine and it did a pretty decent job at converting all the old family videos. I was really disappointed that it didn't have an option to save each frame as a picture though. Seems like there should be a pretty easy firmware hack to make it do that. Trying to find that lead me here. I would love to try the hawkeye mod on the wolverine, but there doesn't seem to be a really good resource for a newbie. Like a step by step guide of what parts to get and how to build. I'm assuming this because so far the project is a work in progress. If there is a good place for a newbie to start, please let me know. Thanks.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Bill. You have a very valid point. A Newbe Guide would be very useful for people joining this forum. I will add a separate thread with a short description of the project and parts needed and the manual link.
Going back to your frame capture question. No, there is no easy way to capture individual frames. The reason is that the cam used and its firmware is based on the dash cam which does not store the individual images but stitches the MP4 video directly.
You alternative is to either use the ffmpeg or similar sw to extract the frames from the video or go with the Hawkeye mod.
The Hawkeye mod replaces the Wolverine camera and controller with a custom controller and provides the Imaging Source camera interface (camera not included). The cost of Hawkeye is $100 and the basic camera is around $200.

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is a start:
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...ye-for-newbies

[Bill Putt]

Thanks so much Stan! Just what I was looking for. Only question I have is what's the different between a 12mm and a 16mm lens. Is one better then the other for any reasons? I tried searching the forums but didn't find much

I started looking for camera's and ran across this. I bought one. Was only $100 including tax and shipping. Hopefully it's identical(or close enough) that it won't cause me any problems.

There are 4 left if any one is looking for one and willing to take the risk for a lower priced camera...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Imagingsour...IAAOSwwdhejga3

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Bill. Looks like you git the right camera and hope it is in a good condition. With this camera and 12mm lens you can get 1280x1024 resolution for 8mm film. The 16mm lens gives you higher resolution capability 2048x1536. I might have an extra 16mm lens. Will check.

[Johann Regner]

Greetings to everybody!

First of all bear with me, I am not an english native speaker.

I have been lurking around this forum for quite a while now, while searching for a way to digitize and preserve the quite extensive super8 film collection, which was filmed by my father back in the days. It was quite a coincidence, when I stumbled upon the ebay link posted by Bill and got the chance to buy a wolverine pro. Out of sheer precaution I bought one of the offered camereas and it works great. Meanwhile the wolverine arrived and while I tried to give it a fair test, the results were absolutely underwhelming. Apart from the in my opinion inferior scanning quality the jitter of the resulting film, which through my experimentaitons result in my case mostly from the free turning supply reel's jerky movements, when the film transport mechanism engages, and which cannot be really reduced by providing a steady tension by increasing the friction to the rolling axle of the supply reel, is one of the biggest problems with this machine. Even when doing deshaking in post processing the results are far away from the viewing experience, which one would have by projecting the image in the conventional way.

Here comes now my question. Since I allready own the camera needed, I am tempted to invest in converting my wolverine pro into a hawkeye but am a little bit uncertain as to the hawkeye would not suffer as well form the jittering problem, which is caused by the mechanics. As I understand, with the hawkeye one can reduce the scanning speed to one or even 1/2 frames per second (when doing HDR scans). Is this speed reduction sufficient so that the film frame has enough time to come to a rest before the picture is taken? When doing a 2 FPS scan, is the time where the scan is triggered optimized to reduce the jitter?

The reason, why I am asking is because I can still return the wolverine until March 19 and I don't really want to invest more money in something, that in the end has a hardware fault or which in the end cannot provide a decent quality whatever is done with it.

I am grateful for your adivces and would really love to hear that the hawkeye works as well as I think it does, because the idea and the dedication put into the project is really impressive.

Yours, Johann

[David Brown]

Hello Johann

I just want to say I have upgraded my Wolverine to Hawkeye and am very happy with the results.

If you don't send your film out to be digitised, what other option do you have? I was considering buying a telecine that was $6000, and not even HD. Adding HD would cost even more. It is too expensive for me, but other machines are commercial and even more expensive.

I don't know of any 'home' systems besides the Wolverine.

Good Luck

[Stan Jelavic]

Like what David says. We are basically stuck with this machine and got to make it work one way or the other. What I suggest is to try a few tests to make sure that the machine does not have some mechanical issue. So here is what you can do.
1. Try different film stock of you have it. Sometimes it can be a film issue. Also check the film for wear and tear especially the condition of perforations.
2. Maybe the reel is wound up too tight. Run a test clip and keep the feed side loose by manually unwinding the reel. If too tight then rewind it using teh Wolverine rewind.
3. The gate is too tight. Try the paper clip trick. https://www.wolverinedata.com/assets..._Film_test.pdf
4. Takeup reel too much tension. Control the takeup reel so that there is a slack on the takeup part of the film.

There could also be a combination of above issues which makes it more difficult to test but still possible.
If the issue is with the takeup then the Hawkeye mod will help there because it pulses the reel instead of holding a constant pull.

[Johann Regner]

Thanks for your advices!

As for point 1 and 2 from you Stan, I have several different types of film on one reel, and they travel quite well through the mechanics. I watch the footage first on a projector and rewind it there, so I think there is no problem with tight fitting film.
As for point 3 methinks that on the contrary, the gate could be even to loose. Let me explain: Every time, the film is transported forward, it gives a jerk on the feeding side, which gives a tug on the 180 meter film reel, which by it's momentum starts spinning and lets loose some amount of film. This tugging can be observed in a jitter in the lower half of the scanned few frames, until the motion settles. While the film is loose, the jitter is far less but originates probably from the takeup reel. As mentioned before, I tried to increase the resistance of the feeding reel, to eliminate the big jerks to the film, and also tried to put a microfiber cloth under the part next to the gate intake, so that there is no free movement of the film there anmore. The effect was, that the big intermittant jitters of the lower half of the frames was greatly reduced but the constant jitter of the whole image was more.

Unfortunately I cannot really let the film being pulled out of the wolverine by gravity, since I don't have a winding apparatus and I think it would be quite dangerous to let 180 meters of film simply fall on the ground.

I think, that having the film being pulled in a pulsed rather than in a constant fashion should really help. Moreso, if the scanning is being done in times, where any movement has allready settled down.

I hope the above description is an expected behavior of the unmodified wolverine. If so I would keep it and go for the hawkeye mod.