Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[Stan Jelavic]

Added preliminary build instructions (run instructions):
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/hawkeye_hdr

[David Brown]

Kamel, saw you uploaded the "front panel", what it looks like is the bottom door.


For the front panel I used the one with the edges.


I had to drill a new hole for the reverse switch, it is now above the rewind switch. The switches are tight, but fit.
Some of the upper cover was removed to fit the reverse switch.


So there are 5 empty holes below the switches that could be used for leds or filled in.

My focus is on operation before modifying the housing. I just spent more than a week just repairing my computer.

This HDR project is hopeful. I tried running two different capture exposures to blend. I found the frames were not aligned at all. It is probable that the cropped rectangle(ROI) can move, I will try again with full frame captures. That's why the HDR capture on a single pass is now the best choice now.

I will try the visual basic thing, have downloaded most of the files. Bruce has nothing to worry about with Visual Basic 2012, I last used GWbasic 12 years earlier than that!

[Stan Jelavic]

David, can you take the picture of the front of the unit with the covers on.
I made a good progress with the Visual Basic code. It includes most of the settings that we normally use and the HDR code that creates two images. Struggling a bit with the exposure change code. Will try to resolve that today.

[David Brown]

Hi Stan. Sounds like you are moving forward on the VB hdr code. I hope that means it's good and you don't need any more help with feasibility testing?
When I ran WindowsApp2.exe, the view is an extreme closeup, probably needs to set a capture res and view magnification. I can't find those.

Here is the picture.

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks for the picture David. The center part then snaps in and out.
Yes I am completing the VB code. The one that you tried is just a first test version. Looks like it runs OK on your machine.
I will be releasing the new version very soon. Just missing the exposure change when the odd image is captured.
TIS documentation is missing some info and I informed their support and they are looking into it.
In the meantime I found what I need on their github site. Will try that tomorrow.
BTW - the new version will have most of the controls that IC capture has. The version that you have does not have any and it is zoomed in
too much.

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the HDR app running on Windows.
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/hawkeye_hdr1
Check the read.me file for instructions. Keep in mind that you will still need the MSP FW to use this properly. Can send the new MSP to anyone who wants to try it. You just have to pay for the part cost and shipping.
I will also post the firmware in github so you can flash your own if you want to go that way.
Oops uploaded the C# version by mistake. Here is the new version:
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/hawkeye_hdr2
You can run it from the release directory.

Here is the hdr (left side) compared against the non-hdr video.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSu...ew?usp=sharing

[Jason Quinn]

I finally bought the Wolverine moviemaker pro a few days ago. I have done some very basic testing and have uploaded a short segment of film shot by my Grandfather on Standard 8mm in 1965 on the Isle Of Wight, (which is off the south coast of England, for the benefit of our worldwide friends currently unaffected by Brexit!)

This is early days for me and the film is presented with no post production whatsoever. I am extremely encouraged by the results. I have attached a link but YouTube's limitations definitely reduce the quality somewhat. Still pleasing to these eyes though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pmu1NmGv-dQ

John, are these results from using the default camera that comes with the unit or the Hawkeye camera mod?

[John Kennedy]

John, are these results from using the default camera that comes with the unit or the Hawkeye camera mod?

Hi Jason.
Just the default camera with absolutely no modification.
I was hesitant in buying the Wolverine Pro after researching it thoroughly but I am completely satisfied with it. Family members who last saw these films projected onto the wall thirty or forty years ago are thrilled with how they look, which is all I wanted.

[Stan Jelavic]

I like your video also John. It did turn out very good. The videos that I took with my original Wolverine generally had issues. My main problem was the amount of compression that actually do not show up on your video. Maybe the quality of the film and plenty of light, not sure.

[Jason Quinn]

Hi Jason.
Just the default camera with absolutely no modification.
I was hesitant in buying the Wolverine Pro after researching it thoroughly but I am completely satisfied with it. Family members who last saw these films projected onto the wall thirty or forty years ago are thrilled with how they look, which is all I wanted.

They look very good. I am impressed. I have the Wolverine Pro as well. I am finding alot of grain and pixelated looking results so I am considering doing the hawkeye mod. Could be light quality of the original films though.

[Stan Jelavic]

Uploaded the latest release of HDR app:
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/hawkeye_hdr3

[Bruce Davis]

Hi Stan, great job with the HDR app, every revision is getting better, I like the active button colour, have not been able to save any images yet (still waiting on the TI dev board for MSP430) and need to learn how to use this app correctly.

I am able to see the change in exposure on the screen as it automatically cycles dark - light, its very good.

The HDR processing of the building near the start in your sample https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSu...NP9zHJgCd/view is good at reproducing the sky detail but the dark building loses detail. I thought the HDR image processing would select detail from the darker image to add detail to the blown out areas of an image (the sky) and select detail from the lighter image to improve detail to the darker areas of an image.

Would be good to be able to save the settings.

Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks Bruce.
I am still testing the hdr script. I believe one of the issues is that the hi exposure was set too low not bringing out the shadows. I changed the auto reference to 100 from 84 and set the IncLow to 3 in the app and ran a bunch of clips..
One of them from Austria with a dark castle and sky in the backgroiund shows how HDR is better.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ro7cSUtsB9XfqK837
Without HDR the camera is hunting. At the beginning the exposure is too high which bleaches out the sky but the castle walls are visible. Then is slowly takes the exposure down. The clouds appear but the walls go too dark.
HDR has some change but not nearly as much. The clouds and the walls are visible throughout the clip.

Good point regarding the save feature. Will add that tomorrow.

The MSP sw is located in the V12 folder on my google drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...V1?usp=sharing
It is called workspace_v9 and can be loaded into the TI Code Composer (free sw).

[Mattias Norberg]

Hi Stan, great job with the HDR app, every revision is getting better, I like the active button colour, have not been able to save any images yet (still waiting on the TI dev board for MSP430) and need to learn how to use this app correctly.

I am able to see the change in exposure on the screen as it automatically cycles dark - light, its very good.

The HDR processing of the building near the start in your sample https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSu...NP9zHJgCd/view is good at reproducing the sky detail but the dark building loses detail. I thought the HDR image processing would select detail from the darker image to add detail to the blown out areas of an image (the sky) and select detail from the lighter image to improve detail to the darker areas of an image.

Would be good to be able to save the settings.

Regards - Bruce

Hi Stan if you want i can test to tweak the HDR avisynth script to maybe work better if you can share the Low and High exposure on google drive for example

i think when you tweak the avisynth script it´s better to get the output picture to look flat so noting get crushed in every film scenes and fix later the film clip in davinci resolve for example and fix scenes by scenes i do like that

the exposure setting i did use in IC Capture was

Low Exposure about 1/1070sec
High Exposure 1/66sec

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks Mattias. Uploading the files now. In this scene the trees turned out too dark although the high exposure shows then OK.
Will send out the link shortly.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...hS?usp=sharing