Wolverine-Hawkeye Telecine

[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]

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

[Jarle Igeltjørn]

Hi!

I have now waited for spacers and camera extensions for over two months. First Amazon would not send to Norway, then the AliExpress package never arrived. But now I at least got the spacers, and I am eager to test

I have a couple of questions though..
- The two USB connections on the V12 card... what are the used for?
(I have connected the camera directly to the PC via a USB C cable)

I have tested a couple of runs using the HDR program, and I see that the numbering is wrong. I read in an earlier post that this was fixed.
So I thought I should flash the chip using TI LaunchPad.
Can I use this: https://github.com/vintagefilmograph...dr_turbo_ux178
Or should I use the former version called freq_gen_12_hdr_turbo?
(I have the 226 camera)

Without the lens extenders it is a bit difficult to try to scan - but I have found that with using 25mm of spacers I am able to focus.
Using IC Measure I have uploaded a Tiff to here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/biiK7qdPMzs167pcA

I have attached two screen dumps one with 4K resolution and one using 1600x1200 - both with 25mm spacers.

In this example I have mainly used auto WB, gain and contrast.

But I feel that my test is far more grany than the other examples I have seen from the Hawkeye.

Regards,
Jarle

[Friedemann Wachsmuth]

Just in case someone is interested in obtaining my modified Wolverine Pro (not Hawkeye, but heavily modded as described above), I put it on Ebay now since I decided to build my own scanner from scratch instead. https://www.ebay.de/itm/203232004527 in case you are interested.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Friedemann. What are you planning to use as a stating point for your custom scanner? A projector?
Hi Jarle. Looks like you made a pretty good progress. The grainy image could be caused by the gain settings. Make sure that Auto Gain is off and set to minimum.
Follow the settings from the V12 manual.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tbh...ew?usp=sharing
The two USB connectors are for the USB2 camera.
There is a mod that you can do for the USB3 with the USB3 connector on the back cover. I will put together the instructions and add them to the manual,

I suggest that you run the non HDR version first and make sure that the scan looks ok.
Use freq_gen_12_hdr_turbo because the UX178 version has some exposure changes that with not work with the UX226.
Set the rewind switch down while running to set the non HDR mode with a single exposure per frame.

With the 16mm lens you will need 14.5mm spacers for max resolution. I can send you the adapter board and spacers.

[Stan Jelavic]

V13 of Hawkeye user manual is out.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e1c...ew?usp=sharing
Added details on camera adapter, USB3 cabling, UX178 and UX226 camera settings.

[Bruce Davis]

Thank you Stan, much work has gone into this over time, very useful to have such a comprehensive guide.
Regards - Bruce

[Stan Jelavic]

Thank you Bruce. Still waiting for the new front panel that has the cutout for the USB cable for the 16mm hi rez mode. In high rez mode the camera sits up higher and the usb cable hits the front panel. The new panel has a cutout.

Would also like to mention that for the hi rez mode you will need two camera adapter boards. One for the S8 and one for R8. Swapping the boards is pretty straight forward. The camera gets installed after the adapter board is mounted. The USB connector is a bit tricky. You have to bring it in from the back tilted backwards. Slide one side it. Then tilt forward so that it sits straight up and then push it in. This is all covered in the manual.
One more note. No need for the V13 board. If you have a V12. the hi rez setup can be made fit. The board has 8 camera mounting holes. Currently the inner holes are used and the camera gets mounted directly on them. For hi rez, use the outer holes to mount the 8mm spacers with 16mm screws. You may need to push a few components out of the way to give enough clearance for the spacers. Then mount the adapter board and then the camera onto the adapter board as per the manual.
Should also work with the BUC02 camera (need 16mm lens and lens mount extension).

[Marco De Vitis]

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. ...

Hi Stan,
I finally found some time to check my unit again.
The trick for removing the front bezel here was to remove the button panel. After doing this, I could remove the bezel and easily slide the stepper assembly out.
I still did not solve my jittering issue though. Here is what I found:

• The large gear seems to be ok. If I lift it up a bit so that it does not touch the small gear and can turn alone, it moves nicely with no strange sounds.
• When moving the small gear, instead, I feel some friction the moments when the sprocket goes up and down.
• This friction is not due to the take up gear, because I "disconnected" it (lifted a bit from its housing so that it didn't get the movement from the small gear) but the friction is still there.
• I was not able to pull the small gear out with my hands, and was afraid to use any tool because of damaging it. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I'm not sure this friction can be the cause of my issue. I feel the friction at every turn of the small wheel but, as you might remember, my jitter is regularly periodic instead: two frames up, two frames down.
So, my jitter seems rather related to the period of the large wheel, which is 4 times longer... or to something in the interaction between the large wheel and the other parts. Any ideas?
Thanks again!

PS: I also tried distributing the grease more uniformly under the large wheel because, as can be seen in the attached photo, it was mostly on one side. But nothing did change.

[David Brown]

This is fascinating Marco! I hope you resolve this problem. It might be something that could happen to the rest of us?
Your picture is not quite close enough to see if there is a retaining clip above the small gear.




Like the other gears I have dismantled, gears simply can be pulled off, but not with fingers, use a screw driver to pry it off.

Below is the gear on my take up spindle.



FIRST remove the clip if there is one!





Hey Stan, if you have an un-cropped & un-masked tiff capture with the UX226 + 16mm lens I'd like to see it!. I know that you might not have those assembled and ready so don't go out of your way. This is just a curiosity for me. I'm thinking you'll have greater magnification than I do. I can see both S8 and R8 from a single mount.

[Marco De Vitis]

Thanks David, there is no retaining clip on the wheel. I'll try again carefully with a screwdriver, I was afraid of damaging the wheel or the piece below.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Marco, my unit does not have the clip and I can slide the small gear out with my fingers. Perhaps some units are tighter due to tolerances. Check all gear surfaces on both wheels for any imperfections. The friction should not be there when rotating the small gear. There is an adjustment for the end of the claw travel. In any case once you get the small gear and the cam out you can check the claw mechanism for binding.
Hi David, will check if I have some UX226 images for you.

[Marco De Vitis]

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!

Coming back to the topic of image quality, indeed David the satisfaction threshold is very subjective! And it also depends on context.

When you have old family movies you probably never watched before, any cheap digital conversion will make you happy. And it will be the final stop for most people.
I'm usually a perfectionist, but when I got my first conversion from a local shop I thought "Hey that's good!". On a second look some scenes seemed "washed out", so luckily I looked at the original film and I realized that I could get more than that.
I tested other shops, discovering along the way that this particular movie was a tough testbed: high contrast scenes, dark and bright areas, etc.
Some conversions were overexposed, some underexposed, some were too much cropped, some had interlace issues...

At this point, my aim was to find a way to prevent losing any information from the originals, e.g. faces in dark or bright areas or details near the frame borders. Trying not to lose any frames, too.
So I found and tried the Wolverine clone, and the first results after a quick postpro were not bad with respect to the shops, see samples below: color balance still needs improvements (and I cropped too much on the left), but at least I have more control on gamma and crop and I can also repeat the conversion with different settings without paying twice the price.



But then I encountered film transport issues, and also started thinking that it was a pity that this machine had such limited quality because the idea is very good... And found out this forum and Hawkeye .

Some Hawkeye results are impressive, especially regarding the "texture", very smooth and real colors, also because of the excessive contrast instead from Wolverine as Stan confirmed in comment #1206 (by the way Stan, thanks for mentioning Film 9, I did not know it). But in my case I think it's probably more trouble (and expense) than it's worth, many of my movies are not so interesting after all, and some are low quality. Instead, it might be well worth it for professionals, or for preservation of historical films. Or also for normal people who have more interesting family movies than I do .

In some cases results from the Wolverine are surprising, for example if we look at this frame from your videos and the same from your hi-res photo, the Hawkeye quality is surely the best overall, but the trousers and the roof of the house in the background are washed out while they are more detailed in the Wolverine captures. And the hi-res photo confirms that there is not much more detail to be captured.



My initial transport issues seem to be almost completely gone away after I opened the unit. Now my main annoyance is this periodic jitter. Automatic stabilization is not always able to fix it, I am even thinking to find a way to export all frames from the video, and automatically identify and correct the offset with some processing software...
I'm still converting my movies anyway because I'm curious to see what they contain, but I'll need to try again to find the reason for the jitter and re-convert them all if I can fix it.

Happy new year to all of you!

[Stan Jelavic]

Happy New Year Marco. Useful comments. Guess the main issue for you is to fix the jitter problem. Have you managed to get the small gear and the cam out. Try wiggling the gear slowly. It may help.
Regarding the Wolverine - Hawkeye comparison. So much of that was discussed here. You have valid points.
Here is my input again:
- Wolverine is probably OK for most of the people
- My main issue is compression that I can clearly see and for me it ruins the video and a small group of people have similar opinion. The images look "crisp" and I do not like that.
- Another, not as big issue is color. It is just too yellow. Can be fixed though.
- Jitter due to continuous takeup. This can be fixed to some extent in post.
- Auto exposue does not work very well. It will hunt sometimes creating flicker. Sometimes it is lucky and it hits a good setting and the image looks better than Hawkeye with less overexposure but in my opinion that is just luck.

So, instead of using Film9 for Wolverine post I used Video Fred. Applied the same script to both Wolverine and Hawkeye videos and put them side by side. I extracted all of the Wplverine frames using following ffmpeg command.
ffmpeg -i "0036.mp4" "pics\image-%03d.jpg" -r 0.1
This extracts the jpeg images at 10 FPS which is my test FPS. Also it is one half of the Wolverine FPS to prevent and interpolation.
Then I just ran the Video Fred script on it. Ran the same script with Hawkeye and put then side by side:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rAJ...ew?usp=sharing

As you can see the Wolverine video on the left is more crisp. Specially visible on faces and even on some objects. Yellow hue is pronounced, specially when run side by side.
I will try to fix the yellow hue. The script did a pretty good job fixing the jitter, grain and interpolation.

[Bruce Davis]

Hi all, putting aside the fact that compression/sharpening artefacts are quite extreme on the Wolverine image, overall on a small screen I feel that the Wolverine video looks better in overall colour and exposure (Wolverine is the first image, the yellowish tinge is obvious) . I assume Stan used the 72BUC02 camera on the Hawkeye (not sure). Resolution may also have a small part to play as the Wolverine (as I understand it) captures at 720 and then upscales. I use Shotcut to extract the sequence of images from a video, it is flexible in output and easy to use.