Film Advancement Issues in Recording

[Bob Davis]

Recently I purchased a Wolverine MovieMaker Pro to digitize some old Super 8 film of mine. It has been an experience getting familiar with the machine. Sadly, the included manual was of little help. Thanks to YouTube I got some help. I have now digitized a couple of small, 50 ft. I think, reels. All told I have 6 - 400ft reels as well as 10 more 50’s. On my first 400 ft reel the film has stopped advancing unexpectedly a number of times. I looked for some help using a Google search. There I learned about several potential issues. One was about film that was cut too wide. One was about damaged sprocket holes. And another was about tension on the “sleds” that provide pressure on the film as it goes through the gate. First, film width is not a problem. Second, I examined the film carefully in a region that stalled and the sprocket holes were not damaged. I was unsuccessful in trying to adjust the sled pressure. Does anyone have any suggestions for me to try?

[Ozzie Williams]

Hi,

It has been a while since I used a Wolverine, but I am struck by the fact you say it happened with the 400ft reel, rather than the 50ft reels.

If I could not reproduce the fault using 50ft reels, then I would begin to suspect that there is something about 400ft reels...such as the SD card not being able to keep up after a while with the amount of information being recorded (the fault happens after 50ft but not before this, so I would test with a faster SD card). Or that as the take up reel becomes filled (beyond 50ft) the amount of effort required of the motor to pull the film through becomes too great as the ration of turns on each reekl changes (hence release resistance such as not looping through all the guides on the take up side).

This is all I can think to suggest, but I hope you get it sorted in the end. I know these things can be a pain.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Bob,
Need some more details.
Is the claw still running when the film is stuck? Do you hear a clicking sound?
You can try the paper fix.
https://www.wolverinedata.com/faqs
Sometimes it could be the reel that was wound too tight. You can try manually turning the feed reel when the machine gets stuck.
It could be film shrinkage so that the perforation spacing became shorter. A paper fix should help here also.
My experience is that the claw mechanism tolerances are not very good with these machines.
There are a few adjustments that you can try if all of the above fails. Let me know how it goes and I can dig out the adjustments details.

[Stan Jelavic]

Additionally make sure that the r8/s8 switch is pushed all the way to the end.