Welcome to the new 8mm Forum!
The forum you are looking at is entirely new software. Because there was no good way to import all of the old archived data from the last 20 years on the old software, everyone will need to register for a new account to participate.
To access the original forums from 2003-2019 which are now a "read only" status, click on the "FORUM ARCHIVE" link above.
Please remember registering with your first and last REAL name is mandatory. This forum is for professionals and fake names are not permitted. To get to the registration page click here.
Once the registration has been approved, you will be able to login via the link in the upper right corner of this page.
Also, please remember while it is highly encouraged to upload an avatar image to your profile, is not a requirement. If you choose to upload an avatar image, please remember that it IS a requirement that the image must be a clear photo of your face.
Thank you!
One would have hoped that Kodak would have upped the quality and performance of the basic Wolverine design. Apparently not, and its unbelievable that these generic scanners are still being marketed with known quality and performance issues which could easily be corrected.
I acquired a ReelZ and ran 14 7-inch reels through it. It can't be expected to run a 7-inch (400+ feet) without several restarts since it seems to stop if the splice bothers it. Restarting requires manually moving the film past the stoppage and OK'ing the record window. Just takes a moment but it happens fairly often.
Then it has another habit of losing tension on the take-up spool at which point it just keeps feeding the film into a pile wherever gravity takes it. It has a stepper motor driving the take-up reel that just seemed to quit when this happened. Pulling on the film would reactivate the motor. And with care, you could manually guide the film back onto the take-up reel.
Finally, I compared the recorded MP4 files and found them to be significantly less sharp than the film. Does it have a lens that they focus during manufacture or just a sensor that is fixed where it will capture a sharp image?
Another gripe is the pressure pads that keep the film in the film plane. They are spring loaded (lightly) and while I didn't notice scratches on the films think it's a real possibility that scratches could happen.
Another minor gripe is you have to position the film under four tabs in the film plane and this does require deftness and patience. Oh well.
I had had enough and decided to return the machine and try something else. I'll try the Wolverine Pro next.
Before I sent it back, I took a peek inside and have to say I was reasonably impressed. They don't seem to have cut any corners but somehow have failed to tweak the software and hardware to get it to work right. I called the number in the owner's manual and a reasonably knowledgeable English-speaking respondent acknowledged that the device was known to have the frequent stop problem and suggested exchanging it your another and that they were making improvements as they experienced user feedback. Maybe you'll be luckier than I was. Would love to hear Kodak or the actual manufacturer eventually get it right ... if you'd like to see the guts of the Reelz, send me an email address.
I've gone through THREE of these Kodak units from Amazon in about a month. One was DOA-- motor was basically locked up out of the box. One stopped advancing the film with the primitive little claw, and one stopped advancing the take-up reel. I got zero use from one, less than 10 hours from a second unit and under 20 hours from the "best" of the lot. At 2 frames per second, I definitely didn't make much progress... Plus, the image quality is moderate at best, and quite a bit of the above "operating time" was spend dealing with jammed film.
One defect is annoying, but it happens. Two-in-a-row raises some serious red flags, and three failures in-a-row pretty much says it all. I cannot imagine they're spending more than $20 per unit to have these made. When things do work, you can tell that details like motor loading are such that they've used the absolute cheapest, lowest capacity rating on *everything...*
Obviously Kodak has disappointingly licensed their name to go on a product with no significant improvements over the cheap Wolverine design.
I'm not sure what to try next. I have at least 15,000 feet of 8mm & Super 8 that need to be digitized. I don't have $5,000 or $10,000 for high-end gear or budget to pay someone $20 or $40 per 50' of this project, nor do I want to hand-off (or for Goodness' Sake *ship*) my late parent's and grandparent's precious films anywhere to get this done.
Is there a viable telecine option that works well? Where might I find a stable projector with a cool light source and variable speed that would capture with good results? I have various camera options from a nice little 3CCD Panasonic dv camera to a 4k JVC (JVC-GY-MH170UA) as well as a full frame Nikon that can also capture HD Video. Seems like the right projector and a bit of post processing in FCP should give me a decent result with one of those cameras.
What's the current "best" budget-minded solution?... I don't mind a slow solution, but I certainly don't need constant jams or other failures that risk damaging my films. New is fine, and so is a used rig, so long as it offers a safe and reliable solution. I'm trying to work within a $500 to $1000 budget at most.
If frame-by-frame isn't absolutely necessary, real-time scan by converting normal projector for lens to lens transfer, when done right, still yield pretty good results and may fit to your need.
Since you already have several decent camcorders to choose from so you already have the first half of the solution. What you further need would be a proper projector in good working order, some optics, a small LED panel to be used as the backlight, and some spare time to tinker with.
I found that I achieved brilliant results using the 'off the wall' method. You need a camcorder that allows you to manually set the shutter speed and focus and the ability to adjust the projector speed. My Eumig hqs projector has a switch that selects either 18fps or 24fps but if you experiment a bit, you can find the sweet spot of 16 and 2/3rds fps (while projecting a film and looking at the monitor on the 1/50th shutter camcorder that's pointing at the projected image - you will see the flicker disappear when you achieve the correct projection speed).
If you opt to do it this way, and your films we're shot at 18 fps, project at 16 and 2/3rds fps and have the video camera set at 1/50 shutter speed. When you play it back, you really won't notice that it's slightly slower.
If the films are 24 fps, shoot the same as the 18 fps films but speed up in editing. If you don't want to do this in editing, project at 24 fps and have the video camera shutter at 1/80.
I have various camera options from a nice little 3CCD Panasonic dv camera to a 4k JVC (JVC-GY-MH170UA) as well as a full frame Nikon that can also capture HD Video. Seems like the right projector and a bit of post processing in FCP should give me a decent result with one of those cameras.
Your JVC camcorder would be no wonder the best candidate for this task. As being professional camcorder, with full blown manual control. But the most important function of all is the manual (and variable) shutter speed mode.
That means you can set the record format to whatever frame rate you prefer - 24p/30p/60p. Then manually dial in the shutter speed to match exactly with the projector's shutter speed (around 1/54s for silent, 1/72s for sound). When correctly done the flicker will be eliminated - I mean totally eliminated.
I just wanted to add another data point to this thread, since my experience with the Kodak REELZ scanner has been mostly positive. When considering the various available machines, I divided them into three categories, based on specs. They all contain a â…“-inch CMOS image sensor, with the original Wolverine (and its clones) advertised as 3.53 Megapixel (2304 x 1536), producing a 720p MP4 output file. The Wolverine Pro has the same sensor spec, but accepts larger reels and produces a 1080p file. The Kodak REELZ is advertised as 8.08 Megapixel (3280 x 2464) and outputs a 1296p file, although I wonder if maybe the cameras in all these units are optically identical, with resolution differences controlled by firmware. The REELZ also accepts SD cards up to 64GB, while the Wolverines are limited to 32GB. It has a larger TFT display (5-inch vs 2.4-inch), but cannot be connected to an external display.
I had watched Tedd Lear's video reviews of the REELZ unit, along with numerous reviews of the Wolverine & Magnasonic machines before deciding to purchase the Kodak-licensed version, mainly on the basis of its higher advertised resolution. I ordered mine via Amazon Prime to ensure easy, no-cost return if the unit proved unsatisfactory. It arrived quickly with no parts missing and nothing rattling around inside. I've scanned nearly 1000 ft. of film so far, both 8mm and Super8, with only two issues, neither of which was the fault of the machine.
My first issue was a jam at the leading edge of the film lid caused by a very thick, glued splice. I removed it and replaced with Presstapes, eliminating the problem. The second issue was caused by the beginnings of vinegar syndrome on one of my films. The first 10 feet suffer from noticeable faceting/spoking, causing the film to lift off the scanning window between each bend point. This makes it appear as if the camera is going in and out of focus every few seconds for the first minute or so of this footage (little boy in boat). Although I cleaned & lubricated all my films with FilmGuard, then let them rest for several weeks, I didn't want to risk breaking a brittle film by trying to flatten out the facets. Fortunately, I was able to mitigate the effect somewhat by inserting a folded piece of Pec Pad just on either side of the scanning window, then closing the lid to add a bit of extra pressure. The machine still had enough oomph to pull the film through smoothly, without the claw causing any apparent damage to the sprocket holes.
When finished, I used a USB cable to upload all the clips directly from the REELZ unit to my iMac computer. I also popped the SD card into my Mac's card reader and it appears that I could have copied all the clips this way, if desired. I left all of the REELZ exposure, sharpness, and tint settings at their defaults, since I planned to make those corrections later in Final Cut Pro X. I did use the frame adjust controls to center the image and zoom out enough to make the sprocket holes and frame edges fully visible. This was to prevent losing any of the desired frame later when applying image stabilization in FCPX, which slightly magnifies and crops the picture's edges as part of the process. I would have preferred that the frame adjust buttons allowed left/right/up/down and zoom/magnify to be changed in finer increments, but this was a fairly minor complaint. I'm also not thrilled with the plastic, non-rotating, guide posts shared by all versions of this scanner, although I haven't had any problems with excess friction or film jamming at any of the posts. I'm convinced that pre-treating all my film with FG was a major factor in preventing these kinds of issues.
As expected, the highly compressed MP4 output file was quite noisy and grainy. I decided to adopt the excellent recommendation by Janice Glesser to use the Neat Video plugin for de-noising and sharpening the images. This software was worth every penny, although it makes for very long render times. Without another machine to compare against, I don't know if my unedited 1296p image was visibly any better or worse than the 1080p & 720p Wolverines' output. Based on the wildly varying reviews for machines with essentially identical specs, I wonder if some dissatisfaction is simply subjective, based on unfulfilled user expectations, with other, more objective complaints a result of poor quality control in the manufacturing of these units. Mine seemed to capture a sharp image, but some have found it necessary to open up the case and break the glue joint on the camera's focus ring to manually rotate it to the optimum focus position. The frame advance and and take-up reel motors on my unit seemed to have plenty of torque (although none of my reels is larger than 5-inch), while others have complained about one or both motors being very weak, failing prematurely, or never working at all. In the interest of treating the take-up motor as gently as possible, I manually rewound all my films on a pair of Craigs instead of doing it on the scanner.
I guess it comes down to "luck of the draw" with these scanners, but I'm reasonably happy with mine (so far). However, if one of these companies offers a version with a better camera and user-accessible focus & compression settings at a reasonable price, I'll replace this unit in a heartbeat!
He's been at it many decades pretty much spells it out.
We did a pro 2k scan of a S8 film I produced then popped reluctantly the film on the Wolverine with its plastic guides. Its a choice between quality and fog.
Shame Kodak couldn't come up with a reasonable domestic scanner but sooner or later someone will I am sure if we live long enough.
Unfortunately Harry, the film to digital is a very small market. These crappy film scanners, and they all come from a single source, Winait of China, will never increase the quality. Why would they?
Most consumers will want fast capture speed and finished product on the memory card. That is why the files are so badly compressed. If the users can even recognise grandpa in the video, they're happy. The horrific compression artifacts are just part of the "film look", right?
People who want improved quality are an even smaller part of that market. The fact that KODAK has sold their name (they have NO connection to REELZ) is the fatal dagger in the heart. There won't be a better machine made.
DIY is your only hope for quality and to stay in the sub $1000 digitizer world.
You could also have your film captured commercialy and not need to spend $$,$$$.
Well, actually... a used Retro 8 is around the same speed and a VAST improvement over these junky machines. I ran about 15,000 feet through one of these and had a total of 2 film jamming issues, both related to over-width film at splices. The concerning splices looked like they had been heat-welded and had oozed out wide from over-heating.
These machines tow the film forward with a strong reel motor. There's no claw. The film never "steps" forward. Sprocket holes are "seen" by the software as a capture trigger, and the light is bright enough that images can be captured sharply while the film slowly rolls by.
The Retro 8 machines show up now and then in the range of under $1000 to around $1500.
Richard,
On the Retro 8 can you zoom out to catch the entire frame? I recall reading that these units crop the 8mm frame with a loss of image area. That lost my interest right there.
Hi, i've try lot of AIO 8mm/Super8 scanners and the result looks the same, the video quality is not good at all due to the small captor on the camera that the machine uses, the compression aren't good, and for the price, a 1080p scanner in 2022 isn't a good way... wait for the next generation with a better captor...For the moment, it's without me...
Tweet
Comment