Wolverine Film Scanner evaulation and quality check
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- A first look at my newest piece of archiving equipment, the Wolverine film scanner. The quality is superb from this unit.
If you have old movie films you want transferred I offer this service as mail in. Please contact me by email for more information
volt@telus.net
A BIG GIANT THANK YOU, ALL I EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE WOLVERINE SCANNER, AWESOME
*Glad I decided to get the **Bestt.Digital** slide scanner. It us very easy to use, and as an added bonus it can hook up to HDMI on a TV and be used as a slide projector.*
Perfect example of just how far we have come with technology.
Mr. Voltivids, thank you for your video. I have been looking at videos about the wolverine or scanners like it. I see so many videos on RUclips about almost anything, and I wish I coud have recorded a few of the surgical procedures I scrubbed in on; But in the 80s and 90s no easy way to record a surgical procedures like a brain surgery for teaching or personal purpose. I see in your other videos you repair electronic devices all those little components look the same to me. Good job on the videos your a good teacher thank you!
nice to see inside of the new machine, I have the original 200ft machine. I notice the 'new' take up motor is widely available at ebay if you search for 3rpm motor. thank heavens for that, I am sure it wont be long before i need another new motor! Thanks for opening this up and making a video
I have been using it now for a few weeks and doing plenty of film orders for customers, so I will be doing a follow up video soon. Just transferring roll number 62 right now. (Most have been 200 footers and a few 400's)
The take up motor on this is much higher than 3 RPM. It is more like 30 RPM as there is a slip collar on the take up spool.
I have one of these, but read the manual and found that there are three tabs not 2 that you have to place the leader under. That alone could affect the sharpness of your copy and definitely was why it jammed when you first started it.
PART OF THE PROBLEM IS THIS MACHINE WAS NOT MEANT FOR FILM WITH SOUND. THE TABS AREN'T MADE FOR IT.
Fantastic walkthrough and review - thank you! I did notice that your demo of captured footage from "Mr Gullible" was stretched to 16x9 for the digital part, but kept the original 4x3 for the analog capture. The analog capture looked pretty good!
My analog chain is pretty good. The wolverine is better. The stretching to 16:9 was done by my writing software. I didn't do it that is how it rendered out even though it looked fine on preview.
Loved this review! Have had my eyes on this since they came out. Ordering it FINALLY. I have 50 years of some pretty amazing footage that I haven't seen since my projector broke. Hope I can use this forum for questions! Wish me luck, everyone, and Happy Trails to all from the Land of Enchantment!
Lascia perdere fa schifo!!
One thing I forget to mention, there is a felt pad that cleans the film directly before it is scanned. It is just to the left of the light table. Works great is cleaning debris off the emulsion side of the film, which is where the camera is focused.
Stunningly more clear ! Amazing output
Pretty good evaluation! Lots of nice techniques that you showed us as well. My Wolverine arrives today. Thanks, Tim in Colorado
This was a first look. Much better quality has been obtained after i figured out tricks like doing the crop on the PC and setting the zoom level on the wolverine back to capture the entire film frame including the sprocket hole.
@@12voltvids can I get the software you are using?
@@jefffoster3557 i use Adobe premiere CS6
As you say, the image quality of the transfer looks pretty good, however it seems that there are digital compression artefacts visible. I wonder what the bitrate of the recorded mp4 is? Or what is the output filesize of the mp4 per minute of film?
ahhh, memories! i still own a Fumeo 9131 variable speed telecine. Used to be in this field for years
Franco Coccini
I have a goko system and an eiki 16mm. Trouble is they are limited to 480i as that is what camera is built in. Today if it isn't HD people don't want it.
Indeed! your new Wolverine film scanner is not that bad after all. With some post processing and tweeking, could be perfectly usable.
@@FrancoCocciniI'm sorry to contradict someone who says he has been a long time in this world .. but the powder is really crap, and I'm not just saying it.
@@antoniosgambelluri35 powder?
This looks really nice. I would use my actual movie projector for the rewind as it's super fast.
It takes about 1 minute to rewind by hand just spinning the reel with a pen inserted in the reel hub. Would take longer to switch reels to use the old projector. Even a 400 foot reel can be done in about 2 minutes.
@@12voltvids
Spinning it by hand like you did is the best way.
To hell with waiting for an hour to let it rewind or longer.
Keith Kuhn
A new subscriber
@@KTHKUHNKK
I always rewind by Hand.
I have used this machine to copy many old family 8 and super 8 films. I found you need to remain in the room doing other things and listen for jams. The machine does a nice job and faithfully copies your movies. I transferred over to dvd and computer and made copies for family members living in different locations.
It never jams on 50 foot reels. Longer reels may jam if the splice was not done right. Mine very rarely jams. I have had some big reels that have springs that grip the film tightly and cause jitter. Rewind onto a different reel and no problem.
Well, based on your great vid reviews I went ahead and purchased the MovieMaker Pro. I could not be happier with this unit. It's performed very well so far. Thought I'd post a quick review and comments if you don't mind!
The footage coming out of this thing looks fantastic; with very little artifacts or noise. Any noise seen in these or other clips are the result of two things: RUclips encoding and/or improper workflow and export settings from your editing software of choice. Improper export and encoding settings are the biggest culprit by far...
Some of the more fanatical criticisms are unwarranted for the MovieMaker Pro. These aren't datacine machines costing as much as a small car, and complaining about many aspects of the MMP is like whining that your Honda doesn't have the handling of a Bugati.
It's hard to just walk away from this unit for very long and let it do it's thing. Quite often old film stock will already have some sprocket holes chewed up from years of viewing, and the unit will simply get stuck on a frame. A gentle tug of the film and it's put right again. While eventually it will shut off, I'd rather not let the unit just sit there grinding away.
The tabs on the latest model have changed. Instead of 3 tabs all on the same side of the gate, 2 are now on the opposite side. Seems like a better configuration that keeps the frames more stable..
I always pull the first 1/4" of film past the gate edge. The transition splice from the leader to the film almost always gets hung up on that last bit of gate edge.
Ambient light does NOT affect the scanning. I've blasted the gate area with my iPhone light and unless you put the thing almost directly on the gate light window, there's no change at all.
For rewinding, I like to pull the takeup reel out just a little bit, then do the 'rewind with the help of a pen' move that 12voltvids pioneered, lol. In this way the reel spins around the pin freely - without engaging the gearing. Saves a bit of wear n tear.
The amount of dust and gunk that collects on the felt and gate area is no joke. Get yourself a large Giottos AA1900 Rocket Air Blaster. Also be prepared to carefully clean out the gate side walls with an Xacto or similar. The emulsion residue and other crap will build up. Check those nylon spindles as well. Gunk will build up on those.
Lastly, encoding. If people are using Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects, there's no reason to do the time stretch trick with your clips in the timeline. I see that method everywhere, and it's a bad way to go - mostly because it's unreliable in terms of how many frames are added and where they are added. Sometimes it works great, many times it doesn't. All you need to do is take your imported clip and interpret the footage. With Super8 you put 18fps in 'conform to frame rate' dialog box. With standard 8mm it's 16fps. This will add duplicate frames in a precise order, then you can export out at 23.976fps. Don't get hung up on the this process. People spend agonizing, PhD quality hours trying to fiddle with the fps (like entering 17.982fps instead of 18 in the interpret dialog because of some very technical reasons). Ignore that crap. It will absolutely not matter with the outcome. Remember, we aren't trying to restore a long lost silent film from Tod Browning here...just getting some great old home movies into the digital age.
Remember, most noise and artifacts are the result of timestretching a clip and/or incorrect fps manipulating.
Hope that helps! Thanks again for the great vids, 12voltvids!
LSZ1318
RUclips encoding caused the biggest change in quality. I have been using mine commercially to transfer film for clients. Have put though over 300 reels so far no issues and every client has been very happy with the results.
That's awesome. Yeah, the RUclips encoding is bizarre and very hit or miss. By the way, I wasn't saying that YOU were doing anything wrong. Hope you didn't think that...!
@@LSZ1318 Is there a particular software that can be used that smoothes out the jitters? I speak of the jitters originally during filming due to camera and sometimes just no tripod used?
@@jefffoster3557 i use Adobe After Effects for work, so I naturally had it available for my home movies. That’s may be a bit pricey for most folks but the results are solid. I think they offer a free trial without watermarks so you could check that out. There’s quite a few free (or less expensive) alternatives out there but I’ve never used them. If you try those, I’d just make sure to scan that download/.exe file as thoroughly as possible for adware and such. I think Windows Movie Maker and iMovie for Macs have built in stabilizers. RUclips also offers this in their editing function!
Mine arrived today, and I've been using it for several hours now. One thing I've noticed, is that in some bright scenes, it will dim the exposure a bit, then raise it, then dim it, then raise it....which, at the slow scan speed, creates a rather annoying flicker. It's not a jitter, and the film is not damaged, and plays on projectors and editors just fine. It's definitely being generated by the Wolverine Scanner. This is happening on any scene that's got hot spots..., and it happens on every 8mm film I've tried. It doesn't do this if you're lucky enough to have a perfectly exposed scene, which, let's face it, with 60 year old home movies made by my mom, those perfect scenes are few and far between! This flicker is pretty bad. I will attempt to try the over and under exposure settings, to see if that makes a difference.
Which version did you get standard or pro version.
@@12voltvids Pro model. Only because that's all that's available. 720 or 1080 doesn't matter a whole lot with 8mm movies, and I don't have giant reels of film. Tons of single reels, though.
I also see a lot of compression in the output, but I can live with that, and I'm probably the only family member who would notice it! The exposure flicker may be a deal breaker if I can't get it figured out. It's about every 6 frames in overexposed scenes.
Does the film scanner itself stretch the aspect ratio to fake widescreen, or did you do that in video editing? Showing it at 4:3, like your VHS copy, is a lot closer to the correct aspect ratio.
I was wondering the exact same thing.
It comes out 4:3. I'll be honest - the price is right but the compression is troublesome.
I bought one of these because my brother was dying and I wanted to show him films of himself that he hadn't seen in 45 years. Sadly, I did not have enough time, even with fast shipping and converting the films on the day the device arrived.
I'm impressed with the quality of the output of this device. In spite of the fact that I bought the 720P version of the device and rushed the job (as can be seen by the framing and dust on some films) I was amazed by the clarity and colors of the films. For under $300 I think this was a bargain. It allowed me to do something I had put off doing for far too long!
I put the results on my channel so my brother's family could see them. If you want to see what kind of results you can get with what you are likely to find in the back of your closet. Have a look at the raw and rushed results and decide for yourself.
If you think you could build one cheaper and better, why aren't you?
This is exactly what I said. For the money this thing is a bargain. The ones grumbling are those that spent 10X as much for a device that produces very similar results. For me this has been a great investment. I have enough film here to convert for clients that the unit is paid for, and now I can make some money doing it. For someone with plenty of film they are further ahead to buy one them self, and quite frankly most people will be more than happy with the 720 version. I went with the 1080 because I could see large reels of film for clients. I find that -.5 exposure gives excellent results every time.
to rewind my film reels, I use my real to real tape deck. the spools fit the roll and that's it.
Hello I’d like to think you for posting this. You swayed me into buying this and it’s awesome I have had a few jams but nothing catastrophic. Thank
Not bad at all. The film grain is well defined so the image is very sharp. Exposure looks good on the exteriors. The interiors look over lit and/ or over exposed when originally shot. Stretching out the 8mm film aspect ratio to 16:9 is not to my taste. I'd rather have the black borders at the sides. However, we know some people like full frame regardless of the distortion. I suppose one could ask the customer for their preference.
I'll be darn. Neat seeing your old light up there.
Thank you for the rewind tip! You're right....that's a major flaw with this product.
i use a seprate veiwer to rewind. sometimes film is backwards or upside down.
The companies need to design a Super 8 / Standard 8 mm converter that plays the film at normal speed, with sound as well, but which scans it like this one. So you get a well defined picture with sound as well. To do it frame by frame like that is sheer madness.
You can get one. 100,000.00
I resently bought one, the thing is that the take up reel is mid sized, I use an Elmo Film Projector which has the magnetic tape pick up heads.
I love history of Vancouver cuz I live in Vancouver BC since born
I have another film that my late father inlaw shot when he worked for the Eaton's company back in the 50's and 60's. He did a film showing the operations that went on to get products from the store to the home in the era of catalog shopping. I'll probably scan this one and post it, as it has some nice shots of Vancouver from back in the good old days as people would say. Back when life was a little more laid back, and nobody was in a hurry.
Would love to see that. Its fun trying to recognize the places as compared to today.
I'll put it up once I scan it. I have a copy on VHS now, but I can get a much better scan now, so I will scan it and post it.
i don't think i've ever seen a sound stripe/track on the leader, neat! TBF a lot of the films i've transferred are missing leaders, 100% amateur and family home movies.
definitely not a fan of zooming/cropping/stretching old films to 16:9 aspect ratio, would rather be able to do full-frame visible transfers, even the sprocket holes if i so choose. I love this stuff regardless tho, reading all the comments here i see you figured out how to get the whole frame properly captured :D
Regular 8mm didn't come with any sound. My father in law was a film buff and made several movies on competition. They would record the sound after the film was shot and edited. The film was sent back to Kodak to have the mag sound added and then they dubbed in all the sound.
Hi. I purchased one of these recently and so far I'm pretty pleased. I do have an issue that I would like to know if you would agree with. If I play the video file from the Wolverine Scanner hooked up to a monitor (yellow RCA cable to HDMI converter to monitor) it looks better than if I play the exact same video file played on the same monitor but played from my computer (Display Port to monitor). When the video is played on the computer (using Windows Media Player or VLC) the image looks way over saturated and sharp. When the file is played from the Wolverine the image looks way better. Do you find this to be true as well?
Update: I just turned down the sharpening and saturation in Premiere Pro and the video looks like it does coming out of the Wolverine Pro. Looks way better now!!
Nice machine, I have lots of regular & super 8mm films but the splices are old and done using those KODAK splice tapes.
The quality on this machine is FANTASTIC.
I did my films from a projector projected on a white sheet of paper years ago and it came out lousy with lots of flicker, I hot prices from places and the cheapest was 15 cents a foot and that was 10 years ago, with all the film I have it would cost me about $800...WOW!
Question: Will we see the dentist pull his tooth...LOL
old64goat
You have to watch it to find out. I posted it years ago from the vhs scan. I should repost but I will color correct it first and make it look better than the source as I can fix the green cast from film fading in lost easy enough.
I think your video here was one that convinced me to buy the Wolverine Pro back in 2019. I've had a lot of fun with it but discovered that the quality of the film scanned has a big influence on the Wolverine output. Also my machine seems to create far more "noise" than yours. Even my best quality 8mm films scan with so much "noise" I have to de-noise the digitized scan through software or the final scan is unusable. So, maybe these machines differ? So far I've scanned almost 2000 feet of double and Super 8 film. It's been fun and I'm glad I purchased the Wolverine but I sure wish there was something better that's reasonably priced. Thanks for doing your video.
The next one up in quality is 5 digits. I know someone with such a system. 6000 for the 8mm gate, 6000 for the super 8 6000 for the 16mm. He had 8mm super 8, 9, 16, 18, 24, 36 and 72mm film gates. Needless to say this is his business. 5k film scanning. I maintain his vcrs for him. His setup was over 100k so he charges accordingly. Mostly work for government and media companies archiving old film footage (hence the oddball obsolete film size gates)
My trick on the wolverine is to not use the take up reel. I let the film drop into a box and reel up after. I also scan full frame with the edge showing through and then crop on the computer after scanning. Much better results. Takes a little longer but results worth it. Recently did a film from the 1930s. Black and white nitrite cellulose film. Owner was most grateful that I was able to get such good quality from an old film. Saw long dead relatives farming using a horse drawn plow.
I have the Pro model. The more I look at the output, which is 1080x1440, the more I realize that it is not being scanned/recorded at that resolution, but rather at a much lower resolution and up-rezzed on the fly to 1080. Digital artifacting, like bad aliasing, is quite evident in these files. I wonder if it's the same for the 720p model?
Thanks for the explanation. I have a reel that was digitized by someone else, and it has the same artifacts. I was not impressed.
I'm convinced that you could build a similar device for about a third of the price, but with a sturdier gate, better camera, larger screen, and auto-winding without needing to swap the reels.
I hate to sound like that guy who always says "Rasp Pi", but... Rasp Pi. lol
You can even get the small camera modules for the Pi that plug in directly, and with a bit of Python script, you could add the menu stuff, and even allow it to send the frames or video clip to a PC via WiFi / Ether.
It's not such a bad device though. It looks like it does the job, and the quality looks fine for the size of the film.
ElectronAsh
I have a challenge for you. Build me one for 1/3 the price and I will buy it from you.
haha - I thought you'd say that. :p
I completely see why people buy them, as it's still not THAT expensive, and hey, somebody at least makes 'em.
It just seems like they could have improved it with some minor changes, like faster rewind motors, slightly less flimsy looking gate etc., even at it's current price point.
It is still a possible venture for an open-source project maybe. I would have a go at it if I had any spare money atm. (most of which has being spent on other electronics projects).
@@electronash As this currently seems like it is (after 3 years and counting) the best mass market device for this type of thing, the market is WIDE OPEN for an improved version. I'd guess that they'd sell well at even twice the asking price.
Yeah, that's the thing. Most people have already transferred to DVD years ago. I had a special case though. I once had to clear out the film department of a local high school and send 1300 16 mm films to the dump. As a film buff, that broke my heart. But I retained about 20 or 30 canisters of things I might have liked to have seen, including documentaries I've not seen since and several cartoons. I did once buy a set of 16 mm projectors and their amps and speakers but never got around to doing anything with them. Might be good for a restoration project. Who knows. Anyway, the newer transfer equipment would be ideal for doing the 16mm films at the very least with some really good transfers so long as the films have held up. I don't have much interest in doing this as a business however, so I'd probably just sell the equipment once I was through with it (much as people do with slide and filmstrip scanners once they have finished archiving their material). But if the costs are too high, I'll probably forgo this idea until (if ever) it does become feasible...
Just keep your film editor handy for the rewinding side of it lots easier. I thought the grain on this device was extremely bad maybe RUclips couldn't pick up on it high-end quality but I wasn't impressed with the sample shown
First my editing software stretched the 4x3 picture to 16x9, and it has been recompressed 3 times. The initial MP4, the edit where I synced the sound as this was a sound film and the sound had to be processed separately. Also it was shot at 16fps so speed had to be adjusted and then rendered out. Then it was rendered out again for the clips in this video and the. RUclips compresses it again. I have a sample uploaded directly from the unit and it looks better but still not as good as the source file off the scanner which looks great.
This is excellent, I would love to do this with all my original film, which was done via projecting to a screen and videoing it. It was a pain to do.
I’m a bit concerned this device may scratch the film - Not comfortable that it manually moves film one frame at a time against plastic (the gate), etc. from your experience have you had any issues with this machine scratching the film? Thanks
Good video, Thanks!
Is this still the latest technology in 2021? I have one and it's worked as you demonstrate, but it seems kind of primitive...
The image is noisy, the blacks are crushed. The digital noise is actually hiding the actual film grain. I think the light source is too weak, therefore the noise. It is obvious how much of the existing image quality of the film is left on the table. It's all neatly integrated though and reasonably easy to use. But the end result is still much worse than a professional transfer, especially one using a wet gate. So building one's telecine rig is still warranted. Thanks for the video, very informative.
You should really look at the source footage, and not one that has gone though the editor and been re-compressed into low bit rate and then uploaded to youtube to be compressed a 3rd time before you trash the quality. The source files are of much better quality, and I had NOT set the unit up. This is how it came out of the box.
Are there better solutions, certainly, but when you are comparing a 500 machine to a 5000 machine you would expect to see quality differences. The thing is this, nobody is shooting 8mm or super 8 film these days. You can't even get reversal film anymore. All the film these units are ever going to see is 50+ years old already with color shift and fading. So how much difference in quality are you going to see between this and a 5000 scanner on 50 year old film. Guaranteed not much difference, and for a 5000 scanner I would have to charge a rate that is so high that nobody would do it. Most, and by most I would say 90% of my clients don't even want me to use this unit because I charge higher price to scan this way. They were perfectly happy with my old projector into a light box and broadcast camera. I do it that way for less because I can do it in real time and hand them a DVD when done. Most clients dont care if it is HD or DVD quality. They just want their films done cheap. I talk them all into paying the higher price and scanning the film properly, and not one single client has had anything but praise for the quality.
About the only people that whine and complain are the internet trolls that nit pick, like you, which I really don't give a rats ass about. My machine has paid for itself multiple times over, and everyone has been very happy with the results. I have had film sent in from as far as London England to convert.
@@12voltvids Yes, it certainly works well commercially. Pixel peepers like me make up only a tiny percentage of the potential customer base. Didn't mean to come across that negative. I just couldn't help being a smart boy, my bad, i should have known better.
i didn't think the quality of it was that bad for its age, celulose film does go strange in time, and it burns too easy.
My dad filmed me as a baby (52 years back) with mum and my brother and sister down the local park.
it was done on super8, expensive in its day.
it was transfered using a projection method then finally saved on vhs. (bad idea).
The original film is lost now, but it was falling apart, every playback it snapped.
I was given a copy on dvd taken from the vhs, not good, the colours were all over that place and the grass was pink, faces were really odd.
I used an old copy of Tmpenc to change all aspects of each frame, it took bloody hours :-(.
The film looked so much better :-D (grass was green, faces were pink ish, hair was correct).
Just for your enlightenment, neither 8mm or 16mm film have ever been inflammable cellulose. From the beginning (1922 for 16mm, 8mm in 1932) these gauges were on acetate safety film, later equally slow-burning polyester. You are probably getting mixed up with the professional 35mm gauge which was mostly cellulose nitrate until circa 1950.
fantastic! an old projector can be used as a rewinder.
Love that thing .
The VHS-segment 22:12 looks alot better, but obviously it's not as sharp compared to the newer digitization.
AAAZ2A
The clip takes from the vhs was also done on an rca tk21 telecine in a tv station. I took that film and projector into the TV station I worked at back in 1982.
Time to head down to the Sally Ann or Value Village to pick up an old 8mm/Super 8 projector to use as a rewinder! It would sure save a lot of time. I find them all the time where I am for between $5 and $20 complete with working bulbs. The bulbs are what most people are after anyway. Thanks for the review. Will send the link to interested parties i know. I wonder what the manufacturers have in mind for this in the future as improvements could sure be made. Was looking at a book scanner for my rare books collection but the cost is normally prohibitive. There are some cheap alternatives but they also may be quirky or basically still ion development with the buyer acting as a guinea pig to test and possibly iron out the bugs. Home brew is another option but I'm not real good at that sorta thing so a purchased unit is something I'd be interested in...
I have about 10 of them kicking around here.
hi! great first review. it looks like you did the transfer for this super8 film with switch on 8mm mode, don't you?.
is there an analog output signal which you're using to monitor it? and it includes text on it.
sometime ago there was an internet project where a guy transfered films using a normal photo scanner.. if i'm not wrong, that included the sound track, so throught the scan process they got video and audio.
regards.. very useful info on your channel
I understand that the sensor and the electronic part have not changed in the new version?
Gostei, meu pai deixou alguns filmes antigos que gostaria de assistir obrigado pela dica. Thank you
I just subscribed good deal Rewind by hand the heck was waiting for that thing do it by way of motor.
The picture quality is actually better on the VHS version. My cousin had a film digitized using this, and it has the same digital artifacts, vs the "cleaner" VHS version.
Its not. VHS doesn't have the resolution to show the film grain. Also the version on this one was not processed.
Here is the link to the entire film that was processed.
ruclips.net/video/aqa_x14JOOU/видео.html
I have one these and it really needs a firmware hack with proper adjustments. It turns anything slightly orange into an over saturated yellow and gives me an overly compressed mp4 file. I'd like to have some sort of white balance adjustment and RAW output.
I have not had an issue with any color films I have run through my unit. I use my commercially and have run though about 800 reels now, and it has worked well, including some new stock negative film, which was inverted on the computer to get a positive image from the negative film stock.
This is an old video I know, what is your opinion of the Wolverine Pro today?
Still using it. Many miles of film through it. Take up reel motor burned out. I let the film drop into a box on the floor and wind back out of the box. Produces good results. I scan full frame and crop, color correct and speed correct on the PC afterwords.
That really shows up the compression articafts on the Wolverine compared with your other transfer.
Well the punch in was from a VHS tape copy made by shooting the screen. There is no detail in it. Also this was done with the default settings on wolvering, before it was dialed in.
When I edited the video, I had originally shot the demo footage in 1080i and just dragged in the 1080p footage from the wolverine. It was then rendered out in 1080i and youtube converted it back to 1080p.
Here is what the wolverine is capable of, again edited in premier, but with the wolverine properly dialed in, and the proper settings applied to the editing software. It is actually very good. I could do a comparison to these same films that were put on VHS about 30 years ago, and you won't think the VHS copy looks better now.
ruclips.net/video/8hAZ2khyhXU/видео.html
Yes but the dashcam used in the Wolverine has much too high compression and isn't very good. Many people on the Super 8 forum are involved with changing the sensor and the software/control gear to get a really good transfer.
@@brianfretwell3886 its good enough for anything I will ever need it for. Done many transfers for clients and they are all happy and that is all that matters. I don't shoot new film. These are all ancient films most are in pretty bad shape to begin with.
The worse shape they are in the worse the effects of over compression. Kodachrome properly exposed with no damage would be the best under exposure or 160 Ektachrome looks really bad.
It looks like it can also pick up ambient light!
I've heard a bunch of new idioms, thank you! "A month of Sundays", that's something I've never heard))).
It's commn in British English - is it not common in your part of USA?
@@G6JPG It is very common, actually, at least here in Kansas. I first heard it back in grade school in the early sixties.
Thanks 12voltvids, unfortunately the 720 version has just left on its way to me. I may get the PRO version and try and sell the 720 when it arrives. I guess the 1080 version gives a far better finished product?
126grey
The 720p version is I believe 1024 x 720 4:3 and the 1080 is 1440x1080 pixels also 4:3 aspect . Will be a little sharper but not as big a difference as going from SD.
Thank you for this.
Great to see such a detailed video of this product. The main thing I was wondering... The specs say it outputs a 1080p file at 20fps... Is that frame for frame, so in terms of Super8 shown slightly faster than original footage or does the device duplicate 2 fps in the output file?
The frame rate it saves is 20fps. You can adjust the speed in an editing program if the extra 2 frames per second is too high. You lose 6 seconds per minute of film.
IMHO, the VHS version looks better, even if lacking picture brightness and sharpness. The digitized version is much brighter, but also has not the greatest color reproduction - especially the skin tones and red parts - and the picture is heavily oversharped. You can even see aliasing that wasn’t part of the original film. But maybe there are options to turn the image style more neutral.
My father bought an analog photo and slide ’scanner’ probably 8 years ago. It proved to be a cheap smartphone-like camera with a low-CRI LED backlight and a fancy user interface. The image quality was comparable with your film scanner. So sadly, the manufacturers don’t seem to improve their products for home users at all.
Nope, they don`t but this is what all the photo labs are using to charge their clients big bucks, so I will do the same.
My Wolverine (just bought) doesn't take 7" Reels like yours does. Where did you get that model from?
Mine is the pro version and it came from B&H photo.
Thanks for the detailed review. Maybe it could incorporate a better camera for better color tone and gamma control, but it looks sharp enough. Next, send results to the PC through some snazzy image processing software to remove grain/sharpen/color correct, etc. I bet software exists that can create intermediate images to smooth frame rate to completely correct speed and preserve sound pitch at the same time. At least it does not flicker! (remember 5 blade shutters used on old telecine equipment?)
FindLiberty
I have 5 blade shutter on my old gear and it works great. I put up a film on my yt channel a few years ago from some 16mm film I had from ww2. Actual combat footage shot by the allies that would have been newsreel footage "castle films" but RUclips claimed it was too violent. You know because a shot of someone firing an anti aircraft gun in the air might upset someone. Or Germans surrendering with their hands up is too much. Actually it might still be up on the channel but. It showed the quality I could get from that old eiki projector which I still use for 16mm.
8mm with sound = Super 8
I would have thought he would know this.
No! 8mm and super 8 are 2 different formats.
Regular 8mm was also available with sound. I should know i have a regular 8mm projector, with sound. As far as cameras went then you are correct, only super 8 was available with sound on camera and only super 8 film was produced with magnetic sound on film. All regular double roll 8mm film was silent. To produce an 8mm sound movie was exactly the same as producing a 16 or 35mm sound movie. The sound was recorded on tape, after the film was processed and edited it was sent back to Kodak and a magnetic sound strip was glued to the edge of the film. Audio tape was edited to match the picture and then the audio tape was dubbed onto the edited film. Yes it was a ton of tedious work. My father in-law did a number of sound 8mm films in competition for the Vancouver movie club and won the Merritt award. His film is on my channel and it is a sound regular 8. I had to scan the picture with my scanner and play the sound in the projector and sync the sound and picture together. Look up "Mr gullible" on my channel to see it and appreciate the work he did on this film. He and his brother in-law shot, edited and acted in the film.
Theres Settings in the unit where u can put it on a frame and play with the Crop Settings!
No high speed dubbing here but priceless playback
I would just find an old projector for use in rewinding the film.
I have a manual "editor" you know the magnifier type that has gear driven spindles, so it will rewind reels very quickly and that is what I will be using. Not this joke of a rewind
I think you did a great job.
I have a 400 foot reel of some 1965 Las Vegas stuff I don't care about sound or music or anything in it I just want to get it transferred to DVD I probably will be contacting you soon.
Keith Kuhn
I can do it no problem.
@@12voltvids
I live in Ohio I forgot what state you said you were from ?
@@12voltvids
I really do think the footage looks good the end product
Hi, Thank you for the review. We have quite a few 8mm films, many of which are made up of single frame images. My mother attached a 'clicker' which took one image per frame. Would it be possible to use this to view the frames individually on the SD card or the computer?
LYNNETTE MILLER ...Yes Lynnette...it will work for you
I bought and used the cheaper Wolverine but just recently upgraded to the dearer 'Pro' version as discussed here. I must admit being rather disappointed to find that the image quality of the dearer model appeared to be much the same as the less expensive one. Comparing results obtained with the 'Pro' with exactly the same film scanned on my original Wolverine showed very little perceived difference.
Worse still however is a problem that I am surprised hasn't been mentioned here so far. That of vertical jitter. I have found that this fault seems to occur with both machines, old and new. It varies from slight enough to be ignored to severe enough to be unwatchable. About 1 in every 5 films require a second or even third scan to finish up with a reasonable result. Changing the threading path by bypassing one or two rollers on the take-up side can often cure the problem for one film but not necessarily the next..
Any other Wolverine users been plagued with this problem or have I just been unlucky? Any suggestions for a cure would be welcome. For instance, Is there any safe way to experiment with gate the pressure?
After using the unit now for a year and transferring about 560 reels I have had the odd film that needs rescanning due to jitter. It is usually on a reel that was tightly wound or a metal reel that was slightly bent. About 1 out of 10 for me seems to be the number. Still for what it costs I am happy with the results as are my clients. There are certainly better machines available but at 10x the cost. For home use or small scale business use this one is fine. If you are making a living scanning film spend 4 grand and get a bigger setup. For my small volume transfer service, a couple of orders a month this one does fine and I make money off of it. If I had spent 4 grand I would still be paying it off in the quanatity of film I transfer.
FINALLY SOMEONE WITH BRAINS. THE 1080P HERE IS PURE FRAUD ON THE PART OF WOLVERINE.
@@TRICK-OR-TREAT236
The output is 1440x1080 which is a 4x3 aspect ratio. I have shown the quality in a few demo reels as to what to expect. I did not receive this as a promo to "pitch" I purchased it to so small volume transfer work and it has met my expectations for what it cost. There are much more expensive solutions that will deliver better quality, but most people films are not great quality to begin with. I have done a few dozen orders over the past year and everyone has been very pleased with the results. Most clients bring me 1 film first and then when they see how it looks bring the rest, so from my experience people are happy. For 375 it does the job. Is it perfect, no. I have not experienced problems like jitter that some have claimed. Bad splices sticking are the biggest issue for me
Have you ever worked on any actual frame to frame projectors with sound like the ones made by Bell and Howell from the 70s?
I have an Eiki 16mm telecine projector (5 blade shutter) with sound and a Kodak 8mm sound unit.
I used them in an optical conversion system back in the 80's and 90's.
@@12voltvids Cool! Have you ever had to do any repairs on these old machines before? I remember from helping my teachers back when I was in school that some of these projectors used a separate lamp for the soundtrack.
@@Truckguy1970
Yes they use an exciter lamp for optical sound. I have replaced belts on mine, and of course the projection bulb.
@@12voltvids I've replaced many of those bulbs, they're getting hard to find now. I never did any work on the mechanical parts though because some of them need special alignment fixtures
Why don"t you get a manual, hand-cranked rewind machine?
It's just faster to use a pencil to spin the reel and wind it back up.
I have noticed a lot of unacceptable compression in the images. Is there an upgrade to a better codec?
The "unacceptable compression" is mostly RUclips plus this was the first time I used the unit and did not set it up. It actually looks great and I have made thousands doing conversions. I just did an order for about 1100.00 and the client was so impressed that she brought me another 500 in super 8 reels. If you want an upgrade there are plenty of w
10,000 and up scanners you can buy. This one however does a great job. The key is not to crop the frame on the unit. Zoom back to show the entire film, set the exposure to -.5 stop, and don't use the take up reel. Let the film drop into a garbage pail and rewind from that. Then load up on computer and do the speed correction and crop to frame size and output in whatever final format you want it in and knock yourself out. It actually looks great and not a single customer has anything but praise for it. I have had a few people get me to scan 1 or 2 reels so they could see the quality and then ordered one themself and paid me a consult fee to help them get their set up running. One fella didn't have a good computer so he scanned all his films and then brought the hard drive over and paid me almost as much to crop, speed and color correct as i would have charged is i had actually scanned it for him. For the 500 bucks it cost it has paid for itself over many many times. Had i dropped 10 grand on one of the other units I would still be making payments on it as there is a top end on what people will pay for film transfers and 10 for a 50 foot (3 minute) reel seems to be at the top end of the scale. Go higher than that and they are pointing a projector at the wall and recording it with their camcorder. (yes people do that too. Had a guy that paid me 100 to rent my projector for 2 weeks to do his own and burned out the bulb. I found out that the bulb is 135.00 argh. )
@@12voltvids thanks for your answer. I would love to show you what I mean by the compression I have found in my scans. I accept that it is not going to be perfect.
@18:54 Is there any difference in sharpness between medium and high?
The quality isn't the greatest from this device. I think they should have used a better camera and proper rewind, oh and did I say sound?
Even better make one of these where you load a film and hit play and it digitizes in real time and not 2 frames per second.
I just ordered the Magnasonic unit at 1080p and 20 frames and will post-process in Adobe Premiere Pro. I have been searching for film cleaners like Film Guard or Filmrenew but can't find it locally. What do you use to clean your Super/8mm film? I'm going to have to resort to Isopropyl Alcohol. Good job with the evaluation btw.
I don't clean the film. Don't want to risk damaging it.
Hi. Great video.
At 11 minutes 50 seconds of your video it looks like a splice went through without catching kin the scanner. I have both ordinary and 'frame line' splicers for repairing film and also one that uses scotch tape to make the join ( not very good) Which do you think would be better to use ?
Splices done correctly have never been an issue. The tape type is find as long as proper splicing tape with the sprocket holes was used with the splicer jig that holds the film in place.
Thx for making this video. Any tips on how to clean film before using this machine? is thee a machine that cleans film automatically?
You can wipe down with mineral oil and then a dry cloth if a film is really bad but I haven't had to do that.
Notice how the film path bends the film back and forth. A great way to turn an old brittle film into spaghetti. I plan to build a scanner that does not bend the film.
There is a reason for this. So the take up torque from the take up spool does not move the film. I have put through hundreds of reels so far and not one film has broken. Poor quality splices done with old splicing tape have come apart but not in this part. They have actually come apart in the scanner gate. Big deal the unit stops and waits for operator to clear the jam, but not a single film has broken.
Compared to film running through a projector at full speed this is about as gentle as this old film will ever see.
I have the Reflecta model that just take the five inch spools. I rarely use the suggested film path, just take it straight through. On rewinding and on some films I use a string with a key as weight on the feed spool just to append a small amount of braking force.
Im pretty impressed.Ive got about 60 rolls from the 40s to the-80s.Ive have been looking on ebay and the one I have seen are advertised as new... but physically seem to be different..Particullarly where the film slides thru.Also the woman doing the evaluation says it 720 but I thought u mentioned 1080 or something? Can u tell me anything about this? But certainly seems a great machine
126grey
There is a less expensive model that is 720. The smaller version only accepts 5" reels as well. The pro version I have is 1080 and accepts the larger reels.
The aspect ratio is off it stretched the image into 16:9 wonder you could probably bring it back to 4:3 by cropping the image In a video editor then if your okay with losing some image you could then zoom it in to fit a 16:9 ratio but then it would at least look right and not stretched.
that stained wood doorway at the end is great. I am 100 percent sure a lazy landlord painted over it by now..
Were you able to tweak it to get better image, if so how did you do it?
Be ready to change belts. I think they use old stock ones in there units. They go to gum in no time. That thing a few years ago was like $150.00 I fig they pulled them off market after so many just were junk.
I will be doing a tear down video on this unit next, so we will see how well it is built. A few years ago it wasn't 150, it was 2500.00 as I looked at one when they first hit the market.
Just curious if the splices you have trouble with are taped splices or wet (glued) splices? Great review.
In my opinion, taped splices tends to be a problem. Glued workes fine.
Sometimes a film doesn't seem to be aligned correctly and I don't see anyway to adjust anything physically. I can tell almost immediately, because it sounds louder and wrong while running. It can also completely throw off my frame adjustment very soon after starting and causes jumpiness in the final video. Any ideas?
Don't use the take up spool. Scan and drop film i to s box. Much better results.
Considering the cost of alternative telecine equipment, 500$ isn't bad.
They have a couple bugs to work out , write them and give feedback of the need to fix it so it doesn't need baby sitting. I'd use an old beater for rewind, um getting rid of two this week. I have a bunch of 60s reels that need transfer from my aunt, um gonna do it the shitty cheap way.
Or you could send the reels to a real telecine service for a lot less the money. They spare you the hassle of "babysitting" and you aren't left with a 500$ device that won't serve any purpose afterwards. Just saying.
if only Wolverine or whoever actually made this unit, seen many OEM units around under different names, if only they produced a slightly higher quality model. better cmos, alloy frame.
The unit is designed for limited use. People buy them to transfer their old films and then the units are either sold or put in storage. Nobody shoots film now so people have a limited supply and once they are done they are done. It is not designed as a commercial use.
The sound is so distorted that it iterates listening to it.
I'm seeing the film is a little jumpy. Is that the original camera or the Wolverine with poor pin registration?
The film is like that even when run through projector. This film has had much splicing done. It was stripped with magnetic sound and then the sound track was added after it was edited. Has been played a few hundred times as when it win the merrit award it was shown across at several amateur filmmaker festivals in the early 60s. It was my late father in-law that made this film and it was his pride and joy. It is very worn as is apparent from all the wear and scratches.
Hey awesome video! This one helped me the most I think. So I am in he Public Affairs shop for the NM Air Guard. We have, I'd say MILES of film we need to digitize before we lose it all to enemy of time. I know Adobe Creative Cloud well, would you say with this machine that we could get these old reels looking (and sounding) pretty good with a little post digitized editing? I am trying to justify the case that we would save a TON of money for us to get one or even 3 of these, over send everything we have out to be done, then most companies throw the reel footage away after. I am big on historical value of things, so I am trying to find a way to keep them for our NM National Guard Museum in Santa Fe.
Thanks!
Remember this is only for 8mm and super 8 film and it only scans silent film. If you have a sound film you will have to play it in a projector and record the sound separately and sync it in Adobe. I have a sound superior called men and those magnificent flying machines. It was excepts from the movie that 20 century Fox release for home movie night on super 8. A 5 minute edit of the feature. I scanned it with the wolverine and took the sound from a projector. It looked fantastic. I posted it to my "test" channel that is totally independent from my main channel. Uploaded from a different computer on a different internet connection. (public WiFi) and it was instantly hit with copyright strike by fox and taken down. It would have been great if I could have left that up to demonstrate the quality of a 24 frame film as most home film was shot 18 frames. But even though this film was done in 1965 and nobody in this film is likely still alive they still took it down. The original film is over 2 hours and the home super 8 release is a clip of the air race and 5 minutes but they still canned it.
12voltvids so... any chance you could send it to me directly? Or if you put it on your channel as private, RUclips won’t take it down, then you can send the web address to those who ask about it and they can view it after your permission is given. My brother did that with a compilation he made about my dad after his death. That way we can have it in a media formate but the songs he used won’t get tagged under copyright junk
@@radryan505
I can put it up on Dropbox and share the link. That way you can see how it looks.
12voltvids that would be awesome! Please do! I’m very interested in seeing ot
Thanks!
I got a similar one but it doesn't have an audio converter option - How can I transfer the audio? do I need a different machine? if so do u recommend any? thx :)
The audio was taken ff using a projector and manually synced up on the computer. That's the only way to do it with these machines as they scan single frame. 2 frames per second.
Did you save that movie as an SD file? Did I see that correct? And is it even more slow if you would save to HD? Ooh it was HD? Just heared you say that in the video. :D
Jeroen De Jong
It only saves in one format 1440 x 1080p 4:3 aspect ratio. It scans at 2 frames per second but the resulting files play at the correct speed.
Moving the film slowly puts less stress on old brittle film. I have been quite busy with it. Just did 15 reels for a client and he is bringing me 37 more after seeing the quality and pictures of his grandfather whom died before he was born. Pay no attention to the trolls and naysayers in here. This unit delivers very good quality and I will make my money back quickly on this investment. Sure there are more expensive and faster scanners that may deliver a slightly better quality on properly exposed professionally shot film done in a studio environment, but these are home movies we are talking, done with bad lighting, the wrong filter on the camera and half of them are not focused properly. For hOme movies there will be no preceivable difference between this machine and one costing 10 x as much because the film is not good to begin with. It sure as hell looks better that shooting it off a screen which was the old way to do it.
I don't think slow rewinding is a big problem. Just have an old 8mm/super 8 projector nearby. Throw your spools on that and rewind them back in no time flat. Easy peasy!!
Stick a pen into the spool and do it by hand. Takes 2 min for a 400 foot.
it loos like an new scanner
You are using them MM100-PRO (the more costly unit), Does it perform better than the MM100
I have not compared it to the cheaper one, but from the specs the cheaper unit is only 720P and this one 1080.
400+ $ for a stepper motor, 500 g of ABS and a bad destructive video processor. I would like the total cost of the device when leaving the plant. 25$? 30$?
Another idiot that has absolutely no clue what engineering costs and manufacturing costs are. Thank you for sharing your lack of knowledge on how business works to the world.
I admire the level of "engineering and manufacturing costs" 🤣🤣. Could you confirm this product has been developed in USA and built in USA ??? I suspect its coming from some chinese plant and developped on the corner of a (chinese) table.. Am I wrong ??
@@florentleider222
The instruction manual said it was engineered in USA. They are built in china just like everything else. There are still set up costs and manufacturing costs to produce them there, but much cheaper than here. The thing you don't understand is this is a low volume device compared to say a dash camera. A dash cam they sell millions so the cost of development is spread out over the production run of say a million units. This is a speciality device with a limited market. They might only sell 10 or 20k units as these only appeal to someone with old family movie films from the 50s and 60s and quite frankly the target audience is dying off these days. I have some home movies of me and my sister when I was little but would my kids want to see what I did when I was 5 years old? Probably not. The time this would have really sold well would have been back in the 80s. In the 80s and 90s I would have bought 3 of these and had them running all day. I did 8mm and super 8 film to vhs and dvd for 3 retail photo finishing shops. I used a modified projector with a broadcast camera into a high resolution projection screen with a 2 way mirror like they use for a teleprompter. Camera directly below the mirror looking at the screen. The quality was very good and on VHS and then dvd looked great but not hd. Most people got their old home movies transferred way back when the parents were still alive. The vast majority of the subjects of home movies of the era and in their 40 and older because film was done by the early 80s. The last rolls of film I shot was of my friends riding dirt bikes in the summer of 78 I think. The VCR came out and film was dead. So the market for these is very limited and that keeps the price what it is which is very good for what the machine is. Their target is small businesses that offer film to video conversion and home users. People with a few films to transfer send them out to people like me with the equipment to do it. If the number of films they have is higher than the cost of the machine, they buy one, transfer their own and then guess what, sell the machine for 60 to 70% what they paid to the next person that needs to do them. For the consumer once they have done their films they no longer need it. Mine sits in the box till the next time I need it, but it paid for itself in the first order or 2 I did. Sure there are better machines and for someone doing high volume one of those custom units would be advantageous because they are faster but, they run about 5 grand to start. I would still be paying off a 5000 film scanner today, where as this one is paid for so now every reel that I get the profit goes in my pocket. It doesn't do anyone any good to hear someone bitching about what something costs.
When I was in the retail business I used to over hear the salesman say to people that were grinding him on the prices wanting a better deal. "is it too much, or too much for you".
I wont argue. The only way I see for me, since I don't have a lot of movies to transfer, is to work out my own device. (reason why I looked at your video). My project : a stepper motor, a power unit, a micro controller to control the motor and the camera, a Sony dsc HX-400V.I must add a filter to magnify the film images , since in macro position, the images represent only 1/3 of the width of the field. The most difficult part (the system to position of the film) will be taken out from an old projector. The total cost should be around 90$. I think its Worth being tested.
@@florentleider222
I didn't want to fart around. I have a business to run, and needed something off the shelf that I could depend on when needed. The Wolverine fit the bill perfectly, and every single client has been thrilled with the quality, which I might add is better then the over compressed youtube sampled.
I have had films sent to me from as far as London England to be converted to digital files.
I have also sold at least 5 of these machines for the company after people saw the results.
Too bad they are not paying me a commission, as I did not receive this unit free to promote it. I bought it with my own money.
Awesome!!! :)
Great video thanks, audio is a problem though. Is there a machine that does both?
No, as to get audio the film needs to play on real time. A professional telecine can do this but they charge 1000 per hour to scan on a professional unit. You can do it with a projector and camera but the quality is not as good. I have a few examples of film done with a camera. With a good projector with a proper 3-2 pull down shutter 5 blade for 24 frame film speed (I have such a unit that was pulled from a tv station) will deliver almost flawless results but 8mm used a 4 blade shutter and ran at 16 frames for 8 and 18 for super 8. This resulted in flicker. Many would slow the film to 15 frames to reduce the flicker but that changed the pitch of sound, or for super 8 speed up to 20 frames as these are multiples of 60 fields. Again a problem with sound film.
The way to do it with the wolverine you need a sound projector to get the sound off and then sync on the computer during post processing which you really need to do to crop and correct film speed.
@@12voltvids thank you
Does this support the concept of overscanning? In other words, scanning beyond the frame of the film so that the entire film frame and borders are scanned. I see there is a zoom feature. Can you zoom way out? I would like to overscan and then crop in post production. Thanks.
Yes absolutely. You can zoom way out to see the entire frame beyond the edge so you can see the film Id marks, sprocket hole and portion of frame on either side so it van be cropped on post production. I should do a demo of this feature.
I’m curious on what the output frame resolution is?
450i
I see you have a variac next to the machine. Do you use that to slow down the speed so the final video is the correct FPS??
No speed correction done in pc. Variac would do nothing. The unit runs on 12 volts dc.
Hello👋
I am having trouble with the fifty foot rolls from the 1984’s.🤢
The film goes through the unit for a period of time then gets tight and stuck!!!!!
I think the width of the film is too wide from when it was cut during processing?
The reels are white plastic in a medium blue color round storage case that the reel fits into.
Maybe a brand of processing problem?
I will not be able to digitize!!
A few reels went though fine and then I hit the problem about six reels into the done earliest date to later date!
Maybe I switched processing labs?
One half of the fifty foot should go through because one half should be slightly narrower than the slightly too wide half????? HOPE SO??
Any ideas?
Roger 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
Great review, but...how did you get past the initial snag with the splice? You said that you started over but that splice is still there, correct?
It stoped at the bad splice, and I had to manually move it past that splice and start it up again. Most splices go through no problem, just ones that people did by sticking a broken film together with scotch tape.
Ah right. Tnx. I was wondering if that were possible if the film snags for you to just manually move things forward a bit and just hit start again - so there's my answer. Really great series of vids on this unit BTW.
Yes it detects the jam and stops to wait for you to manually clear it. Same when the film ends, it stops and writes the file. That way when the files are taken into a computer to be edited they are just cut together like any other clips.
This machine is not intended nor claims to be a commercial processing machine. It is designed to produce a reasonable quality transfer for home movies. To expect a $400 machine to produce a professional quality copy is ridiculous. If this guy wants to provide a professional copying service then he should be looking at spending a few thousand dollars on a proper telecine machine.and then spend some hours learning how to use it.
There is no point investing thousands in a professional system as people are not willing to pay more for conversions. I compete with people that use a projector, camera and white piece of paper to project on. I don't transfer for film makers with a budget. I transfer old movies for people that were shot 50 or more years ago. The quality is very good for what it cost and I have recovered the price paid so now every film I transfer I am actually making money. If I invested the 4000 for the next model up on the quality scale I would be paying for it for 10 years. There just isn't that much film left to transfer. 30 years ago I dropped 2500 for a flying spot telecine. I have a film that was transferred with that I should compare with this. I used that machine for many, many years, but it only put out SD. It was great for VHS and DVD output, but people want stuff done in HD now. This unit is more than good enough. Never had anyone complain about the quality and it allows me to keep my prices competitive. I still get people wanting me to use my old real time SD, system because I charge less to use a projector and camera. I give people 2 options. Projector into a 3ccd camera and output on DVD or wolverine onto memory stick. I charge half the price for the SD optical telecine route and most people opt for that as opposed to a single frame transfer because they are concerned with price. They would rather pay 5.00 for a crappy SD transfer than 10.00 for an HD transfer. Thats just the way it is, and even if I did invest 4 grand in a higher end system, there is an upper limit in what people will pay. Once you hit 400 or 500 in transfer costs they are buying one of these and doing it themself. So there is absolutely no point investing any more than necessary unless you have the volume to justify it, and these days that volume is just not there because 90% of people with old 8mm film have already had it done, or done it them self. 30 years ago with my old optical system I was doing about 5 hours (running time) of film every day. Leading up to christmas I was booked out 3 weeks in advance, and did all the transfers for 3 photo labs. That work is all done now, and the odd roll comes in. Perhaps 1 order a month now.
You are mistaken. A proper TELECINE machine? Why not recreate the contents of the film with shadow puppets? In just four hours of obsessing over this issue and searching through forums over the past four years, I have read excellent suggestions from IT professionals, video encoding programmers, and engineers who cumulatively have thought of ways to greatly improve the output of these machines with little to no increase in manufacturing cost. The high prices for higher quality machines are very much like wine prices. After a moderate price increase with corresponding quality increases, the quality-to-cost ratio reduces exponentially. In this particular industry, there are very few alternatives. From everything I've read, the addition of a faster video card, a higher quality camera, and better video compression software, matched with better frame advance mechanism would make a machine the same size produce a quality output equal to anything a "professional" outfit might make. You might need to add a better cooling system for the faster processor, adding a couple inches to the size and a pound more in weight. People are too impressed with the word "professional", especially when it's so often misapplied. No one making these machines or operating them took graduate courses on how to do so and has a diploma on their wall. These products are made to be cheap because they couldn't be bothered to hire actual professionals to design them.