Scanning SUPER 8 at Home with The WOLVERINE MOVIEMAKER-PRO | REVIEW
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- Опубликовано: 10 авг 2022
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“Sharpness to digitally enhance the scan to make things look worse”. Nothing beats honest.
I laughed out loud at that. 😂
Less than 5 minutes in and you know he doesn't like it 🤣
My thoughts after scanning a box of old Kodachrome with the Wolverine Pro.
3:07 SD card must be 32 GB or less and FAT32. A 50-foot roll saves to a 260 MB file.
3:40 Upping the sharpness doesn’t work, because the MP4 compression (at constant 10 Mbps) re-softens the image.
4:50 Feed mechanism choked 3-4 times over about 80 rolls, though with good-quality film.
5:00 Frame adjust doesn’t *quite* zoom out to the entire film width.
Conclusion: it’s expensive until you get a quote for a lab transfer.
"Conclusion: it’s expensive until you get a quote for a lab transfer." And that's one quote for one reel, folks. So true! lolz
I'm glad you enjoy the film! For those harvesting the Fuji 800 from disposables, remember... you HAVE to block the lens, (waterproof housing removed if applicable) or use a dark bag and "take" pictures with the lens blocked to wind the film back into the canister before unloading the camera. On disposables the film lives out of the cassette and when you take pictures it winds it back into the cassette as you go. (it's why you don't have to "rewind" a disposable when sending it to the processer). Just remember to stop at the very end before the counter gets to 0 so you leave a leader out, otherwise you'd have to retrieve the leader...
I've been following the various incarnations of these chinese OEM Hardware Scanners and still wonder why on earth no hacker has given these things a custom firmware that actually makes these things somewhat usable. Like being able to at least save single frames as stills, adding LOG curves, higher bitrates, more stable film transport and so on...it also sucks that these aren't able to transfer the magnetic audio of super 8 but i wonder if you can transfer the optical sound of some Single 8 reels when you use the overscan function? Oh and a higher resolution would also be great. Personally i would not use anything below 4K scans anymore in this day and age.
Good point on using this to get a preview. I got a Wolverine F2D for $8 in excellent condition and I use it to scan my home-developed 35mm film as a quick way to have a "contact sheet" of sorts, and from there I can pick what I will be scanning with Silverfast and my Epson.
Tanx for this video. I just learned of this product and your review is indispensable.
Great video. I’ve been hoping to find a solution to digitizing old movie film. This video had me excited at first, but left me feeling the weight of truth: you get what you pay for. Thanks for the honest review!
Interesting!
Thanks for the review!
Great review. I thought of buying this product for Super 8 scans for future use but I don’t have any old home movies get this scanner and wasn’t too sold on the resolution. Although the resolution looks passable enough but a higher quality film lab scan does wonders in terms of color grading.
The new intro is so good!
I saw a video showing to NOT zoom with the Wolverine and do the crop later in post editing. This makes a huge difference. The video with the digital zoom of the converter is riddled with compression artifacts. The video with no zoom is virtually artifact free.
Nice review, very helpful.
Thanks for this assessment. I've recently come into several thousand feet of reels. With 3", 5" and 7" titles such as "Key West 1953", Miami 1961, Amsterdam 1980 and others, there is likely some historical gold in there to be found. Whether Wolverine or magnasonic or the kodak option, 1080p will/should yield an excellent inventory-grade digital repository for indexing. As you suggest, once any gems are found, bring those to a lab for pro quality.
As a generic consumer level device, this could probably not be simpler or better. For pros looking to capture an archive on the cheap, this is also a great device. Fact is, this could be a $100,000 dollar scanner straight from ARRI, you still need dust busters, painters and roto artists to clean and fix the scan errors, never mind any actual film damage that needs repairs. 'Simple' color correction is icing on the cake in those circumstances.
An ideal device would take several exposures of each frame as they pass. I'd rather have an image sequence than a movie format; but as said, unless you build it yourself, you get what you get when you get it with what you got when you had it and then do what you can while it's there.
HTV Wales Ident tune was nostalgic
I wasn’t expecting much judging from your comments but I was very impressed. Watching on a 65 inch LG 4K OLED I couldn’t see a huge difference in picture quality on the side by side or the full screen scans. Granted the stability wasn’t great but one is used to that on 8mm projectors anyway. I must ask has anyone pointed out that your intro music comes from the station ident for the sadly missed Uk regional channel “Harlech” serving Wales?
Ha, ha ha
I like that you had to tell people that the film needs to be developed first… I can tell we are in the year 2023
Watching films of people and times of the past are great time capsules.
I've been using the German "Reflecta" version of this for some while, with reasonable success. A few tips that might also apply here are: If you are in the position to be able to edit or do some post-production, then DO NOT use the zoom option. The zoom is not optical but rather electronic zooming and framing of the image scan. This is far better achieved in post-production software. This is why zooming in to 'frame it' correctly and then using sharpen only enhances the 'jpeg-ness' of the image encode. Do zooming, to frame and sharpen, externally. Also, I too had problems with the 'auto' for both exposure and colour. Zooming out all the way overcomes the problem of exposure (to an extent). When zoomed out you'll get both the sprocket holes in view and a white bar on the other side. These areas of white seem to fix and hold the exposure and colour balance during scanning. When zoomed into a frame the unit only exposes for that area, my option fools the device to see a constant area of white to set itself by. After scanning a film, tweak everything in an edit programme!
Can you explain this to me like I’m 5. Sorry i am newbie
Agreed. First scan the raw footage. Then clean it up using post-op software, like FCPX.
Yes, agreed. Zoom out as far as possible, then crop in post.
Thank you. Now I must seek the "Reflecta" .
I'd been wondering what zoom level gives you a 1:1 capture of the sensor output. Are you saying that only fully zoomed out gives this?
In europe Andec Film Lab does a great job with 8mm, super 8, 16mm and even 35mm film processing and scanning for movies ☺️
I agree this is wayyy better with positive film, but I did not get nearly as bad results as you did with negative film, not amazing, but for sure not as bad. I have used it on both personal and professional projects and never did it come out like that. I wonder if inconsistency is one of the many issues with this product, as well as maybe they dropped the quality of the product over time... Great video as always.
Thank you so much for this video. I'm going to start shooting 8mm and I was thinking about getting something like this for scanning but I'm gonna pass. The black and white looked pretty cool but the color film was horrible.
I found the Kodak version of this used for $200. It worked for 2 days and the SD card slot went bad. Thankfully I did get a refund. My impression was that it was just a licensed version of this Wolverine model as it had the same features, right down to those sketchy "rollers." I did get good enough scans of my in-laws' home movie collection that they were happy with, but some of them I plan to send off for better quality.
A straight scan is one thing. The post- production work is something else. I use Adobe After Effects. Framing, grain reduction, fps, music if requested; etc. Wolverine Pro does the old 8mm and Super 8s just fine.
I wonder how much closer to lab scan it would be if it was put through denoise in davinci resolve fusion at least with the sharpness setting being so extreme
DaVinci and Topaz both have terrific de-noise features that make the Wolverine Pro look like lab scans. FCPX also does a phenomenal job with colour correction and image stabilization.
The image stabilization between Wolverine and Lab Scan can be just as easily done using Adobe or FCPX.
Very interesting. I didn't think smartphones existed in the era of 8mm films. (8:42)
See what you mean about quality being bit crappy and limited. Would be great if could properly mod these. Replace the rollers with proper shaped moving ones, replace the camera and guts with a raspberry pi would do the trick! 😄
I thought at 5:45 the higher sharpness setting made the maker's name more legible.
It's a pity the Wolverine (and clones - Digiscan, Reflecta, etc. - they're all made by Winait) _doesn't_ allow single-frame capture or _uncompressed_ video; that could be done without needing any better hardware.
The Kodak, as well as a bigger screen, has a sensor (camera) with more pixels - which seems rather pointless as it still only produces 1080p files. (So why bother with a better sensor!)
Thanks for the tip about Davinci resolve - I didn't realise there was a stabilising software that was free.
Yeah, paid 400GBP for one of these, ended up selling it at a loss, quality and colour balance was rubbish. Great review.
If a transfer service does not mention what equipment they are using then assume they are using THIS.
The Kodak Reels machine looks like Wolverine made it for them. Bigger screen, higher res. Same fiddly film path, same slow rewind. Same features (more or less - no negative scanning). I’ve been using a Kodak Reels for a bit, and it does not scan reliably to MP4. It’s faulty. I’m getting a replacement, so I’ll see how that goes.
The review here would easily do for the Kodak Reels.
Matt (UK)
I keep seeing this "higher res" claim for the Kodak; some justify it by saying it has a sensor (camera) with more pixels. But as it still only creates files at 1080, I'm not sure what difference that makes - or even why they do it.
Hi Noah. Thanks for making this Movie Maker Pro video. I'm curious & confused, is this unit by Wolverine the same as the one by Digitnow? They have the same name
Which lab is the best? I have one of those polarvision cartridges from the 80s that was exposed and want it digitized.
At 8:31. What equipment is Niagara Labs using to make this quality better?
all i want is a scanner like this with a sony mount and a built in makro lens maybe a remote shutter cable and that's it ... that is all i want.
honestly? some of those B&W scans looked cleaner than the lab results.
the color ones were clearly much better from the lab tho'
is there a way to plug in a external recorder to the tv out ? just to get a better quality, bypassing the bad internal codec?
No; the TVout just shows the same as the internal screen.
Interesting experiment, but the best way for better results is to use a video camera pointed at a screen projection. HDV tape cameras are the best for combating flicker. Just set to manual shutter at 25fps. US settings would be 30fps.
Not surprised by the build and Image quality, Would’ve been cool but unrealistic that would work at that price
There is a 16mm solution?
Not sure if you mentioned this, but S-8 film is shot at either 18 frames per second, or 24 FPS. But the files this produces plays at 20FPS. There's a free software that losslessly saves the file at 24fps, but can't do 18fps. Should be able to make a ffmpeg script to change the speed.
If you haven't done it already:
REM W20_15_30.bat 08-21-2022
REM Convert the 20 fps Wolverine film scan to 15 fps framerate at 30 fps
REM Converted file is named filename_30 in Vid30 directory
mkdir Vid30
for %%a in ("*.mp4") do call :my_function "%%a"
pause
exit
:my_function
ffmpeg -i "%~1" -vf "setpts=1.33*PTS" tempout.mp4
ffmpeg -i tempout.mp4 -filter:v fps=fps=30 "Vid30\%~n1_30.mp4"
del tempout.mp4
goto :eof
So the Pro unit converts Full HD 1080p Video at 20 fps. The quality is very good considering. When cleaning up in FCPX, it appears we need to do the following:
1) convert from 20 fps to standard 23.98 fps
2) convert from widescreen 1440 x 1080 .... exactly what ratio for standard 4:3?
Only 24 if you were shooting super 8 sound; super 8 silent was 18, standard 8 was 16.
And the ratio: 1440:1080 _is_ 4:3 already; it isn't widescreen (or shortscreen as I prefer to call it).
i have the wolverine! its great! especially as an alternative to the death sentence for prison inmates!
I find it frustrating because it would take only a moderate effort by the manufacturer to hugely increase the quality. The components are well over 10 years out of date and no effort has been made to do something as simple as swap out the 15 year old 4MP camera for a cheap 5 year old 12MP camera, put on rollers rather than guides, and lower the compression ratio while giving the option of storing individual uncompressed pngs or low loss jpgs on larger SD cards. Those simple swap outs and reprogramming would move this scanner from frustrating with a ton of post processing required, to a worthwhile option for serious home scanning.
Absolutely correct. For a few more dollars, you could have high definition images from well exposed Kodachrome. Check out Fresh Ground Pictures home made scanner. He has magnificent images from his home made scanner.
The original wolverine does NOT scan in 720p it scans in 360p and is digitally zoomed up to 720p. That is why it is so awful.
The sharpness option on any wolverine scanner should be avoided.
avi synth or Film9 can help remove a lot of the grain.
Hey there I have a question for you we have a GAF super 8 sound movie projector that we're missing a power cord for. Do you have any suggestions about how we could go about finding a new power cord for it because the projector is in great shape we're just missing the cord.
2000s is the model
Assuming the problem is that it's an unusual connector, any competent electrical/electronics person ought to be able to get inside and solder on a captive lead for you (drilling a hole for it to emerge if necessary). Make sure you blank off the existing connector (glue a plastic cap over it or something) as the pins would be live.
I'd prefer a machine which scans the film and moves the film forward one frame per scan- using software to join the frames into one contiguous digital video.
That's what these machines do! (At 2 frames per second.)
thanks - I will not buy the Wolverine Pro, but rather look at other options.
£400 was a bit steep so I built one instead (cost about £80)! 😄Video of it: ruclips.net/video/kEEqaKTDaVI/видео.html
😲whoa!!!
There is a very good reason that a good scanner costs 15000 euro's, i have tested this thing and the new price is even too much for how horrible it is! it is very rough for the film, it cannot be trusted to be left alone and the resulting video is very unstable and jittery. my conclusion is that is is awesome to damage your films but if you care about getting good transfers: forget this thing and let a professional lab do it (check if they have a good scanner and not his piece of junk :)) like you mention the filmfabriek scanner (pictor?) they are very nice!
What is your rating of moviestuff retroscan? I want to order one.
The bitrate is the bottleneck to quality here, not the camera. An uncompressed scan that resolves all the film grains in a 50-foot roll of 8 mm should be around 30 GB = 3M px * 3 byte/px * 16 f/s * 210 s. Instead, this scanner saves a roll to about 260 MB, which is effectively a 100:1 compression ratio.
Doesn't look like it's worth the hassle. Sure it's cheaper than a lab transfer in the long run, but if you get into super 8/8mm you already know it's an expensive medium. Might as well go the entire way and shell out the money for a quality scan that will give you a raw, high quality file.
A lot of these reviews seem to be by people who are still shooting on film. I'm sure the majority of the market is for people who just have old movies. (But that doesn't mean we don't want good.)
This to get people Hooked only........The mark 2 will be out soon so people can throw the mark 1 in the skip.......Then the mark 3 usually at Christmas so people the throw the mark 2 in the skip and so on......What is the result of recording at 20 FPS Too fast when projected??
It's the jitteriness of the digital file that's so nasty to watch. I could nearly forgive the un-lockable white balance and exposure (both of which you can see change within a scene) but to have each frame jumping minutely from the last one isn't so easy to accept. The claw mechanism just isn't precise enough, and however sharp your original Kodachrome, if each picture is minutely displaced from the last and the next one, you might as well not bother. Now let's talk about the huge mpg4 compression. Or maybe let's not.
Hello...and the sound ?
This unit cannot transfer the sound on Super 8 sound film.
Thanks for the honest video! There are far too many overly positive reviews on this scanner, probably as people are watching their own home movies and it's exciting and emotional, or they haven't seen what a pro lab scan can look like. I scanned a test film on my wolverine and my filmfabriek HDS+ to show the huge detail difference, you can check it out here - ruclips.net/video/YmaAE84k9G8/видео.html
As much as the filmfabriek HDS+ is a fantastic scanner, there is a very good reason why a lot people will still buy the cheap one. It is VERY expensive film scanner.
They don’t even advertise the price on their website, but from what I’ve looked up it’s about £35,000-£40,000.
They also sell a small “affordable” scanners called the pictor and pictor pro but I put affordable in quotations as those scanners will cost at least £10,000.
Not really in my definition of affordable.
And before you say “just send them off to a professional transfer.” There is a reason why a lot of people don’t do that.
There have been many documented cases where the films have gotten damaged, destroyed or lost thanks to these film transfer companies.
If that happens, the most that you’ll get is a refund and that is not good enough. But it’s now gotten to the stage where people have just accepted that there is a chance that you will lose your precious memories in transit which in my opinion is frankly pathetic that is considered normalised. No one should lose a precious memory because of a error.
Hence why a lot of people will buy these cheap scanners.
Sure they look rubbish, but in a lot of cases it’s cheaper and it’s a lot less risky.
Not to mention, some people really want to get their film scanned as quickly as possible as their time is running out.
Take this advice from someone who has an estimated 500 to 600 reels of uniquely shot film (That does not count 9.5mm or 16mm film BTW.) that he can’t transfer because he can’t afford it and does not have the skills to make his own machine.
Sorry if I’ve been rude, but I have to be brutally honest. i’ve had to deal with this nightmare for nearly over a decade now.
Most people originally watched these movies on a wimpy home projector that could barely hold the image steady and show a weak image in a dark room on a uneven projection surface. Or in our case the side of the white refrigerator in the kitchen. If they were fancy, they had them converted to VHS in the 80s or 90s. Compared to that, the Wolvarine plus some post-processing in DaVinci looks astounding.
@@thatsunpossible312- very true. A lot of this is perspective. Many of us were lucky to find a wall without dings to project on.
@@northridgewood5918 my local library has one of these units so I was able to play with it. I’m exploring an outside lab right now and comparing the performance. It is definitely a cheap piece of crap, but I was actually astounded at how far advanced our cheap pieces of crap have become. This machine costs about the same as just the hard drive I’m giving the lab for my images, and it produces a final product that is far superior to what most home-gamers would have had access to in the 40s through the 80s when this was popular. The fact that it is considered hot garbage is astounding all by itself 😁
It’s amazing when you think about it. 😊 Between the Wolverine Pro and FCPX for some post clean-up, old 8mm/Super 8mm can look amazing in 2023. We are lucky.
They need to release a new version of this scanner with an image sensor that wasn't pulled from a 20 year old flip phone. The amount of compression artifacts, blockiness, pixel shift, jagged edges and overall poor image quality is off the charts. Why spend the R&D to create the mechanics of the device only to skimp on the sensor and processing - the two things that matter most? I don't get it...
If you're going to output only 1080p files, I suspect the sensor used is more than adequate; it's what's done with its output that's poor - the autoexposure, autocolour, and (possibly worst of all) compression that are terrible. It seems amazing they haven't given a "save raw sensor output" option: that's what people have been calling for more or less since these first came out (several years now), and it would obviously require the _least_ software.
Um the Wolverine scan looks way better than the lab scan in the side by side comparison section you have with Wolverine on the left and the lab scan on the right. Maybe you need new glasses... That lab scan looks awful.
it's a pitty that 8mm or super8 is either crappy quality or extremely expensive... 70-90e per scanned movie. I have 50+ films from my grandpa and I still dont know how to scan that in a budget with decent quality...
I wouldn’t purchase this I don’t like how it makes the home movies look I rather save up for a expensive one.
Nope .
jesus that looks horrible
This looks like a piece of junk !!!
Another one of the endless cheap and shoddy toys of the Chinese... It certainly does not offer a permanent and high-quality solution. It only serves to meet immediate needs. No one wants to sacrifice their priceless memories or a short film they have just made to such a low-quality scanning system. The machine is so bad in terms of design and material quality that it has difficulty standing upright.
As much as it’s cheap, unless if you got a big wallet or great engineering and programming skills this is the best you can do for the time being.
Well that or sending your films to a professional film transfer company with the risk of having the films getting damaged, destroyed or lost in transit.
Take your pick.