Its easy to color correct film on the computer. I do that for my clients. Remember that this old film is, well old and the dyes can also shift with age.
So I got the Wolverine Pro. It is doing far better than using a projector and videoing the image on a screen. It even can handle film that is stiff and warped with some intervention. 1947 film my folks had taken I thought was completely lost as it would not feed through a projector. Most old film would not stay in focus. It seems that film from the 40's and 50's are a problem. They are breaking down with a strong smell of what I think is acetone. The film curls side to side and is very stiff, the beginning of the reels are showing white oxidation and that part is unrecoverable. The device just catches one sprocket hole to advance the film (if it caught two or three that would be better) and as a result because the tension on the film changes due to the warped film there is some jitter in the result. Because the film curls up at the edges, the sprocked fails to catch the film at times. Sometimes it comes out of the three tabs that holds it in place and sometimes the film bulkles causing the image to go out of focus. For bad film I am using fewer of the guide wheels as it would be too much resistance for the film to advance. Using my finger to hold the film flat going into the imager helps. Lubricating the film is essential but slows splicing repairs when old ones break as the oil has to be cleaned off. My editing software can mostly stabilize the result of jitters, but not the often big jumps. Still I am getting sharp images from 70 year old film and if worse come to worse, I capture individual images and create a slideshow for the worst parts. One thing I haven't been able to fix. On any film where the lower part of the image is dark and the upper part is light (think sky), the Wolverine creates digital video that pulses darker at what seems like once a second or so. I haven't tried changing the exposure setting, maybe that will help, but then the rest of the film would be at the wrong exposure setting. Any ideas?
Some issues I can think of. - No real manual control. Manual white balance/exposure is a must. - Inefficient video compression hardware. LOTS of blocky artifact there. Only if they raise the bit rate to something better. If these 2 issues were solved. I might consider this unit then.
There is an exposure control. The bit rate is fine, you haven't seen the source files. Off the encoder directly it is 12mbits. A 3 minute file is 250 megs in size. The frame size is 1440x1080 4x3 aspect. When I run through the editor, premiere matches the frame size to my camera files which is 1929x1080 16x9 aspect. I then recompress and have my encoder set to 8 megs VBR to make the file as small as possible while producing an acceptable picture. RUclips then recodes in multiple formats, but they make it even lower bit rate to usually about 5 mbits. So what you see here is NOTHING close to the original file. Also the old cartoon I put on at the end was done in 1933, and the print if all gawd know what master. It looks like hell even projected. This was not an evaulation, I put it on for fun because I found this old reel. I was given a box of old movies a long time ago, and there were some disney films, a swiss family robinson, an old write brothers flying machine from the 20's and even an old stag film in there to boot. I thought this one would be fun to throw on at the end. The soource quality is far better than what youtube represents. As far as color correction goes, that is what your editing software is for. This unit is color balanced for the light source and if the correct type of film was shot then it is correct. If the wrong film was used, , tunsten film outdoors, it will be blue, or daylight under flood lamps orange. No different than if you were to project it on a screen. You load the file in your computer and fix it in post and then send the fixed file back to disk at a higher bit rate. you can also change the frame rate in the computer too. This is just a tool to scan the film, and it scans exactly what it sees. You can set exposure up or down 2F stops in .5F stop steps. Also these films are in many cases over 50 years old, and the emulsion is deteriorating. No matter what you use you can't improve what isn't there. Many are fading, or rotting. Dyes are changing. If you were to scan a brand new film the quality is much better. Yes I know Kodak thinks hipsters will come back to film, but this is useless for the new film because they don't make reversal film now days only negative film, and this won't reverse negative film. Not that many will be using film, it is just too dam expensive, and you can do a better job with digital, and even make digital look like film.
Agreed on RUclips's (re)compression. No matter how decent my videos looked,they would turn out crqp once uploaded. Still can't figure that out. Personally I think 1080p resolution is waaaaay overkill especially for Double8 film anyway. (what to expect from that tweeny-tiny 3.3*4.4 mm of film area?) Using just 720p resolution for the entire process from sensor to output file(s) would make more sense. 16mm films would be another story then. The real deal breaker of this product for me is that I'm still not sure if this will give DEFINITELY better result than what I'd already achived,using home-brew frame-by frame scan setup made of a scrapped projector+a decent miniDV camcorder+some tinkering and patience. Although the result is just SD,but it seems acceptable to me. Here it is. ruclips.net/video/hHBi2ZxlmqM/видео.html This product is probably made for a specific target group. A serious amatuer who inherited TONS of old 8mm films form their parents and do not want to send them out to someone's else hands to scan,but don't want to go the full DIY route. Or a professional shop who already have other main business,but still have clients asking for 8mm film scans from time to time. (That sounds much like your business lol.) Investing in Moviestuff's Retroscan system for example, while definitely better,would be be too much. This product seems perfectly fit the bill.
What’s the frame rate that it records in? I think the 720p version records in 30fps and then you have to adjust it in your editing software to match the 16 or 18 fps that most 8mm was shot on, yes?
@@scottneumyer 20 fps Ive heard people complain that it makes the digitized copy too fast. One person said the bride was power walking down the isle. LOL!
some tech info.always check splices before proceeding to transfer this can save a lot of headaches.never let glue splices enter unit re-splice bad and glue splices.always clean films before scanning.I suggest what we use in the film industry for motion pictures it is called "film guard".and can be bought here.www.urbanskifilm.com also thereelimage.jimdo.com
I am aware of that. I was editing in 16x9 mode, and premiere auto fills the frame. I would manually have to squish it back to 4x3 if I wanted black bars. When I play the source file it plays in 4:3 with black bars on both sides of my 16x9 monitor.
The film is 8.0 mm and USA brand because 9.5 mm would be grossly over size. The film fits as it should and runs for awhile then jams in the feed alignment section where the digitizing operation takes place. Once jammed the film is a little difficult to remove from the digitizing section guides.
I just noticed that the take up reel is turning continuously and the clutch allows keeping take up tension on the film. So the claw seems to be acting like an escapement.
I found on the Wolverine Pro that it’s important to verify the film is indeed clipped under all three little white clips or your finished film will be too jumpy The color, even on 1958 8mm, is fantastic.
Just to note there’s a review on the Amazon page for this model from someone who also has the 720p version. He has images showing the picture quality between them is quite close.
I would imagine that they would be fairly close due to the fact that most peoples 8mm and super 8 film that are 50+ years old have started to deteriorate by now anyway so the gain in resolution is probably not that noticeable. I went with the pro model because it handles larger reels. The standard unit only handles 200 foot reels.
@@12voltvids Good choice. You could extend (and probably have extended) your home video transfer business to films as well. Who knows, maybe someone wants a DVD of their old short films from days gone by.
This is why I bought this unit. It has already paid for itself. I don't get many films in these days unlike days gone past, because most have probably already had it done to VHS 30 years ago and tossed the old films. I have had a few come in, and one of the guys brought me an old Grundig radio to repair as well. It was actually the shop that told him it was going to cost 375 to fix that gave him my number for transfer work, and I ended up fixing his radio too after the other shop quoted a stratosphere high price.
Regardless of the age of the film being scanned, you'll still get a good proper product if done right. This final result is unacceptable for 1080. It does not matter how old it is, if it was scanned properly, you would still see film grain. This is not film grain you see, this in fact is terrible compression.
Whatever. It is what it is. Make lots of money from this scanning people's films. Sure I could spend 10x as much and get a better unit, but that is not a good business model. People will not spend 10x the price and I would still be paying for that more expensive machine where now I am turning a profit and not one single client has anything but praise for the quality. For what it costs you won't find anything that comes close in quality. I get referrals by word of mouth and I get lots of referrals despite what you internet trolls say about it.
Sure people will pay for this if they aren't educated enough about higher quality. The true term for "1080" is often misinterpreted and therefore misguided. I'm sorry if you disagree, but facts are facts. No need for hostility, just pointing out the obvious.
@@coreyoilar5651 the resolution is kit misguided. The frame size is 1440 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. The non pro version 1280 x 720. It is compressed at 15 meg / second onto mp4. The problem is this, and it is not a fault of the machine. Film grain is just like chroma noise on analog video like vhs. It must be compressed. Because film grain and video noise if random it takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Back in the day when I was working with broadcast sd video I was capturing analog video into mjpg compressed files at 3:1 compression and bandwidth wise 2 minutes of video took 1 gigabyte of drive space. A 9 gig 10,000 rpm drive that cost 5000.00 was enough space to produce a 4 minute music video, source files and rendered file. This is why when VHS video is transferred to dvd the quality isn't as good. Compression noise everywhere because the noise needs to be compressed and there is not enough bandwidth. The only solution is to low pass filter the video and roll off all the detail. Same goes for 8mm film. The frame size is very small so the grain is very noticable. This film grain which is random needs to be compensated for. So you either use lower compression or you roll off the high frequency detail slightly. The low setting in the sharpness looks better because the edge is taken off the detail allowing the grain to blend in. People get used to the quality of digital video at low bandwidth. This is possible because digital video is very clean with virtually no noise which allows compressors such as h.264 and have h.265 to work their magic. Give them a noisy signal such as high grain 8mm film, especially film that has been sitting for 60 years and not only is it grainy but there is deterioration to the film too. I wish i could show you a modern film down on this unit. I had a guy bring me some new color negative film that he just shot because he was a film student doing a project with super 8. You can't buy reversal film now just negative. I scanned it and flipped it to positive on the computer. He was wanting to see the quality on new film stock which btw has a much finer grain than old vintage stuff from the 50s and 60s. He actually offered to buy my unit on the spot. Had me transfer 2000 feet of negative. Paid me 400.00 to do it. Then he went and bought his own machine for future use. So obviously the quality is there, but this will never convince someone that is uneducated in how video compression works. It does deliver a very good picture but as they say, garbage in garbage out. Many old films are not in good shape for many reasons. Age is one, storage conditions another, quality of original stock a 3rd and probably the most important, how it was exposed when first shot. That is the biggest factor on how good transfer will look. No matter how good the equipment is, amateur home movies can look great or like crap.
@@12voltvids Yes, you are correct mostly, but as an industry professional I can tell you that film splotches and scratches, if transferred correctly, will be clear on the screen regardless of the content. Splotches and scratches are on the film itself and not filmed from the camera, so if they are unclear it's obviously the machine unable to transfer a nice crisp image.
@@coreyoilar5651 It transfers a great picture when set up properly. The first few reels I had not set it up, or premiere for the edit process. Once I got the unit dialed in it looks great. The key is to zoom the image all the way back to show the entire frame and then crop the image in the pc. It is also important to edit and render out in the same resolution , 1440x1080. One of the films I scanned a few months ago was used in a documentary and some shots broadcast on tv. I have some shots of a bridge that collapsed during construction in 1958 and the last survivor that fell off that bridge was interviewed with shots off my old film featured scanned on the wolverine. Looked great. Remember this is a consumer device, not a professional machine and for what it costs delivers excellent results. Not without its flaws though. Mine has had the take up motor short out so now I drop the film off the desk into a box and reel it up when done from the box.
I found this video very good especially the bit about the felt pad. One thing I found out about the included "puffer brush" was it wasn't powerful enough to clear dirt/fluff that had accumulated under the gate and I had to resort to an airbrush/air duster.
be cautious when rewinding the film as you demonstrated as the unite has small gears in the take up assembly and can be striped if ran to fast.I would suggest using a second projector for rewinding or just buy some rewind arms.here is a good source for editing supply's for S8-shop.www.urbanskifilm.com8mm-16mm.mom and pop
I see you set exposure to -0.5. Are you experiencing yellow "flaring" artifacts when the exposure it set higher (I have on my non-pro unit). What setting do you use for sharpness? I set to low to reduce artifacts. I don't think this reduces sharpness, it just doesn't enhance it with software. #ThriftyAV
Very helpful post. Thanks for sharing! I wondered about rewinding. In other vids it does look like the built-in rewind was kinda slow. I just got one of these devices and will be trying out today. Thanks again for the tips and info!
I don't use the take up reel at all. Can cause film slippage which results is a shaky picture. I let the film drop into a box and then rewind by hand after it's done. Much faster and image quality is improved.
@@12voltvids I'm going to go back and re-digitize my old famly films using your technique. I can definitely see I have a jitter effect on some of them just like you described. Your other video where you also talk a bit about your post-editing techniques another great bit of advice. My hope is to get all these films digitized in time to share with my siblings for Christmas. Thank you again for the great advice and excellent videos. They have really helped me get the most out of the Woilverine device!
@12voltvids I'm curious about the actual compression. Mp4 can contain a wide variety of codecs and bitrates. What does this machine produce? Also. The x/y and zoom adjust... Are those done optically or digitally? So do a fully zoomed out scan have the same amount of pixel data as a fully zoomed in? And related to that, if you want to scan it wide and do perforation stabilization in post to negate gateweave and finetune framing shot by shot... Would I essentially be wasting good pixel data? I'd also be curious about switching out the camera for a higher res version to capture the full film width and still have enough resolution for archival purposes.
It is digital zoom so zooming back to show the sprocket and edge yield more pixels. This is how I do it. Crop in post and let the computer power resize the image. The initial test i didn't do it that way but i found that the quality is far better cropping in the PC. Resolution off the unit is 1440x1080. 4:3 aspect ratio bitrate 17mb|sec. I have footage up from scans taken off old film on my channel. Just look for the old travel films from the 50s and 60s. All done with the wolverine and cropped in post.
0:42 wouldn’t recommend that as it’ll scratch the film, you can see it touching the area around the screen. These old films are fragile. I know you said it wasn’t touching but it very much looks like it is, and you can hear it scrapping when you are saying it isn’t touching and you’re pushing on it.
Big deal, the film has already been scanned at this point and it will be heading into the permanent storage facility after it is scanned. I don't even use the take up reel anymore because after about 380 reels the take up motor burned out so I just let the film drop into a big box and then spool it up out of the box afterwords. Now nothing touches the film. Remember 99.9% of old home movies are already scratched scraped burned and in pretty bad shape from years of abuse. The majority of clients that have me transfer their film ask me to dispose of it which i decline and tell them just to throw it out if they no longer want to store it. Sorry if this upsets you, but that is what most people do with old film once it is transferred.
The sensor looks like it could pick up ambient light, washing out the video! Hopefully you're doing these film-to-video conversions in the dark! I could actually see the film image darken when you moved your hand toward the film gate!
Please tell me how the sensor is going to pick up ambient light? It is facing down, shooting directly onto the frame of film that is illuminated with a bright light source from below. The camera is focused on the film frame, and is actually up inside the housing. I would have to shine a bright light up from the bottom to affect it as the sensor is directly above the film plane.
Any advice on what to put on the 'rollers' to stop this thing from scratching my reels? I can't believe I didn't buy an expendable film off eBay to test the thing first, now my childhood films have a cute scratch running down the middle
I found that using all the rollers isn't necessary. The rollers on my machine didn't damage the film, but for old stiff film I ran the film through with only a couple of rollers engaged and used my finger to hold pressure on the film as it entered the imager. If the resistance on the film going through the imager isn't steady, the framing will get out of wack with a bit of the adjacent frame showing on top or bottom. One complaint, all the information on the top of the screen hides it when it starts to show a bit of the next slide. However if it is just a bit, with your editor, enlarge the view and move the video upward to fill the screen without the line. (or downward as needed) Usually the subject is in the middle of the screen and losing a little of the top or bottom edge is unimportant. With spliced reels, often the next reel won't be aligned like the first one and the framing needs to be reset. Also if one of the wheels is scratching the film, maybe the manufacturer will fix it.
Thanks 12voltvids for sharing your experiences with this new model Wolverine scanner. I am about to up grade from the earlier model as soon as I can sell it here on Australian eBay. After watching your informative video I feel far more confident that I am making the right decision. As a 78rpm-year-old pensioner, the outlay involved is not inconsiderable. I feel obliged to make three comments however, partially based on my experience with the cheaper scanner. First, I have a feeling that your 'sharpness' setting is too high. I've invariably found that 'LOW' provides better results with less film grain and video noise apparent. Next, I feel that it is always worthwhile to run the resulting MP4 files through an editing program (almost any will do) to slow down the movement from the native 20-frames/sec. While one might choose to ignore the result of speeding up super8 from 18fps to 20fps, a 125% increase in the speed of silent standard 8 would be noticeable. In both cases clients would feel they were getting more for their money, often several minutes more in fact, with speed corrected files. Correct speed is of course even more important if a sync soundtrack is to be re-laid later. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I trust you supply your end user paying customers with images in the proper ratio, namely 4:3 and not S T R E C H E D horizontally to fill a 16:9 screen as seen in these samples. This not only looks ugly but also degrades the horizontal resolution unnecessarily.
I have converted 10 4" reel successfully and now the colour on films are blue, (perfect colours on projector) is the bulb fading and if so can it be replaced, not mention of this in manual HELP Please
Its a white led and it won't be color shifting that quick. Usually when I see blue films its because when the film was exposed tungsten balanced film was shot outside without a color correction filter. When projecting it might look OK to the eye because the brain is correcting the color bit to a camera it will be quite blue. Look at the film. How does it look to the naked eye?
@@12voltvids Thank you for your prompt reply and excellent explanation. I couldn't tell by looking at film with the naked eye, but did a process of elimination - found a film in the garbage that was good and recorded that again and it was perfect. As a matter of interest the good cine film dated back to 1947 was wound on a metal reel and kept in a very tight fitting metal case. I am 85 and am down sizing so films have to go, but this way the memory can linger on. Once again thanks for you help
My films are hanging a lot coming through the gate. The pressure is too much for most of the Super 8's I'm trying to scan. The only relief that I've found is if I release the gate flap with my finger over it so it just releases the pressure and then the machine quiets down a lot and the film advances freely, as it should. I really don't want to babysit the machine like this. Has anybody overcome this issue? If so, how? I don't see the point of the metal guides if you've got the film under the tabs, I'm tempted to remove them and to see if that gives me better results, and if not, maybe getting some very soft, low friction fabric that put just a little pressure on them.
5 лет назад+1
Is there any way of cropping to make it fit 16:9 format ?
The biggest headache I have with the scanner is when people did this, because if they were not done correctly it will stop at the splice, and you have to manually move it past the splice and start up again. The down side is a 400 foot reel would take 4 hours, so I put the machine on before going to bed only to find out it stopped after the first 50 feet. Then I start it again and go to work, and it shops again after 50 feet.
yea I can imagine the splices making the film get stuck. I did however do a precise job back then and the guy who digitized them onto DVDs some 10 years ago didn't complain :)
Cool thing, Cool name. = great video. Isnt it amazing how tech changes.? We have some film of Dads time in Japan back in 1961. It was so different back then, no high rise appartments and just before the old Japan disappeared under concrete. Now I know how they digitize them I might get it done on his film. Thanks.
I have such a device FILIM 2 DIGITAL MOVIE MAKER But there is a problem when I convert the elephants at the top of the image there is a fold What to do
Oh. And since the film is in the open when scanned. Does that mean you need to keep that in mind so the overall room light doesn't change resulting in unnecessary flicker if you turn off the room light when not babysitting the machine? I mean. Maybe that's why the examples I've seen on youtube scan a bit too bright when set to ev0?
No light in the room won't affect it. Perhaps if you shine a flashlight on the film but ambient light no, because the light table below is quite bright and the camera looking directly at it.
I don't even use the take up reel. I just let the film drop off the desk into a box and rewind up from that after the reel is done. The reason the film path is set the way it is is to remove any torque from the take-up school which could cause the film to slip and a result in vertical shake on the picture. The motor on my take up side failed so I just let the film drop and the quality improved. Also don't crop on the machine. Set zoom to zero and crop the resulting file on computer. Results better.
@@ФедорМеркулов Don't use the take up reel. Let film drop into a box. The reason there is no sprocket is because 8mm and super8 have different dimmentions. The mechanism they put in place is to stop any torque from the take up spool. The rubber coating on the roller acts like a brake to stop slippage. The engineers actually know more than you do. Also this is a consumer device built for a price point. Sure many of us use it commercially. I have a business associate that has a much much higher end scanner. His scanner was closer to $100,000, and he charges $50 for a 50 ft roll of fill which is 3 minutes. How many consumers do you think will pay $50 to have a 3 minute reel of film scanned regardless of the quality? Answer 0. His clients are big corporations archiving historical film. Big media companies that have old archives that they need to digitize. Not Joe consumer with a box full of films that his dad'or grandfather shot. I have had a few of my father's films that had some old historical footage picked up by local TV and broadcast that were transferred with the wolverine and they look just fine when they went to air.
I just got the W-movie maker Pro. Tried 3 different 50' reels and find that 1. seems to pull sluggishly after the first 25 feet or so and 2. video on my imac screen is very small about 2" X 1 1/2". Do you know if I can use imovie to enlarge the image on screen or am required to use Kodak Share which came up when I copied the first video into my computer from the SD card?
Assuming the warrantee on both the regular and pro version are the same 200 cycles, the pro version's warrantee is potentially double the film footage of the regular version. My question is, does that make it worth it to combine two 200 foot similar subject films or is it still better and more convenient to copy two 200 foot films separately?
That is up to you. The warranty is 200 rolls or 1 year which ever comes first. This is for the people using it commercially that will have it running all day every day. Most people will not have more than 200 little reels of film never mind 200 big ones. But yes if you think that way the pro version holds 500 foot reels. So more than double.
Hi great video! I just received mine in the mail and I'm digitizing my first reel. I had to adjust the X, Y, & W because it was off a little bit. Do you have to do this for each reel? It seems like that would mean your counter will go up 2 for each reel because you have to start over each time.
Hi, Thank you for usefull videos of Wolverine. I have one question...do you recommend me the version Cheap versión? (720p) I don't have money for 1080 version.
@@kthx1138 what about compression and possible posterization on the 1080p version? From the example shown on the video (where he is looking at a folder of files) I see that a 2 minute film is 140MB, which I believe works out to about 9300kbps, which is not bad. I am worried about images being too contrasty - I have a Wolverine slide scanner and am not thrilled...
I use sinds 4 years the first model of the Wolverine, last week i get and Install some new firmware. Install was working but i can not use the machine becourse i read on the screen " CARD PROTECTED". annyone kno how to lose that Problem???
Just got myself one but get lots of film jumping in final scan. Either the whole picture or at best the top part of the image! I only use Standard 8mm and they are from the 60's through to the 80's but none steady. Checked the sprockets and look ok and still project perfectly through my Bolex 18-5.. Tried threading it in reverse as recommended by Wolverine but no better. Perhaps I have a lemon? Motor seems to sound straining at times and have had it jammed even without a splice on film. Any ideas. I am in Uk and got from US so a long way to send back!
Make sure the film is not tight on the supply side such as a warped reel or uneven wind the last time the film was rewound. Also it needs to go around the guides on the right side as illustrated in the threading guide, as this reduces the tension from the tape up side. I have run about 280 films though mine now, and the only ones I have had problems with was damaged films where the sproket holes are damaged by a bad projector or camera.
Thanks for replying. I have used the film path as shown and just tried another 50 foot reel where the film was very loosely threaded. But the footage is still awful and jumpy. Early scans the whole picture jumped now it seems to be mainly the top part. Though this new scan was completely jumping. Also I notice after the scans that there is a mark on the film sprocket caused by the scanners claw. And you can hear different noises where the scanner struggles. Though I must admit I did hope this last one would be alright as it seemed to go through smoothly and no hint at how unstable it really was!
As I said I have had no issues with mine, could be that yours was damaged in transport. Mine has paid for itself doing the odd film for clients, and everyone has been very happy with the result. Even thr guy with sound films, which I had to do as a 2 stage scan, as the sound had to be done separately.
Bill Sherren Are you certain the film is threaded so it goes UNDER THE THREE WHITE TABS on the light table? Missing any of the three will definitely cause the problem you mention. Incidentally, the sketch of the gate area on the front on the machine appears incorrect. The pair of tabs is on the opposite side to the film perforations, single tab is nearest the aperture, on the perforation side.
Charles Slater I wish it had been that simple but from the start I made sure it was under all three tabs. But a combination of unsteady images, exposure changing all the time even on a static shot and worse of all damaging my films made it unusable. So have sent it back for a refund...
The speed, after scanning with the Reflecta, is much higher than the original 8 mm film and must be reduced by approximately (+/- 60%) after scanning to MP4. Is that also the case with the Wolverine?
The wolverine scanned speed is 20 frames per second. Generally 8mm film was shot at 18 fps so there is a slight reduction required if you want it to play at the exact speed but the additional 2 frames per second is not that noticable. Reduce in editing software to 90% solves this issue.
Hey - I'd like to highlight one feature on this unit that you haven't mentioned, and that is the TV out. The mp4 1080p files that get saved to the card are all very well, but to my eye can look very digitised and compressed. I have found that if you record the TV signal via an analogue to digital capture device (ie Canopus ADVC 55 or similar), and record via firewire to DV or AVI format into your computer, the picture can look much more natural and smoother than the raw mp4 that the machine creates. Granted you are reducing the resolution down to 720x576 pixels, but I personally prefer the look for some types of capture. Not sure how this would work in the US using 30 fps NTSC, but in UK / EU where we use PAL 25 fps, adding a duplicate frame every 4 frames will result in a perfect 25 fps file (editing the resultant DV file in FCPX or Filmora Wondershare can do this). Anyway, that's my tip, if you have the equipment and time I would recommend playing around with it. In addition, the bonus for using the TV out is that your image is then blown up to whatever computer screen / monitor you are using during capture which makes reviewing the footage much easier to the eye.
Typically you scan the entire roll at once. Yes if you start and stop each file will increment by one but in normal use you scan the entire reel in one go.
@@12voltvids I stop most reels to adjust the frame when it goes out. Also learning how to use the machine on day 1 got me to 24 clips in one day, not reel count.
@@ougibbons that's you. I rarely have to stop once the reel starts. I do all my cropping post production and keep it zoomed back to minimum with full frame showing therefore framing is not important. Allows me to scan the entire film in one go and then fix on computer. Can correct any frame shift in about 2 minutes on the PC and I can adjust for color shifts throughout the film due to aging and incorrect camera filter during exposure. I have put about 1100 reels through my machine by now.
@@12voltvids I get what you're trying to say but the fact still stands that the counter counts the clips and not the amount of reels as stated in the video. Can you provide a link to where they guarantee it for 200 reels? Also, I'm yet to come across a review that discusses the USB input. What do you use it for?
@@12voltvids But great news on the 1100 reels that you've done so far! I'm in South Africa and ordered mine from B&H last week. Took 5 days to get here, no hassle at all. Looking forward to doing some client work and selling stock footage at the same time. I've already converted 15 reels on day 1.
You Never Know If You will stumble on the Second Film that the Mysterious Lady In the Head Scarf was Filming. It Is out there somewhere???. What If the Film has Sound?. Nice Bit of Kit this. It's a Pity they don't do something like this for Video Tape as well. My Sony C-7 Died and Parts are like Gold Dust (I Am In the UK).
TheBudgie29 ...are you serious? Video tape is much, much easier to digitize!!! All you need is a video player and a video capture card in your desktop computer. I have seen laptops with RCA input plugs for video capture. Sound is just as easy by plugging a jack from the video player headphone jack into the mic input of the computer... And there's an even easier option, just get a VCR/DVD combo off ebay and burn it right to DVD. I wish I only needed that setup...but, I have over 300 8mm films...
Hey sir, great videos, I have 2 questions.. 1- how long does it take to transfer a small reel, and 2- if by connecting the yellow RCA in the back of the unit to my computer.( in my case an old canopus capture card with "S"" , RCA and firewire IN) I have 5 systems that are flawless.., as of now I and still using the "Mirror /projector/ Video camera " to do the transfer, Video camera is a Sony DSR-250 with lots of manual adjustments, that work well, but this setup seems to be the way to go.. Also, is the light source ( bulb) for the wolverine a standard bulb that I can get anywhere, ?..Thanks Love your tutorials and videos.gotta project I'm doing with 10 500ft reels and 65 small reels, and 600 slides, Im using the Epson slide scanner I purchased fro B&H years back that works well, I can only do 4 slides at a time.. ..
Yes I do have to set it up. At 10:32 just as I started this film I noticed that the frame was coming down from the top due to the camera not being loaded correctly, so I stopped it, adjusted the framing up slightly, rewound the film and started over again. Usually it stays correct after I initially set it up, but that was the 1 8mm roll I pulled out of the bag full of super 8. Generally I only have to set framing once for an order as when someone brings me their home movies they were generally all shot on the same camera. The horizontal frame is usually OK as far as centering goes, and the size, I generally over scan ever so slightly so that when there is debris on the camera during exposure it is generally out of frame. With the unit I could zoom way back to allow all 4 edges of the frame to show, and the sprocket holes. The first film I actually did for a client that was paying wanted an underscan of the film to show the entire frame including the sproket hole, and slight image of the above and below frame. The reason was he was going to crop it himself on his computer, and wanted to make sure that nothing was missed.
I have had this unit for less than a week. I have tried a few things and with my experience with film since birth and 30+ years of video production behind me including for MLB and the Phillies, I would say I can figure this stuff out rather quickly. I have found that after scanning my first reel of 8mm film, then scanning a second reel, this time S8mm, I tried to methods. With the S8mm I pulled the image all the way outing did no cropping or zomming or centering of the image in the scanner. I aligned it, sure, but I did not try to create the final mage with the unit. That's what Final Cut Pro X is for. The first reel looked bad, like several of the tests I have seen on youtube which made me question the unit at first. I can now say that the best approach is to take in as much of the entire frame as you can (zoom all the way out) then crop it later. I lost no quality. Seriously, this thing is better than my first reaction. I believe you can get truly good results with this scanner.
What’s been your best platform for syncing your 8mm with the original sound to the video? I do it the long hard way by running through my Kodak unit then spend countless minutes syncing. Please advise and thank you for your video.
Have you found that certain films appear too jumpy upon playback, and then will play smoother after a second run thru the machine? If so, have you found a way to prevent this from happening in the first place? (This is only an occasional glitch, but quite frustrating.) Thanks.
Yes I have found a solution to the jumpy film problem. It's not a real elegant solution you might laugh but it works. Don't use the take-up spool to wind the film up this is what causes it to jump the film slips through those little rollers that are supposed to stop it from slipping. Run the film through the gate let it drop off the edge of your table into a great big box it will pile up in the Box but will not tangle. At the end of the film just remove it from the gate because it'll still be stuck in the gate when it gets to the end put it back on the real and wind it up by hand by using a pencil to spin the reel around. I'm going to do a film transfer today for a client I think I will make a video showing how I do it.
@@12voltvids GREAT TIP. Worked like a champ! Thank-you so much. (I use a projector to rewind, dragging the reel with my hand to slow it down). An inch gap between my work table and projector platform straightens out the film as it passes thru on rewind. (i watch it carefully when rewinding). Thanks again.
Naughty - You've done it again. I know my Disney characters and they just aint that plump . You've stretched your demonstration video to 16:9 aspect ratio instead of the required 4:3
Just like any other movie file, but you might want to not erase the digital file as they hold higher quality than DVD. Try BluRay as well, but keep the files! Until you scan higher quality (and there is only so high 8mm is worth climbing) your new scans are now sub masters. The DVDs are how you distribute them to the masses, ala Disney, Universal, Fox etc. The beauty of this machine is it unlocks those images which you always had to view the source material to see them. Now, aunt Suzie and uncle Mike can each have copies. You can even give them file masters which they store in case your storage fails! I figure it's worth the investment of a few thumb drives to hand out as off-sight backups.
Most of my old film is on large reels. Wolverine only comes with a 200 ft take-up reel and it can handle 800 or 900 ft reels. So for larger reels you need to get a bigger take up reel. However splices often hang up going through the imager and then you have to stop, reset the film, and restart the conversion. That is another count on the tally. With a 50 ft reel, you can safely set it up and let it run while you leave the room. Not on larger reels.
I got a very stupid question! But I have just started researching super 8 film. Do you need to send the film off to be developed before you are able to scan it? Or can you go directly from shooting the film to scanning it with the Wolverine scanner? Any help is appreciated!
Not stupid at all. Normal reversal film requires processing where it is developed and turned into a positive image as opposed to a negative. So film becomes a movie. Then you scan and edit.
A 50 ft reel is about 3 1/2 minutes. The Wolverine runs at 20 frames per second but all my film was shot at 16 frames per second. The editing software I have lets me change the frame rate and slow everyone down to normal speed.
I recently scanned some negative film for a film student. Since today all you can get is negative color or black and white film. So the film was scanned and then changed to positive in computer. Personally I have no idea why anyone would want to shoot super8 today. 3 minutes if film costs about 100.00 to buy and process. Shoot digital. Cheaper and better quality.
12voltvids Wolverine says that the Pro has an option to scan negative film so you wouldn’t have to make it into a positive on a computer. Does it work or not?
Super 8 has more resolution than VHS, but it also has a fair bit of film grain which is normal for such a small frame size. It is like taking one of those old pocket cameras, that used the 110 film size, or worse that kodak "disk" that used a disk of film that resembled a floppy disk but was really film with a tiny negative, and blowing it up to an 8x10. Sure you could do it, but it looked like crap compared to a 35mm film. Well 8mm and super 8 wasn't great. Super 8 slightly better because it had a slightly larger picture area, but nothing like 16mm film. Still scanning directly to 1080p digital looks good, better than it would look going to VHS, but saying that VHS was so bad it would hide the film grain which is now clearly visible,
VHS had at its best (meaning a really good VCR) could reproduce 240 lines of horizontal resolution under optimum circumstances. Super 8mm film, although half of 16 mm film, still is film and therefore holds a higher degree of information than VHS could in the image. Now, as with VHS, S*mm had many factors. What kind of equipment did you use? Consumer? Professional? What kind of film stock/tape stock? What kind of camera? What kind of VCR? What kind of projector? Screen? TV? Get the picture? lol So, all those things considered, this machine is capable of giving you a better than VHS image of your 8mm or S8mm film. It has some limitations and some things could be improved, but you won't be disappointed in the results.I almost was after my first reel transfer. Then, my father bought new and better Bolex equipment, and I saw immediately better results. The S8mm film frame is larger than 8mm and the sprocket holes were less of an issue. More film surface was used for reproducing the image. there is a much smaller line between frames. My advice is to scan at full wide and let your Computer software (Premiere, Final Cut etc) do the interpolation for resizing the image when you crop it slightly to fit and remove excess portions of the frame. A bit more information about video to respond further to your original question. Betamax was better than VHS but not by much. It might reproduce 240 lines of resolutions well, but if you used the original quicker speed which cut your recordings down to 90 minutes on a 3 hour tape, you could see a greater quality. Super VHS and Super Beta had these two formats beat by allowing about 325 lines of resolution, but Beta was such a non-factor in the consumer market, they stopped trying. Super VHS was a great acquisition format because it held quality AND because it introduced the S-Video cable. This was a predecessor of component video. It broke the chrominance and luminance signals apart through the wire and the unit (VCR or TV) at the other end would reassemble the picture. This kept the color from the b&w carrier signal until it got to your monitor. It made for a better viewing experience. It also allowed for batter editing possibilities with less loss. Hi-8mm video was also in this league of quality and the Digital formats, Mini-DV and Digital 8mm both had 500-525 lines of resolution recording depending if it was professional quality or consumer grade. My Panasonic Mini-DV VCR used S-Video cables for copying to VHS or watching on a monitor. Of course it took firewire so it was basically doing a file transfer with anything digital. No loss to very little loss of quality there. I hope this helps.
It doesn't. The camera is above the film, and is focused on the emulsion layer of the film (which is the underside of the film) The light source is very bright to iluminate the film. The reason that the emulsion is played down side is so that film thickness will not affect focus. Doesn't matter if film stock or tin or thick, the emulsion will always be held against the scan plate
My parents found some old film in their closet. How do you know what type it is? It's very small it fits in my palm. They're kinda curious what's on it, it comes in a little box "Color Movie Film". How much do you charge?
Oh really, that is a really good deal. Of course I'm not sure how much I'd cost to mail it to you (I'm in the US) but I'll talk to my parents about it. That's $10 Canadian or USD? Not that it's much of a difference. :p
@@victorcoss2600 It'd be Canadian, since his conversion business is based in B.C. $10 CAD=$7.73 USD as of 8/28/18. That's minus the shipping and other fees to get it to B.C. and have it returned.
I have not seen any that the average person can afford. The ones I have seen are closer to 10 grand. You will probably have to send your finds out to be transferred and eben that will be costly as the places that do 16mm properly are few and far between. They are all professional places and charge accordingly. I do 16mm but even that is expensive because I don't keep the machine set up so I charge a set up fee because it takes about an hour to set up and calibrate before I can do anything with it.
Excellent video. I have been using the method of transferring 8mm and super 8 by setting my movie projector up and projecting the movie on a white poster board. I then put my 4K camcorder on a tripod frame it in and then push record on the camcorder. It does a pretty good job but I cannot remove the flicker caused by the movie projector. This system you use seems to be a lot easier and well worth the investment of buying a new unit from B&H camera. May I ask what you charge to to do this service? I recently retired from my full time job and thought about maybe doing this as a part time job from my home. The problem is I'm not sure what I should charge to do this service. Thank you for answering back.
12voltvids Thanks...I was wondering because I have the slow AF reflecta scanner and I realized the negative film looks wrong. How do you adjust for that in editing?
@@TheNewSkateboardTV Should be an option to invert whick will make negative film positive. I have only done it once. Had a guy bring me some current negative film. Once it was inverted and levels corrected it looks pretty good, for super 8mm film that is. By that i mean the grain, motion blur ect.
Hi, 12voltvids, You say :"Off the encoder directly it is 12mbits. A 3 minute file is 250 megs in size.". Is that the file that you end up with on the SD card? Is it already compressed to a .mp4 file? Is so, is there a way to get hold of the "crude" non-compressed file?
No options to change it. You can change things like sharpness, exposure and framing but as far as the file format no. You can also not reset the file naming which is a sequential number that starts at 00001 when new and increases every time you run a film through it.
@@12voltvids I found no way to change the date stamp on the file either. The file number (name) advances every time you stop and start film, even if you record for just a second.
@@danzervos7606 Yes that is how they determine the warranty. The counter just goes up every time. 12 months or 200 reels I believe is the warranty. I was at 200 reels after 8 months and have put through about 80p now.
Some earlier comments related to the fact that the product instructions state that the film must be positioned under all three "white tabs". A bit of a task. However your video seems to show that you only position it under the single rearward tab. Correct?
@@12voltvids You're right. It is not hard to load, but you just need to make sure it is loaded correctly. There is a difference between difficult and making sure to do it correctly.
As I understand it the device takes a jpg image of every frame, right? When you transfer the folder/file to your computer what software do you use to convert all that to mp4 (or avi)?
Robert Lee That is RUclips. The original looks fine. Remember what you see here is 3 generation compression with size change because I didn't render in 4x3. My editing software had no option for HD in 4/3. It will stretch out to 16x9. I could render it at 480p in SD but that would defeat the purpose.
@@12voltvids Or, you can drag the image into a 16x9 timeline and let the image be smaller inside the frame. It is still possible to choose an older HD format to work with but why? I'd rather even add a decorative frame on the sides than lose the original aspect ratio. It is also possible since you are grabbing a larger area than you ever saw from the projector gate, to crop the image into a 16x9 aspect. But then you might have to re-frame sections to not crop anyone's head out. lol But at least now you have options that do not cost thousands of dollars to experiment.
It looks to me that the max 200 roll warranty is to make sure it is not guaranteed for commercial use but for light home use. But your dismantling video seems that the drive mechanism is strong so I hope it lasts a long time for you. If it should break after warranty, I wonder who might have a video repair on her? Great cartoon.
Yes that is what I gathered. I would expect it to last far longer than that, because the parts that move the film are metal, even though the cam gear is a plastic gear, there is not stress, as it moves relatively slow compared to the old projectors.
@@12voltvids If it's just a generic plastic gear, then it may be possible to switch that out for a metal one when it breaks and the part has to be brought in. Metal gears would make it last even longer.
Yes brand new. This is a new model, the previous one only did 720p. Other frame by frame scanners are even slower. This is done so the machine puts no stress on the film, as many old films are very brittle. So it moves the film relatively slow and takes a picture of each frame and compiles the pictures into a .mp4 movie.
OK that is more of a challenge. I would first scan the film to get the video into a file, and then run the film a second time through a sound projector (with the lamp off naturally) and record the sound track on the computer. Then in editing softeware match the frame speed to the sound. I did that on the first film I scanned. I showed a few minutes of it on the first look. I should upload that entire film Mr Gullible has a toothache that my late father inlaw did back in the early 60's. A VHS version is up on my channel that was transferred using an RCA TK21 telecine camera about 30 years ago at the TV station I worked at. I took the sound from the VHS transfer and added the picture from this one, except for about 10 seconds where the film had broken. For that clip I cut to the VHS version and then back.
Hi Dave and many thanks for your detailed answer. Indeed it is time consuming job as each roll needs two passes: one for the picture and the second for the audio, not to mention the editing to get it to sync. You are well deserve a special payment foe each transfer job. Best Regards, Moshe.
Yes to transfer a sound job would be much more costly then silent. Fortunately not many films are sound. In the 30 years I have been transferring film to video/DVD I can count the number of clients that brought me sound film on 2 hands. The reason was sound on film cameras came out just before home video, and the cost of magnetic sound film was very costly. Where as a 3 minute reel of silent film was about 20.00 in 1980, a 3 minute sound film was 49.99. super8 was always a very expensive medium. Regular 8 never had a sound on film option. The regular 8 film my late father in-law did the sound was not recorded when the film shot. They scripted their film, and then after the film was developed and edited together, it was sent back to the lab to have a magnetic sound strip added, and the sound was dubbed in on the projector. That was even more ridicules as far as cos went. So, the majority of film I see is silent, and if I do see a sound film, it will have to be post produced and the sound added later at additional cost to the client.
Depends how noisy your projector is. If it's a Eumic you'll need to use the line output of it and connect it to a recorder. See my YOU TUBE channel > royfromdurham< and select LAS PALMAS reflecta converted. There is also copy of LAS PALMAS I did previously using the method of shooting with a DV Camcorder from a projected screen. So you can see the difference. By the way I'm 92 years old so if I can do it, so can anyone.
@@12voltvids what is a sound projector ( with the lamp off naturally) and where can I get one? Thank you so much for the information. All my videos have sound.
Thank you for your knowledgable evaluation of the Wolverine. I bought one and I'm trying to use it with Fuji Single 8 film. The format of Single 8 is basically the same as Super 8. But sometimes I run into a problem where the film won't move through the gate. I called Wolverine. They said that the Fuji film tends to have a finer thickness compared to the Kodak film. I don't suppose you've had any experience with this film, but if you have or you have any ideas on what I can do to help I'd be interested.
Only 200 hundred rolls.... Hmmm.... 1) Take 1 million rolls of film. 2) Splice all films into one huge roll. 3) Engineer something to hold all that film. 4) Run the one huge roll as a single run. 5) Use a computer to edit the one roll into multiple videos.
The warranty os 1 year or 200 rolls of film, which ever get there first. 200 50 foot or 200 400 foot doesn't matter. The film counter when it gets to 200 the warranty is done if this happens before the 1 year time warranty expires. This is to catch people using it commercially. In reality most people will not hit 200 rolls in a year unless you have a very big collection of films. I was using mine commercially and my unit only has 250 on it now, and it is past the 1 year warranty.
The units were made as a alternative to spending too much on services. So most people do not have 200 reels of film of any size, 50 ft or larger. What it prevents is people who are taking what was not made for 24/7 operation to have a year long warranty when they make thousands of dollars and it finally craps out 362 days into the year. So they don't care if you have 200, 50 foot reels or 200, 400 foot reels, it allows them to service the user based more on how they are using the product rather than how long they are using it.
Junior BCM Some 8mm were shot and some at 16. Super 8 was 20 for silent and sound super 8 20 or 24. This unit scans single frame and turns out a 20FPS file. You can load in your computer and turn out whatever frame rate you wish. Many of the dual 8 projectors used 18 so that 8mm Shot at 16 wouldn't appear too fast and super8 wouldn't appear too slow.
Super 8 was either 18fps or 24fps and standard 8 (std8) was 16 or 24. I am not sure why they chose 20 frames per second other than it makes the math easier to change playback rates for whatever speed you desire later rather than 18 or 16. Personally, I would have preferred having the option of individual frames that you can import into any program and decide what speed you'd like them to be played or how long each frame should be held still before advancing to the next one. But it's really aimed at consumers that just want to get a decent scan of old films they might never see again otherwise with the easiest of operation. The only improvement I would want is to ALSO have a pass which allowed for taking audio off the film strip in real time, but that surely would double the price. Since a larger percentage of film shot was by home users and most of their sound was added in later as music tracks or narration, that can be easily solved like 12voltvids already outlined - record the audio separately and sync it up. It is not that hard to do. Just remember to correct the timing of the movie once it's restored to a video file or the audio file will have to be sped up to match. (Something has to be re-timed. I would opt for the film since we know that speed, and with a casual transfer through a video camera off the projector's low bulb setting, you can tell when transitions occur thus knowing when the two are in sync.)
Oh and the simple math makes it 80% for 8mm shot at 16 fps and 90% for S8mm shot at 18 fps. I hadn't considered the math for 24 fps, but that will be a slight increase of speed. 1.2 or 120% should do the trick. My father shot at 18fps because it was to save money on film cost. BUT, he would sometimes shoot 24fps, when he wanted it played back at 18fps or 16fps for slo-motion.
Works fine and every client is super happy. Had i invested in a real high end unit i would still be paying it off as opposed to making money. Isn't that the point of a business? To make money? I know someone with a real high end 5k scanning system. He has to charge 5x what i charge and dies very little consumer scanning. He does work for government and commercial film where they have deep pockets. No customer is going to pay 30.00 to scan a 50 foot reel if film when they have 100 to do. Shit they don't even want to pay 10.00. As for quality it works fine. Take a look at some films I scanned with it. Look at my series "burried treasures". Shots of the bridge collapse on one of them was featured on the local news for the anniversary of the collapse. It's all how you set it up and process the resulting images but it can and does look very good. For what it cost there is no other unit that does better. It takes time though. A 50 foot roll of film. Takes about 45 minutes to scan and then process. Longer if you want to do things like color correct scenes and so forth.
its many things, "excellent" is certainly not one of those things. The grain of that cartoon is really messing with the already bad artifacting of the picture.
RUclips is also creating much more grain than the original scan. This is due to 3 compression runs. First on the original, which is 12mbit. Then when I run through the editor I set for 8. I could go higher, but my internet bandwidth is metered, so I tend to make the youtube as small as possible for an acceptable quality. Then youtube encodes again, and reduces the quality even more. Right off the source file the quality is fine. There are certainly better systems, but the return on investment in a 4500 machine is too long. Can not charge enough to justify the additional cost, because for the majority, 99% of people, and you would fall into that 1%, the quality is more than acceptable.
not that much more. when you upload at 1080p its done so at a higher bit rate. This is why when I do DV and VHS rips for people, delivering on youtube as 720 or 1080 there is no noticeable drop in quality when you look close as its original resolution of 480i(as p. premiere deinterlacing is very good) 100% of the garbling you see in this video at 1080p is done by the capture device itself due to a very well known issue with wolverine's ability (or inability) to process *pg file.
another perk you can upload 4:3 HD to youtube and it will render as that so 1440x1080p will still show up as 1080p and not be 16x9. Ive gotten allot of mileage from this feature.
Major problem with your demo. It's fine as far as it goes but one of the most important parts you left out entirely!!! What goes in the back and how do you connect whatever it is you are capturing the images on??? In other words where are the old 8mm films being transferred to and how do you hook the electronics up!!!???
It is a self contained unit. Movies are recorded in MP4 format onto an SD card you plug into the back. The only other thing on the back is the power connector and a video out to view on an external monitor.
@@12voltvids I've got the pro, which I bought just this month. It also has a mini-USB port which, if hooked up to a computer, will allow the SD card to be mounted as an external drive, then you can move them without having to go around the back of the machine, juggling the SD card. To do this, you go into the menu and select the USB Drive option, and it will mount on the computer (I'm using Windows 10). When you're done, just pop it out of the USB mode.
I wonder if your customers know that you (and, to be fair, most other people who review these machines) are putting fingerprints all over their film when putting it into the gate mechanism. And your rewinding _is_ rubbing the film somewhat, especially at the _right_ edge of the grey housing: if it wasn't, the film wouldn't be flattened as it obviously is.
Here is some news for you. They don't care. These films are all 50+ years old. They are already scratched, burned, warped, torn, you name it. They don't care about the film and 9 times out of 10 they have me throw it away once scanned. So nobody cares about your opinion about handling film. I suggest if you care so much you send your film to a lab that charges 100 per 50 foot reel. They will put on the white gloves.
@@12voltvids I have some film from the '70s, and obviously I won't be sending them to you 🙂! (And they aren't scratched, burned etc.: I took good care of them. It really isn't hard to handle by the edges only.)
@@G6JPG that's nice. I have enough work to keep me busy. Customers are thrilled to see their old films and tapes. Again 9 out of 10 don't even want them back and ask me to throw them away.
@@12voltvids Well, we might as well enjoy the cartoon while it lasts, as I hear that Disney always tries to extend the copyright length of their movies & short films, although with the current copyright law (author's life+70 years here in Canada), it should be fine. Walt passed on 12/15/66, so add 70 to that, and you get when this film became public domain, 12/15/2016.
Don't be so sure about that. I scanned an old 8mm home movie film of Mickey Mouse that had a copyright date of 1932 and got hit with copyright when I tried to post it. Disney renews all their old copyrights. Just because Walk might be pushing up daisies the company is still very much in business, and they will renew copyrights long after we are all gone.
@@12voltvids Thus why I said 'we might as well enjoy this cartoon while it lasts'. I wasn't sure how long it would be until the Mouse Police (lol) shows up and takes this vid down.
Its easy to color correct film on the computer. I do that for my clients. Remember that this old film is, well old and the dyes can also shift with age.
So I got the Wolverine Pro. It is doing far better than using a projector and videoing the image on a screen. It even can handle film that is stiff and warped with some intervention. 1947 film my folks had taken I thought was completely lost as it would not feed through a projector. Most old film would not stay in focus. It seems that film from the 40's and 50's are a problem. They are breaking down with a strong smell of what I think is acetone. The film curls side to side and is very stiff, the beginning of the reels are showing white oxidation and that part is unrecoverable. The device just catches one sprocket hole to advance the film (if it caught two or three that would be better) and as a result because the tension on the film changes due to the warped film there is some jitter in the result. Because the film curls up at the edges, the sprocked fails to catch the film at times. Sometimes it comes out of the three tabs that holds it in place and sometimes the film bulkles causing the image to go out of focus. For bad film I am using fewer of the guide wheels as it would be too much resistance for the film to advance. Using my finger to hold the film flat going into the imager helps. Lubricating the film is essential but slows splicing repairs when old ones break as the oil has to be cleaned off. My editing software can mostly stabilize the result of jitters, but not the often big jumps. Still I am getting sharp images from 70 year old film and if worse come to worse, I capture individual images and create a slideshow for the worst parts.
One thing I haven't been able to fix. On any film where the lower part of the image is dark and the upper part is light (think sky), the Wolverine creates digital video that pulses darker at what seems like once a second or so. I haven't tried changing the exposure setting, maybe that will help, but then the rest of the film would be at the wrong exposure setting. Any ideas?
Some issues I can think of.
- No real manual control. Manual white balance/exposure is a must.
- Inefficient video compression hardware. LOTS of blocky artifact there. Only if they raise the bit rate to something better.
If these 2 issues were solved. I might consider this unit then.
There is an exposure control. The bit rate is fine, you haven't seen the source files. Off the encoder directly it is 12mbits. A 3 minute file is 250 megs in size. The frame size is 1440x1080 4x3 aspect. When I run through the editor, premiere matches the frame size to my camera files which is 1929x1080 16x9 aspect. I then recompress and have my encoder set to 8 megs VBR to make the file as small as possible while producing an acceptable picture. RUclips then recodes in multiple formats, but they make it even lower bit rate to usually about 5 mbits. So what you see here is NOTHING close to the original file. Also the old cartoon I put on at the end was done in 1933, and the print if all gawd know what master. It looks like hell even projected. This was not an evaulation, I put it on for fun because I found this old reel. I was given a box of old movies a long time ago, and there were some disney films, a swiss family robinson, an old write brothers flying machine from the 20's and even an old stag film in there to boot. I thought this one would be fun to throw on at the end. The soource quality is far better than what youtube represents.
As far as color correction goes, that is what your editing software is for. This unit is color balanced for the light source and if the correct type of film was shot then it is correct. If the wrong film was used, , tunsten film outdoors, it will be blue, or daylight under flood lamps orange. No different than if you were to project it on a screen. You load the file in your computer and fix it in post and then send the fixed file back to disk at a higher bit rate. you can also change the frame rate in the computer too.
This is just a tool to scan the film, and it scans exactly what it sees. You can set exposure up or down 2F stops in .5F stop steps.
Also these films are in many cases over 50 years old, and the emulsion is deteriorating. No matter what you use you can't improve what isn't there. Many are fading, or rotting. Dyes are changing. If you were to scan a brand new film the quality is much better.
Yes I know Kodak thinks hipsters will come back to film, but this is useless for the new film because they don't make reversal film now days only negative film, and this won't reverse negative film. Not that many will be using film, it is just too dam expensive, and you can do a better job with digital, and even make digital look like film.
Agreed on RUclips's (re)compression. No matter how decent my videos looked,they would turn out crqp once uploaded. Still can't figure that out.
Personally I think 1080p resolution is waaaaay overkill especially for Double8 film anyway. (what to expect from that tweeny-tiny 3.3*4.4 mm of film area?) Using just 720p resolution for the entire process from sensor to output file(s) would make more sense. 16mm films would be another story then.
The real deal breaker of this product for me is that I'm still not sure if this will give DEFINITELY better result than what I'd already achived,using home-brew frame-by frame scan setup made of a scrapped projector+a decent miniDV camcorder+some tinkering and patience. Although the result is just SD,but it seems acceptable to me. Here it is.
ruclips.net/video/hHBi2ZxlmqM/видео.html
This product is probably made for a specific target group. A serious amatuer who inherited TONS of old 8mm films form their parents and do not want to send them out to someone's else hands to scan,but don't want to go the full DIY route. Or a professional shop who already have other main business,but still have clients asking for 8mm film scans from time to time. (That sounds much like your business lol.) Investing in Moviestuff's Retroscan system for example, while definitely better,would be be too much. This product seems perfectly fit the bill.
12voltvids you could quite easily reverse a negative with software?
What’s the frame rate that it records in? I think the 720p version records in 30fps and then you have to adjust it in your editing software to match the 16 or 18 fps that most 8mm was shot on, yes?
@@scottneumyer 20 fps Ive heard people complain that it makes the digitized copy too fast. One person said the bride was power walking down the isle. LOL!
some tech info.always check splices before proceeding to transfer this can save a lot of headaches.never let glue splices enter unit re-splice bad and glue splices.always clean films before scanning.I suggest what we use in the film industry for motion pictures it is called "film guard".and can be bought here.www.urbanskifilm.com also thereelimage.jimdo.com
The Mickey Mouse cartoon is strectched from 4:3 to 16:9!
I am aware of that. I was editing in 16x9 mode, and premiere auto fills the frame. I would manually have to squish it back to 4x3 if I wanted black bars.
When I play the source file it plays in 4:3 with black bars on both sides of my 16x9 monitor.
The film is 8.0 mm and USA brand because 9.5 mm would be grossly over size. The film fits as it should and runs for awhile then jams in the feed alignment section where the digitizing operation takes place. Once jammed the film is a little difficult to remove from the digitizing section guides.
I just noticed that the take up reel is turning continuously and the clutch allows keeping take up tension on the film. So the claw seems to be acting like an escapement.
I found on the Wolverine Pro that it’s important to verify the film is indeed clipped under all three little white clips or your finished film will be too jumpy
The color, even on 1958 8mm, is fantastic.
Just to note there’s a review on the Amazon page for this model from someone who also has the 720p version. He has images showing the picture quality between them is quite close.
I would imagine that they would be fairly close due to the fact that most peoples 8mm and super 8 film that are 50+ years old have started to deteriorate by now anyway so the gain in resolution is probably not that noticeable. I went with the pro model because it handles larger reels. The standard unit only handles 200 foot reels.
@@12voltvids Good choice. You could extend (and probably have extended) your home video transfer business to films as well. Who knows, maybe someone wants a DVD of their old short films from days gone by.
This is why I bought this unit. It has already paid for itself. I don't get many films in these days unlike days gone past, because most have probably already had it done to VHS 30 years ago and tossed the old films. I have had a few come in, and one of the guys brought me an old Grundig radio to repair as well. It was actually the shop that told him it was going to cost 375 to fix that gave him my number for transfer work, and I ended up fixing his radio too after the other shop quoted a stratosphere high price.
Regardless of the age of the film being scanned, you'll still get a good proper product if done right. This final result is unacceptable for 1080. It does not matter how old it is, if it was scanned properly, you would still see film grain. This is not film grain you see, this in fact is terrible compression.
Whatever. It is what it is. Make lots of money from this scanning people's films. Sure I could spend 10x as much and get a better unit, but that is not a good business model. People will not spend 10x the price and I would still be paying for that more expensive machine where now I am turning a profit and not one single client has anything but praise for the quality. For what it costs you won't find anything that comes close in quality. I get referrals by word of mouth and I get lots of referrals despite what you internet trolls say about it.
Sure people will pay for this if they aren't educated enough about higher quality. The true term for "1080" is often misinterpreted and therefore misguided. I'm sorry if you disagree, but facts are facts. No need for hostility, just pointing out the obvious.
@@coreyoilar5651 the resolution is kit misguided. The frame size is 1440 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. The non pro version 1280 x 720. It is compressed at 15 meg / second onto mp4. The problem is this, and it is not a fault of the machine. Film grain is just like chroma noise on analog video like vhs. It must be compressed. Because film grain and video noise if random it takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Back in the day when I was working with broadcast sd video I was capturing analog video into mjpg compressed files at 3:1 compression and bandwidth wise 2 minutes of video took 1 gigabyte of drive space. A 9 gig 10,000 rpm drive that cost 5000.00 was enough space to produce a 4 minute music video, source files and rendered file. This is why when VHS video is transferred to dvd the quality isn't as good. Compression noise everywhere because the noise needs to be compressed and there is not enough bandwidth. The only solution is to low pass filter the video and roll off all the detail. Same goes for 8mm film. The frame size is very small so the grain is very noticable. This film grain which is random needs to be compensated for. So you either use lower compression or you roll off the high frequency detail slightly. The low setting in the sharpness looks better because the edge is taken off the detail allowing the grain to blend in. People get used to the quality of digital video at low bandwidth. This is possible because digital video is very clean with virtually no noise which allows compressors such as h.264 and have h.265 to work their magic. Give them a noisy signal such as high grain 8mm film, especially film that has been sitting for 60 years and not only is it grainy but there is deterioration to the film too. I wish i could show you a modern film down on this unit. I had a guy bring me some new color negative film that he just shot because he was a film student doing a project with super 8. You can't buy reversal film now just negative. I scanned it and flipped it to positive on the computer. He was wanting to see the quality on new film stock which btw has a much finer grain than old vintage stuff from the 50s and 60s. He actually offered to buy my unit on the spot. Had me transfer 2000 feet of negative. Paid me 400.00 to do it. Then he went and bought his own machine for future use.
So obviously the quality is there, but this will never convince someone that is uneducated in how video compression works. It does deliver a very good picture but as they say, garbage in garbage out. Many old films are not in good shape for many reasons. Age is one, storage conditions another, quality of original stock a 3rd and probably the most important, how it was exposed when first shot. That is the biggest factor on how good transfer will look. No matter how good the equipment is, amateur home movies can look great or like crap.
@@12voltvids Yes, you are correct mostly, but as an industry professional I can tell you that film splotches and scratches, if transferred correctly, will be clear on the screen regardless of the content. Splotches and scratches are on the film itself and not filmed from the camera, so if they are unclear it's obviously the machine unable to transfer a nice crisp image.
@@coreyoilar5651
It transfers a great picture when set up properly. The first few reels I had not set it up, or premiere for the edit process. Once I got the unit dialed in it looks great. The key is to zoom the image all the way back to show the entire frame and then crop the image in the pc. It is also important to edit and render out in the same resolution , 1440x1080.
One of the films I scanned a few months ago was used in a documentary and some shots broadcast on tv. I have some shots of a bridge that collapsed during construction in 1958 and the last survivor that fell off that bridge was interviewed with shots off my old film featured scanned on the wolverine. Looked great. Remember this is a consumer device, not a professional machine and for what it costs delivers excellent results. Not without its flaws though. Mine has had the take up motor short out so now I drop the film off the desk into a box and reel it up when done from the box.
I found this video very good especially the bit about the felt pad.
One thing I found out about the included "puffer brush" was it wasn't powerful enough to clear dirt/fluff that had accumulated under the gate and I had to resort to an airbrush/air duster.
be cautious when rewinding the film as you demonstrated as the unite has small gears in the take up assembly and can be striped if ran to fast.I would suggest using a second projector for rewinding or just buy some rewind arms.here is a good source for editing supply's for S8-shop.www.urbanskifilm.com8mm-16mm.mom and pop
I was thinking the exact same thing when he was rewinding them with a pencil.
I see you set exposure to -0.5. Are you experiencing yellow "flaring" artifacts when the exposure it set higher (I have on my non-pro unit). What setting do you use for sharpness? I set to low to reduce artifacts. I don't think this reduces sharpness, it just doesn't enhance it with software. #ThriftyAV
Very helpful post. Thanks for sharing! I wondered about rewinding. In other vids it does look like the built-in rewind was kinda slow. I just got one of these devices and will be trying out today. Thanks again for the tips and info!
I don't use the take up reel at all. Can cause film slippage which results is a shaky picture. I let the film drop into a box and then rewind by hand after it's done. Much faster and image quality is improved.
Thanks for the tip!@@12voltvids
@@12voltvids I'm going to go back and re-digitize my old famly films using your technique. I can definitely see I have a jitter effect on some of them just like you described.
Your other video where you also talk a bit about your post-editing techniques another great bit of advice. My hope is to get all these films digitized in time to share with my siblings for Christmas.
Thank you again for the great advice and excellent videos. They have really helped me get the most out of the Woilverine device!
@12voltvids
I'm curious about the actual compression. Mp4 can contain a wide variety of codecs and bitrates. What does this machine produce?
Also. The x/y and zoom adjust... Are those done optically or digitally? So do a fully zoomed out scan have the same amount of pixel data as a fully zoomed in?
And related to that, if you want to scan it wide and do perforation stabilization in post to negate gateweave and finetune framing shot by shot... Would I essentially be wasting good pixel data?
I'd also be curious about switching out the camera for a higher res version to capture the full film width and still have enough resolution for archival purposes.
It is digital zoom so zooming back to show the sprocket and edge yield more pixels. This is how I do it. Crop in post and let the computer power resize the image. The initial test i didn't do it that way but i found that the quality is far better cropping in the PC. Resolution off the unit is 1440x1080. 4:3 aspect ratio bitrate 17mb|sec. I have footage up from scans taken off old film on my channel. Just look for the old travel films from the 50s and 60s. All done with the wolverine and cropped in post.
How's the scanner still holding up? I'm on the fence for a 720p versus 1080p version. How many reels are you up to and any issues?
720p is totally fine
1080 is much better quality
0:42 wouldn’t recommend that as it’ll scratch the film, you can see it touching the area around the screen. These old films are fragile. I know you said it wasn’t touching but it very much looks like it is, and you can hear it scrapping when you are saying it isn’t touching and you’re pushing on it.
Big deal, the film has already been scanned at this point and it will be heading into the permanent storage facility after it is scanned. I don't even use the take up reel anymore because after about 380 reels the take up motor burned out so I just let the film drop into a big box and then spool it up out of the box afterwords. Now nothing touches the film. Remember 99.9% of old home movies are already scratched scraped burned and in pretty bad shape from years of abuse. The majority of clients that have me transfer their film ask me to dispose of it which i decline and tell them just to throw it out if they no longer want to store it. Sorry if this upsets you, but that is what most people do with old film once it is transferred.
ruclips.net/video/WnIj0j_ZDLA/видео.html
Here is a private link to direct upload from the wolverine scanner.
i use to do this converting. film to dvd via Sony mini dv cam corder, so much work . there was no Wolverines. would like to get one
The sensor looks like it could pick up ambient light, washing out the video!
Hopefully you're doing these film-to-video conversions in the dark!
I could actually see the film image darken when you moved your hand toward the film gate!
Please tell me how the sensor is going to pick up ambient light?
It is facing down, shooting directly onto the frame of film that is illuminated with a bright light source from below. The camera is focused on the film frame, and is actually up inside the housing. I would have to shine a bright light up from the bottom to affect it as the sensor is directly above the film plane.
That is not a problem: I had thought it might be, but never had found anu evidence.
The light in the sensor is SOOO much brighter than any ambient light.
Any advice on what to put on the 'rollers' to stop this thing from scratching my reels? I can't believe I didn't buy an expendable film off eBay to test the thing first, now my childhood films have a cute scratch running down the middle
The scratch adds character? No? Too soon? Sorry. That sucks. Thanks for the heads up. I have not started transferring yet.
I found that using all the rollers isn't necessary. The rollers on my machine didn't damage the film, but for old stiff film I ran the film through with only a couple of rollers engaged and used my finger to hold pressure on the film as it entered the imager. If the resistance on the film going through the imager isn't steady, the framing will get out of wack with a bit of the adjacent frame showing on top or bottom. One complaint, all the information on the top of the screen hides it when it starts to show a bit of the next slide. However if it is just a bit, with your editor, enlarge the view and move the video upward to fill the screen without the line. (or downward as needed) Usually the subject is in the middle of the screen and losing a little of the top or bottom edge is unimportant. With spliced reels, often the next reel won't be aligned like the first one and the framing needs to be reset.
Also if one of the wheels is scratching the film, maybe the manufacturer will fix it.
Nice update! And more good techniques loading the film and doing the rewinding! First class job and thanks from Tim in Colorado.
I'm using mine now and am on reel 64, just like you were in this video.. The Lattice of Coincidence!
Thanks 12voltvids for sharing your experiences with this new model Wolverine scanner. I am about to up grade from the earlier model as soon as I can sell it here on Australian eBay.
After watching your informative video I feel far more confident that I am making the right decision. As a 78rpm-year-old pensioner, the outlay involved is not inconsiderable.
I feel obliged to make three comments however, partially based on my experience with the cheaper scanner.
First, I have a feeling that your 'sharpness' setting is too high. I've invariably found that 'LOW' provides better results with less film grain and video noise apparent.
Next, I feel that it is always worthwhile to run the resulting MP4 files through an editing program (almost any will do) to slow down the movement from the native 20-frames/sec.
While one might choose to ignore the result of speeding up super8 from 18fps to 20fps, a 125% increase in the speed of silent standard 8 would be noticeable. In both cases clients would feel they were getting more for their money, often several minutes more in fact, with speed corrected files. Correct speed is of course even more important if a sync soundtrack is to be re-laid later.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I trust you supply your end user paying customers with images in the proper ratio, namely 4:3 and not S T R E C H E D horizontally to fill a 16:9 screen as seen in these samples. This not only looks ugly but also degrades the horizontal resolution unnecessarily.
Do you ever have to splice broken film? And does it pull through the gate without skipping?
I have converted 10 4" reel successfully and now the colour on films are blue, (perfect colours on projector) is the bulb fading and if so can it be replaced, not mention of this in manual HELP Please
Its a white led and it won't be color shifting that quick. Usually when I see blue films its because when the film was exposed tungsten balanced film was shot outside without a color correction filter. When projecting it might look OK to the eye because the brain is correcting the color bit to a camera it will be quite blue. Look at the film. How does it look to the naked eye?
@@12voltvids Thank you for your prompt reply and excellent explanation. I couldn't tell by looking at film with the naked eye, but did a process of elimination - found a film in the garbage that was good and recorded that again and it was perfect. As a matter of interest the good cine film dated back to 1947 was wound on a metal reel and kept in a very tight fitting metal case. I am 85 and am down sizing so films have to go, but this way the memory can linger on. Once again thanks for you help
My films are hanging a lot coming through the gate. The pressure is too much for most of the Super 8's I'm trying to scan. The only relief that I've found is if I release the gate flap with my finger over it so it just releases the pressure and then the machine quiets down a lot and the film advances freely, as it should.
I really don't want to babysit the machine like this. Has anybody overcome this issue? If so, how?
I don't see the point of the metal guides if you've got the film under the tabs, I'm tempted to remove them and to see if that gives me better results, and if not, maybe getting some very soft, low friction fabric that put just a little pressure on them.
Is there any way of cropping to make it fit 16:9 format ?
You can do that in a video editor.
As a teen I spliced my family's 3-minute super8 spools together onto a large spool with a splicer tool and special splice stickers
The biggest headache I have with the scanner is when people did this, because if they were not done correctly it will stop at the splice, and you have to manually move it past the splice and start up again.
The down side is a 400 foot reel would take 4 hours, so I put the machine on before going to bed only to find out it stopped after the first 50 feet. Then I start it again and go to work, and it shops again after 50 feet.
yea I can imagine the splices making the film get stuck. I did however do a precise job back then and the guy who digitized them onto DVDs some 10 years ago didn't complain :)
Cool thing, Cool name. = great video. Isnt it amazing how tech changes.? We have some film of Dads time in Japan back in 1961. It was so different back then, no high rise appartments and just before the old Japan disappeared under concrete. Now I know how they digitize them I might get it done on his film. Thanks.
Never thought I’d see a film related video here.
You will never see me shoot anything on film.
How would you recommend cleaning the film. We have film from 50 to 70+ years old which I want to convert to digital.
I have such a device FILIM 2 DIGITAL MOVIE MAKER
But there is a problem when I convert the elephants at the top of the image there is a fold
What to do
Oh. And since the film is in the open when scanned. Does that mean you need to keep that in mind so the overall room light doesn't change resulting in unnecessary flicker if you turn off the room light when not babysitting the machine?
I mean. Maybe that's why the examples I've seen on youtube scan a bit too bright when set to ev0?
No light in the room won't affect it. Perhaps if you shine a flashlight on the film but ambient light no, because the light table below is quite bright and the camera looking directly at it.
It is not clear why the manufacturer made such primitive rollers on the scanner that the film rubs against?
I don't even use the take up reel. I just let the film drop off the desk into a box and rewind up from that after the reel is done. The reason the film path is set the way it is is to remove any torque from the take-up school which could cause the film to slip and a result in vertical shake on the picture. The motor on my take up side failed so I just let the film drop and the quality improved. Also don't crop on the machine. Set zoom to zero and crop the resulting file on computer. Results better.
clearly, instead of one toothed drum in front of the receiving coil, they put primitive rollers, idiotic designers.
@@ФедорМеркулов
Don't use the take up reel. Let film drop into a box. The reason there is no sprocket is because 8mm and super8 have different dimmentions. The mechanism they put in place is to stop any torque from the take up spool. The rubber coating on the roller acts like a brake to stop slippage. The engineers actually know more than you do. Also this is a consumer device built for a price point. Sure many of us use it commercially. I have a business associate that has a much much higher end scanner. His scanner was closer to $100,000, and he charges $50 for a 50 ft roll of fill which is 3 minutes. How many consumers do you think will pay $50 to have a 3 minute reel of film scanned regardless of the quality? Answer 0. His clients are big corporations archiving historical film. Big media companies that have old archives that they need to digitize. Not Joe consumer with a box full of films that his dad'or grandfather shot. I have had a few of my father's films that had some old historical footage picked up by local TV and broadcast that were transferred with the wolverine and they look just fine when they went to air.
I just got the W-movie maker Pro. Tried 3 different 50' reels and find that 1. seems to pull sluggishly after the first 25 feet or so and 2. video on my imac screen is very small about 2" X 1 1/2". Do you know if I can use imovie to enlarge the image on screen or am required to use Kodak Share which came up when I copied the first video into my computer from the SD card?
Assuming the warrantee on both the regular and pro version are the same 200 cycles, the pro version's warrantee is potentially double the film footage of the regular version. My question is, does that make it worth it to combine two 200 foot similar subject films or is it still better and more convenient to copy two 200 foot films separately?
That is up to you. The warranty is 200 rolls or 1 year which ever comes first. This is for the people using it commercially that will have it running all day every day. Most people will not have more than 200 little reels of film never mind 200 big ones. But yes if you think that way the pro version holds 500 foot reels. So more than double.
Hi great video! I just received mine in the mail and I'm digitizing my first reel. I had to adjust the X, Y, & W because it was off a little bit. Do you have to do this for each reel? It seems like that would mean your counter will go up 2 for each reel because you have to start over each time.
Hi, Thank you for usefull videos of Wolverine. I have one question...do you recommend me the version Cheap versión? (720p) I don't have money for 1080 version.
if you can deal with the smaller than 7 inch limitation on the reels. I'd always go for higher resolution because you're only going to do this once.
Plus the compression in the image quality in the cheaper 720p version is horrendous--there's a lot of posterization.
@@kthx1138 what about compression and possible posterization on the 1080p version? From the example shown on the video (where he is looking at a folder of files) I see that a 2 minute film is 140MB, which I believe works out to about 9300kbps, which is not bad. I am worried about images being too contrasty - I have a Wolverine slide scanner and am not thrilled...
I use sinds 4 years the first model of the Wolverine, last week i get and Install some new firmware. Install was working but i can not use the machine becourse i read on the screen " CARD PROTECTED". annyone kno how to lose that Problem???
If it's an SD card just check the tab hasn't moved
Just got myself one but get lots of film jumping in final scan. Either the whole picture or at best the top part of the image! I only use Standard 8mm and they are from the 60's through to the 80's but none steady. Checked the sprockets and look ok and still project perfectly through my Bolex 18-5.. Tried threading it in reverse as recommended by Wolverine but no better. Perhaps I have a lemon? Motor seems to sound straining at times and have had it jammed even without a splice on film. Any ideas. I am in Uk and got from US so a long way to send back!
Make sure the film is not tight on the supply side such as a warped reel or uneven wind the last time the film was rewound. Also it needs to go around the guides on the right side as illustrated in the threading guide, as this reduces the tension from the tape up side. I have run about 280 films though mine now, and the only ones I have had problems with was damaged films where the sproket holes are damaged by a bad projector or camera.
Thanks for replying. I have used the film path as shown and just tried another 50 foot reel where the film was very loosely threaded. But the footage is still awful and jumpy. Early scans the whole picture jumped now it seems to be mainly the top part. Though this new scan was completely jumping. Also I notice after the scans that there is a mark on the film sprocket caused by the scanners claw. And you can hear different noises where the scanner struggles. Though I must admit I did hope this last one would be alright as it seemed to go through smoothly and no hint at how unstable it really was!
As I said I have had no issues with mine, could be that yours was damaged in transport. Mine has paid for itself doing the odd film for clients, and everyone has been very happy with the result. Even thr guy with sound films, which I had to do as a 2 stage scan, as the sound had to be done separately.
Bill Sherren Are you certain the film is threaded so it goes UNDER THE THREE WHITE TABS on the light table? Missing any of the three will definitely cause the problem you mention. Incidentally, the sketch of the gate area on the front on the machine appears incorrect. The pair of tabs is on the opposite side to the film perforations, single tab is nearest the aperture, on the perforation side.
Charles Slater I wish it had been that simple but from the start I made sure it was under all three tabs. But a combination of unsteady images, exposure changing all the time even on a static shot and worse of all damaging my films made it unusable. So have sent it back for a refund...
The speed, after scanning with the Reflecta, is much higher than the original 8 mm film and must be reduced by approximately (+/- 60%) after scanning to MP4. Is that also the case with the Wolverine?
The wolverine scanned speed is 20 frames per second. Generally 8mm film was shot at 18 fps so there is a slight reduction required if you want it to play at the exact speed but the additional 2 frames per second is not that noticable. Reduce in editing software to 90% solves this issue.
Hey - I'd like to highlight one feature on this unit that you haven't mentioned, and that is the TV out. The mp4 1080p files that get saved to the card are all very well, but to my eye can look very digitised and compressed. I have found that if you record the TV signal via an analogue to digital capture device (ie Canopus ADVC 55 or similar), and record via firewire to DV or AVI format into your computer, the picture can look much more natural and smoother than the raw mp4 that the machine creates. Granted you are reducing the resolution down to 720x576 pixels, but I personally prefer the look for some types of capture. Not sure how this would work in the US using 30 fps NTSC, but in UK / EU where we use PAL 25 fps, adding a duplicate frame every 4 frames will result in a perfect 25 fps file (editing the resultant DV file in FCPX or Filmora Wondershare can do this). Anyway, that's my tip, if you have the equipment and time I would recommend playing around with it. In addition, the bonus for using the TV out is that your image is then blown up to whatever computer screen / monitor you are using during capture which makes reviewing the footage much easier to the eye.
I didn't show the tv our as that is outputting an sd video signal. Defeats the purpose of scanning in HD.
Hi do you have knowledge of a machine like this one to use 16mm films?
That counter is per video clip that you record, not per roll.
Typically you scan the entire roll at once. Yes if you start and stop each file will increment by one but in normal use you scan the entire reel in one go.
@@12voltvids I stop most reels to adjust the frame when it goes out. Also learning how to use the machine on day 1 got me to 24 clips in one day, not reel count.
@@ougibbons that's you. I rarely have to stop once the reel starts. I do all my cropping post production and keep it zoomed back to minimum with full frame showing therefore framing is not important. Allows me to scan the entire film in one go and then fix on computer. Can correct any frame shift in about 2 minutes on the PC and I can adjust for color shifts throughout the film due to aging and incorrect camera filter during exposure. I have put about 1100 reels through my machine by now.
@@12voltvids I get what you're trying to say but the fact still stands that the counter counts the clips and not the amount of reels as stated in the video. Can you provide a link to where they guarantee it for 200 reels? Also, I'm yet to come across a review that discusses the USB input. What do you use it for?
@@12voltvids But great news on the 1100 reels that you've done so far! I'm in South Africa and ordered mine from B&H last week. Took 5 days to get here, no hassle at all. Looking forward to doing some client work and selling stock footage at the same time. I've already converted 15 reels on day 1.
You Never Know If You will stumble on the Second Film that the Mysterious Lady In the Head Scarf was Filming. It Is out there somewhere???. What If the Film has Sound?. Nice Bit of Kit this. It's a Pity they don't do something like this for Video Tape as well. My Sony C-7 Died and Parts are like Gold Dust (I Am In the UK).
TheBudgie29 ...are you serious? Video tape is much, much easier to digitize!!! All you need is a video player and a video capture card in your desktop computer. I have seen laptops with RCA input plugs for video capture. Sound is just as easy by plugging a jack from the video player headphone jack into the mic input of the computer... And there's an even easier option, just get a VCR/DVD combo off ebay and burn it right to DVD. I wish I only needed that setup...but, I have over 300 8mm films...
Hey sir, great videos, I have 2 questions.. 1- how long does it take to transfer a small reel, and 2- if by connecting the yellow RCA in the back of the unit to my computer.( in my case an old canopus capture card with "S"" , RCA and firewire IN) I have 5 systems that are flawless.., as of now I and still using the "Mirror /projector/ Video camera " to do the transfer, Video camera is a Sony DSR-250 with lots of manual adjustments, that work well, but this setup seems to be the way to go.. Also, is the light source ( bulb) for the wolverine a standard bulb that I can get anywhere, ?..Thanks Love your tutorials and videos.gotta project I'm doing with 10 500ft reels and 65 small reels, and 600 slides, Im using the Epson slide scanner I purchased fro B&H years back that works well, I can only do 4 slides at a time.. ..
Hello....how do you deal with 8mm film that is just a little too wide and gets jammed in the digitizing area? 🙏🙏🙏🙏
8mm film is just that 8mm. Now if it is too wide it is probably 9.5mm film from europe, and no it doesn't work with those films.
How about the trimming/cropping/centering for each frame? I see you no longer have to adjust for that. Got a new way/strategy to handle that?
Yes I do have to set it up. At 10:32 just as I started this film I noticed that the frame was coming down from the top due to the camera not being loaded
correctly, so I stopped it, adjusted the framing up slightly, rewound the film and started over again. Usually it stays correct after I initially set it up, but that was the 1 8mm roll I pulled out of the bag full of super 8. Generally I only have to set framing once for an order as when someone brings me their home movies they were generally all shot on the same camera.
The horizontal frame is usually OK as far as centering goes, and the size, I generally over scan ever so slightly so that when there is debris on the camera during exposure it is generally out of frame. With the unit I could zoom way back to allow all 4 edges of the frame to show, and the sprocket holes. The first film I actually did for a client that was paying wanted an underscan of the film to show the entire frame including the sproket hole, and slight image of the above and below frame. The reason was he was going to crop it himself on his computer, and wanted to make sure that nothing was missed.
12voltvids Thanks! That makes perfect sense. Glad to hear that it generally stays consistent for the same camera.
I have had this unit for less than a week. I have tried a few things and with my experience with film since birth and 30+ years of video production behind me including for MLB and the Phillies, I would say I can figure this stuff out rather quickly. I have found that after scanning my first reel of 8mm film, then scanning a second reel, this time S8mm, I tried to methods. With the S8mm I pulled the image all the way outing did no cropping or zomming or centering of the image in the scanner. I aligned it, sure, but I did not try to create the final mage with the unit. That's what Final Cut Pro X is for. The first reel looked bad, like several of the tests I have seen on youtube which made me question the unit at first. I can now say that the best approach is to take in as much of the entire frame as you can (zoom all the way out) then crop it later. I lost no quality. Seriously, this thing is better than my first reaction. I believe you can get truly good results with this scanner.
Do you accept the default settings for exposure and sharpness?
What’s been your best platform for syncing your 8mm with the original sound to the video? I do it the long hard way by running through my Kodak unit then spend countless minutes syncing. Please advise and thank you for your video.
Have you found that certain films appear too jumpy upon playback, and then will play smoother after a second run thru the machine? If so, have you found a way to prevent this from happening in the first place? (This is only an occasional glitch, but quite frustrating.) Thanks.
Yes I have found a solution to the jumpy film problem. It's not a real elegant solution you might laugh but it works. Don't use the take-up spool to wind the film up this is what causes it to jump the film slips through those little rollers that are supposed to stop it from slipping. Run the film through the gate let it drop off the edge of your table into a great big box it will pile up in the Box but will not tangle. At the end of the film just remove it from the gate because it'll still be stuck in the gate when it gets to the end put it back on the real and wind it up by hand by using a pencil to spin the reel around. I'm going to do a film transfer today for a client I think I will make a video showing how I do it.
@@12voltvids Okay! I will give that a try. Thank-you very much.
@@12voltvids GREAT TIP. Worked like a champ! Thank-you so much. (I use a projector to rewind, dragging the reel with my hand to slow it down). An inch gap between my work table and projector platform straightens out the film as it passes thru on rewind. (i watch it carefully when rewinding). Thanks again.
Naughty - You've done it again. I know my Disney characters and they just aint that plump . You've stretched your demonstration video to 16:9 aspect ratio instead of the required 4:3
1. does this thing produce single image files for own postprocessing?
2. what is the maximum image size?
The image size is 1440x1080p. It produces a 20 fps mp4 file that you can speed adjust in post.
@@12voltvids Have you had any jitter problems with the scanner lately? Thank you.
After your done how do you put it on dvd
Just like any other movie file, but you might want to not erase the digital file as they hold higher quality than DVD. Try BluRay as well, but keep the files! Until you scan higher quality (and there is only so high 8mm is worth climbing) your new scans are now sub masters. The DVDs are how you distribute them to the masses, ala Disney, Universal, Fox etc. The beauty of this machine is it unlocks those images which you always had to view the source material to see them. Now, aunt Suzie and uncle Mike can each have copies. You can even give them file masters which they store in case your storage fails! I figure it's worth the investment of a few thumb drives to hand out as off-sight backups.
Maybe you could splice multiple films together on one reel to cut down on the reel tally it keeps a record of?
Sire you could if you had a large reel, and splicing equipment to align the film properly
Most of my old film is on large reels. Wolverine only comes with a 200 ft take-up reel and it can handle 800 or 900 ft reels. So for larger reels you need to get a bigger take up reel. However splices often hang up going through the imager and then you have to stop, reset the film, and restart the conversion. That is another count on the tally. With a 50 ft reel, you can safely set it up and let it run while you leave the room. Not on larger reels.
I got a very stupid question! But I have just started researching super 8 film. Do you need to send the film off to be developed before you are able to scan it? Or can you go directly from shooting the film to scanning it with the Wolverine scanner? Any help is appreciated!
Not stupid at all. Normal reversal film requires processing where it is developed and turned into a positive image as opposed to a negative. So film becomes a movie. Then you scan and edit.
That's half hour for a 3 minute reel?
Yes, takes 30 minutes to do a 50 foot or 3 minute reel. Scans 2 frames per second.
Well worth it since the quality is good
A 50 ft reel is about 3 1/2 minutes. The Wolverine runs at 20 frames per second but all my film was shot at 16 frames per second. The editing software I have lets me change the frame rate and slow everyone down to normal speed.
How would this scanning system work for a DIY filmmaker?
I recently scanned some negative film for a film student. Since today all you can get is negative color or black and white film. So the film was scanned and then changed to positive in computer. Personally I have no idea why anyone would want to shoot super8 today. 3 minutes if film costs about 100.00 to buy and process. Shoot digital. Cheaper and better quality.
12voltvids Wolverine says that the Pro has an option to scan negative film so you wouldn’t have to make it into a positive on a computer. Does it work or not?
Whats a good price to charge a customer per reel?
I charge by the foot.
How is the super 8 quality compared to VHS?
Super 8 has more resolution than VHS, but it also has a fair bit of film grain which is normal for such a small frame size. It is like taking one of those old pocket cameras, that used the 110 film size, or worse that kodak "disk" that used a disk of film that resembled a floppy disk but was really film with a tiny negative, and blowing it up to an 8x10. Sure you could do it, but it looked like crap compared to a 35mm film. Well 8mm and super 8 wasn't great. Super 8 slightly better because it had a slightly larger picture area, but nothing like 16mm film. Still scanning directly to 1080p digital looks good, better than it would look going to VHS, but saying that VHS was so bad it would hide the film grain which is now clearly visible,
VHS had at its best (meaning a really good VCR) could reproduce 240 lines of horizontal resolution under optimum circumstances. Super 8mm film, although half of 16 mm film, still is film and therefore holds a higher degree of information than VHS could in the image. Now, as with VHS, S*mm had many factors. What kind of equipment did you use? Consumer? Professional? What kind of film stock/tape stock? What kind of camera? What kind of VCR? What kind of projector? Screen? TV? Get the picture? lol
So, all those things considered, this machine is capable of giving you a better than VHS image of your 8mm or S8mm film. It has some limitations and some things could be improved, but you won't be disappointed in the results.I almost was after my first reel transfer. Then, my father bought new and better Bolex equipment, and I saw immediately better results. The S8mm film frame is larger than 8mm and the sprocket holes were less of an issue. More film surface was used for reproducing the image. there is a much smaller line between frames. My advice is to scan at full wide and let your Computer software (Premiere, Final Cut etc) do the interpolation for resizing the image when you crop it slightly to fit and remove excess portions of the frame.
A bit more information about video to respond further to your original question.
Betamax was better than VHS but not by much. It might reproduce 240 lines of resolutions well, but if you used the original quicker speed which cut your recordings down to 90 minutes on a 3 hour tape, you could see a greater quality. Super VHS and Super Beta had these two formats beat by allowing about 325 lines of resolution, but Beta was such a non-factor in the consumer market, they stopped trying. Super VHS was a great acquisition format because it held quality AND because it introduced the S-Video cable. This was a predecessor of component video. It broke the chrominance and luminance signals apart through the wire and the unit (VCR or TV) at the other end would reassemble the picture. This kept the color from the b&w carrier signal until it got to your monitor. It made for a better viewing experience. It also allowed for batter editing possibilities with less loss. Hi-8mm video was also in this league of quality and the Digital formats, Mini-DV and Digital 8mm both had 500-525 lines of resolution recording depending if it was professional quality or consumer grade. My Panasonic Mini-DV VCR used S-Video cables for copying to VHS or watching on a monitor. Of course it took firewire so it was basically doing a file transfer with anything digital. No loss to very little loss of quality there.
I hope this helps.
How does ambient light affect the quality of the image?
It doesn't. The camera is above the film, and is focused on the emulsion layer of the film (which is the underside of the film) The light source is very bright to iluminate the film. The reason that the emulsion is played down side is so that film thickness will not affect focus. Doesn't matter if film stock or tin or thick, the emulsion will always be held against the scan plate
@@12voltvids That's great to know! I had wondered but had not thought it through.
My parents found some old film in their closet. How do you know what type it is? It's very small it fits in my palm. They're kinda curious what's on it, it comes in a little box "Color Movie Film". How much do you charge?
It is probably 8mm or super 8. That little reel is 50 feet, and I charge 10.00 to scan one of those over.
Oh really, that is a really good deal. Of course I'm not sure how much I'd cost to mail it to you (I'm in the US) but I'll talk to my parents about it. That's $10 Canadian or USD? Not that it's much of a difference. :p
@@victorcoss2600 It'd be Canadian, since his conversion business is based in B.C.
$10 CAD=$7.73 USD as of 8/28/18. That's minus the shipping and other fees to get it to B.C. and have it returned.
Can you get this sort of thing for 16mm film as well?
I have not seen any that the average person can afford. The ones I have seen are closer to 10 grand. You will probably have to send your finds out to be transferred and eben that will be costly as the places that do 16mm properly are few and far between. They are all professional places and charge accordingly. I do 16mm but even that is expensive because I don't keep the machine set up so I charge a set up fee because it takes about an hour to set up and calibrate before I can do anything with it.
Excellent video. I have been using the method of transferring 8mm and super 8 by setting my movie projector up and projecting the movie on a white poster board. I then put my 4K camcorder on a tripod frame it in and then push record on the camcorder. It does a pretty good job but I cannot remove the flicker caused by the movie projector. This system you use seems to be a lot easier and well worth the investment of buying a new unit from B&H camera.
May I ask what you charge to to do this service? I recently retired from my full time job and thought about maybe doing this as a part time job from my home. The problem is I'm not sure what I should charge to do this service. Thank you for answering back.
I use Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro to edit movies that I have shot.
I charge .20 per foot of film to do it with this unit.
An actual movie screen will give much brighter images than poster board. I have done both and the screen is better.
Does this scan negative S8 film as well?
Yes it will scan negative and you reverse it on your computer.
12voltvids Thanks...I was wondering because I have the slow AF reflecta scanner and I realized the negative film looks wrong. How do you adjust for that in editing?
@@TheNewSkateboardTV
Should be an option to invert whick will make negative film positive. I have only done it once. Had a guy bring me some current negative film. Once it was inverted and levels corrected it looks pretty good, for super 8mm film that is.
By that i mean the grain, motion blur ect.
Did you add the felt cleaning pad? Mine doesn't have that.
No it came with mine.
What is your website url Dave?
Hi, 12voltvids, You say :"Off the encoder directly it is 12mbits. A 3 minute file is 250 megs in size.". Is that the file that you end up with on the SD card? Is it already compressed to a .mp4 file? Is so, is there a way to get hold of the "crude" non-compressed file?
No options to change it. You can change things like sharpness, exposure and framing but as far as the file format no. You can also not reset the file naming which is a sequential number that starts at 00001 when new and increases every time you run a film through it.
@@12voltvids I found no way to change the date stamp on the file either. The file number (name) advances every time you stop and start film, even if you record for just a second.
@@danzervos7606
Yes that is how they determine the warranty. The counter just goes up every time. 12 months or 200 reels I believe is the warranty. I was at 200 reels after 8 months and have put through about 80p now.
Some earlier comments related to the fact that the product instructions state that the film must be positioned under all three "white tabs". A bit of a task. However your video seems to show that you only position it under the single rearward tab. Correct?
No it is under all the tabs. If you don't load it right it won't work. It is not hard to load. Just push the film in and close the gate.
@@12voltvids You're right. It is not hard to load, but you just need to make sure it is loaded correctly. There is a difference between difficult and making sure to do it correctly.
As I understand it the device takes a jpg image of every frame, right? When you transfer the folder/file to your computer what software do you use to convert all that to mp4 (or avi)?
It outputs a 20FPS .mp4 video
The scan looks so pixelated/compressed.
Robert Lee
That is RUclips. The original looks fine.
Remember what you see here is 3 generation compression with size change because I didn't render in 4x3. My editing software had no option for HD in 4/3. It will stretch out to 16x9. I could render it at 480p in SD but that would defeat the purpose.
Can you upload an untouched footage so it only goes through youtube compression minus the others?
Yes I will do that as an unlisted.
Dave which editing software do you use, if you don't mind me asking?
@@12voltvids Or, you can drag the image into a 16x9 timeline and let the image be smaller inside the frame. It is still possible to choose an older HD format to work with but why? I'd rather even add a decorative frame on the sides than lose the original aspect ratio. It is also possible since you are grabbing a larger area than you ever saw from the projector gate, to crop the image into a 16x9 aspect. But then you might have to re-frame sections to not crop anyone's head out. lol But at least now you have options that do not cost thousands of dollars to experiment.
How much do you charge per 50ft roll?
ou can contact me by email regarding pricing.
Link is on my home page.
You know how to fix most things anyway if it breaks you can fix it
It looks to me that the max 200 roll warranty is to make sure it is not guaranteed for commercial use but for light home use. But your dismantling video seems that the drive mechanism is strong so I hope it lasts a long time for you. If it should break after warranty, I wonder who might have a video repair on her? Great cartoon.
Yes that is what I gathered. I would expect it to last far longer than that, because the parts that move the film are metal, even though the cam gear is a plastic gear, there is not stress, as it moves relatively slow compared to the old projectors.
@@12voltvids If it's just a generic plastic gear, then it may be possible to switch that out for a metal one when it breaks and the part has to be brought in. Metal gears would make it last even longer.
Are these modern units?
Yes brand new. This is a new model, the previous one only did 720p. Other frame by frame scanners are even slower.
This is done so the machine puts no stress on the film, as many old films are very brittle. So it moves the film relatively slow and takes a picture of each frame and compiles the pictures into a .mp4 movie.
I have three white tabs in the gate.
Great video Dave! How do you transfer the sound from film stock that has sound? Best Regards, Moshe.
OK that is more of a challenge. I would first scan the film to get the video into a file, and then run the film a second time through a sound projector (with the lamp off naturally) and record the sound track on the computer. Then in editing softeware match the frame speed to the sound. I did that on the first film I scanned. I showed a few minutes of it on the first look. I should upload that entire film Mr Gullible has a toothache that my late father inlaw did back in the early 60's. A VHS version is up on my channel that was transferred using an RCA TK21 telecine camera about 30 years ago at the TV station I worked at. I took the sound from the VHS transfer and added the picture from this one, except for about 10 seconds where the film had broken. For that clip I cut to the VHS version and then back.
Hi Dave and many thanks for your detailed answer. Indeed it is time consuming job as each roll needs two passes: one for the picture and the second for the audio, not to mention the editing to get it to sync. You are well deserve a special payment foe each transfer job. Best Regards, Moshe.
Yes to transfer a sound job would be much more costly then silent. Fortunately not many films are sound. In the 30 years I have been transferring film to video/DVD I can count the number of clients that brought me sound film on 2 hands. The reason was sound on film cameras came out just before home video, and the cost of magnetic sound film was very costly. Where as a 3 minute reel of silent film was about 20.00 in 1980, a 3 minute sound film was 49.99. super8 was always a very expensive medium. Regular 8 never had a sound on film option. The regular 8 film my late father in-law did the sound was not recorded when the film shot. They scripted their film, and then after the film was developed and edited together, it was sent back to the lab to have a magnetic sound strip added, and the sound was dubbed in on the projector. That was even more ridicules as far as cos went.
So, the majority of film I see is silent, and if I do see a sound film, it will have to be post produced and the sound added later at additional cost to the client.
Depends how noisy your projector is. If it's a Eumic you'll need to use the line output of it and connect it to a recorder. See my YOU TUBE channel > royfromdurham< and select LAS PALMAS reflecta converted. There is also copy of LAS PALMAS I did previously using the method of shooting with a DV Camcorder from a projected screen. So you can see the difference. By the way I'm 92 years old so if I can do it, so can anyone.
@@12voltvids what is a sound projector ( with the lamp off naturally) and where can I get one? Thank you so much for the information. All my videos have sound.
What about the sound???
Most didnt have sound
Thank you for your knowledgable evaluation of the Wolverine. I bought one and I'm trying to use it with Fuji Single 8 film. The format of Single 8 is basically the same as Super 8. But sometimes I run into a problem where the film won't move through the gate. I called Wolverine. They said that the Fuji film tends to have a finer thickness compared to the Kodak film. I don't suppose you've had any experience with this film, but if you have or you have any ideas on what I can do to help I'd be interested.
I have the same problem. I only have Single 8 movies. Have You got any solutions on this problem ?
Only 200 hundred rolls.... Hmmm....
1) Take 1 million rolls of film.
2) Splice all films into one huge roll.
3) Engineer something to hold all that film.
4) Run the one huge roll as a single run.
5) Use a computer to edit the one roll into multiple videos.
The warranty os 1 year or 200 rolls of film, which ever get there first.
200 50 foot or 200 400 foot doesn't matter. The film counter when it gets to 200 the warranty is done if this happens before the 1 year time warranty expires. This is to catch people using it commercially. In reality most people will not hit 200 rolls in a year unless you have a very big collection of films. I was using mine commercially
and my unit only has 250 on it now, and it is past the 1 year warranty.
The units were made as a alternative to spending too much on services. So most people do not have 200 reels of film of any size, 50 ft or larger. What it prevents is people who are taking what was not made for 24/7 operation to have a year long warranty when they make thousands of dollars and it finally craps out 362 days into the year. So they don't care if you have 200, 50 foot reels or 200, 400 foot reels, it allows them to service the user based more on how they are using the product rather than how long they are using it.
Thanks!
Were those 8mm films always shot at 18fps? If not, is it possible to change the framerate on the scanner?
Junior BCM
Some 8mm were shot and some at 16. Super 8 was 20 for silent and sound super 8 20 or 24. This unit scans single frame and turns out a 20FPS file. You can load in your computer and turn out whatever frame rate you wish. Many of the dual 8 projectors used 18 so that 8mm Shot at 16 wouldn't appear too fast and super8 wouldn't appear too slow.
Super 8 was either 18fps or 24fps and standard 8 (std8) was 16 or 24. I am not sure why they chose 20 frames per second other than it makes the math easier to change playback rates for whatever speed you desire later rather than 18 or 16. Personally, I would have preferred having the option of individual frames that you can import into any program and decide what speed you'd like them to be played or how long each frame should be held still before advancing to the next one. But it's really aimed at consumers that just want to get a decent scan of old films they might never see again otherwise with the easiest of operation. The only improvement I would want is to ALSO have a pass which allowed for taking audio off the film strip in real time, but that surely would double the price. Since a larger percentage of film shot was by home users and most of their sound was added in later as music tracks or narration, that can be easily solved like 12voltvids already outlined - record the audio separately and sync it up. It is not that hard to do. Just remember to correct the timing of the movie once it's restored to a video file or the audio file will have to be sped up to match. (Something has to be re-timed. I would opt for the film since we know that speed, and with a casual transfer through a video camera off the projector's low bulb setting, you can tell when transitions occur thus knowing when the two are in sync.)
Oh and the simple math makes it 80% for 8mm shot at 16 fps and 90% for S8mm shot at 18 fps. I hadn't considered the math for 24 fps, but that will be a slight increase of speed. 1.2 or 120% should do the trick. My father shot at 18fps because it was to save money on film cost. BUT, he would sometimes shoot 24fps, when he wanted it played back at 18fps or 16fps for slo-motion.
I definitely wouldn't use this thing for a business. You need a quality device that produces quality video.
Works fine and every client is super happy. Had i invested in a real high end unit i would still be paying it off as opposed to making money. Isn't that the point of a business? To make money?
I know someone with a real high end 5k scanning system. He has to charge 5x what i charge and dies very little consumer scanning. He does work for government and commercial film where they have deep pockets. No customer is going to pay 30.00 to scan a 50 foot reel if film when they have 100 to do. Shit they don't even want to pay 10.00.
As for quality it works fine. Take a look at some films I scanned with it. Look at my series "burried treasures". Shots of the bridge collapse on one of them was featured on the local news for the anniversary of the collapse.
It's all how you set it up and process the resulting images but it can and does look very good. For what it cost there is no other unit that does better. It takes time though. A 50 foot roll of film. Takes about 45 minutes to scan and then process. Longer if you want to do things like color correct scenes and so forth.
its many things, "excellent" is certainly not one of those things. The grain of that cartoon is really messing with the already bad artifacting of the picture.
RUclips is also creating much more grain than the original scan.
This is due to 3 compression runs. First on the original, which is 12mbit.
Then when I run through the editor I set for 8. I could go higher, but my internet bandwidth is metered, so I tend to make the youtube as small as possible for an acceptable quality. Then youtube encodes again, and reduces the quality even more. Right off the source file the quality is fine. There are certainly better systems, but the return on investment in a 4500 machine is too long. Can not charge enough to justify the additional cost, because for the majority, 99% of people, and you would fall into that 1%, the quality is more than acceptable.
not that much more. when you upload at 1080p its done so at a higher bit rate. This is why when I do DV and VHS rips for people, delivering on youtube as 720 or 1080 there is no noticeable drop in quality when you look close as its original resolution of 480i(as p. premiere deinterlacing is very good) 100% of the garbling you see in this video at 1080p is done by the capture device itself due to a very well known issue with wolverine's ability (or inability) to process *pg file.
another perk you can upload 4:3 HD to youtube and it will render as that so 1440x1080p will still show up as 1080p and not be 16x9. Ive gotten allot of mileage from this feature.
That looks like 16. I think that’s just me though.
No that is super 8 and it was 18. Regular 8 was 16 or 18 frames depending on the camera.
Black always looks better and more professional. The other one looks like a toy lol
Major problem with your demo. It's fine as far as it goes but one of the most important parts you left out entirely!!! What goes in the back and how do you connect whatever it is you are capturing the images on??? In other words where are the old 8mm films being transferred to and how do you hook the electronics up!!!???
It is a self contained unit. Movies are recorded in MP4 format onto an SD card you plug into the back. The only other thing on the back is the power connector and a video out to view on an external monitor.
@@12voltvids I've got the pro, which I bought just this month. It also has a mini-USB port which, if hooked up to a computer, will allow the SD card to be mounted as an external drive, then you can move them without having to go around the back of the machine, juggling the SD card. To do this, you go into the menu and select the USB Drive option, and it will mount on the computer (I'm using Windows 10). When you're done, just pop it out of the USB mode.
I wonder if your customers know that you (and, to be fair, most other people who review these machines) are putting fingerprints all over their film when putting it into the gate mechanism.
And your rewinding _is_ rubbing the film somewhat, especially at the _right_ edge of the grey housing: if it wasn't, the film wouldn't be flattened as it obviously is.
Here is some news for you. They don't care. These films are all 50+ years old. They are already scratched, burned, warped, torn, you name it. They don't care about the film and 9 times out of 10 they have me throw it away once scanned.
So nobody cares about your opinion about handling film. I suggest if you care so much you send your film to a lab that charges 100 per 50 foot reel. They will put on the white gloves.
@@12voltvids I have some film from the '70s, and obviously I won't be sending them to you 🙂! (And they aren't scratched, burned etc.: I took good care of them. It really isn't hard to handle by the edges only.)
@@G6JPG that's nice. I have enough work to keep me busy. Customers are thrilled to see their old films and tapes. Again 9 out of 10 don't even want them back and ask me to throw them away.
I don't understand why you've used such a very old cartoon as an example. It's not impressive. Please give us some decent examples of what it can do.
There are many films i have posted. Look at this one.
ruclips.net/video/O8oJEoEcns0/видео.html
Well i did like the cartoon, but your video was crap Ha ha :-D Joking :-D.
Im not sure i like there way of limiting the guarantee, a bit worrying :-(
@@12voltvids Well, we might as well enjoy the cartoon while it lasts, as I hear that Disney always tries to extend the copyright length of their movies & short films, although with the current copyright law (author's life+70 years here in Canada), it should be fine. Walt passed on 12/15/66, so add 70 to that, and you get when this film became public domain, 12/15/2016.
Don't be so sure about that. I scanned an old 8mm home movie film of Mickey Mouse that had a copyright date of 1932 and got hit with copyright when I tried to post it. Disney renews all their old copyrights.
Just because Walk might be pushing up daisies the company is still very much in business, and they will renew copyrights long after we are all gone.
@@12voltvids Thus why I said 'we might as well enjoy this cartoon while it lasts'. I wasn't sure how long it would be until the Mouse Police (lol) shows up and takes this vid down.
Colton. You need to go back to school. 1966+70=2036.