Enjoyed the video (and subscribed). I have one of the early 720P (5" reel) models with the belt drive for the take-up reel. I did add a small fan to the case to help keep the innards cool. But that was after I scanned over 120 reels of film from the mid '50's through the late '70's with no mechanical issues.
*Glad I decided to get the **Bestt.Digital** slide scanner. It us very easy to use, and as an added bonus it can hook up to HDMI on a TV and be used as a slide projector.*
I was hoping you were going to post an upload of the film your dad shot of the stores' customer purchase set up procedure. Love your videos & stop by from time to time to see what's on the boilerplate! LOL!
I did, but on a different channel. I want to re scan that film as I didn't have the framing set correctly when I did it. I just have to find the reel of film again.
Somehow I missed this the first time around. I'm glad I found this after the fact. I've just completed scanning ALL my Mother's old Super8 with the non-Pro 720p version, and my device kept working. I would still like a firmware upgrade that would allow more manual control over the scan settings.
I agree. The machine's auto exposure effectively undoes the manually locked exposure that I shot my Super 8s with. Same with the white balance - you can see this machine altering the colours within a scene because of its variable white balance.
Quality build! Found it a bit cheaper at one of the discount photo houses that advertise in some of the photography magazines. Tempted to buy one and have it sent to me. Was ready to buy a used dual eight projector but in the long run this is still a better deal.
I just got one from Amazon. Even though this one does not have the Wolverine name on it , when it starts up the screen says Wolverine. and it works the same way as in the video.
from the outside , on video here, it looked kinda cheap. that really is nicely made!! Ive seen others that were all plastic and didnt work right. I rented one from a public library and it wasnt the best either. Ended up just shooting the video on a white wall and recording it with 1080 camera. I still have a bunch of very old 8 mm movies from Vietnam, Korea, Philippines an uncle recorded during his time in the military during those wars. Thanks for sharing this it might be something i look in too.
It's slow, but has worked flawlessly on the 2 films I have run through it. Results have been much better than the old modified projector and HD camera. Sure the Reflecta is faster, but it is also 4,500.00 and that is just too much to justify considering that the film to digital transfer business is not what it used to be. Most people have already paid to have their old films put on VHS or DVD, and many tossed the old films once they had them put on video. I used to get film orders every day, and did the work for 2 photo labs. I now get a few orders a month. I bought this unit so I could up the quality now that the remaining film owners want the best quality, and I will also rent it out to people wanting to do their own.
I watched the other video about this scanner and I was about to ask you to make a tear down. You read my mind. I wonder if the scanner can be upgraded because I'm planning to buy the non pro (720). Also, does the scanner allows you to save the each frame as a picture? Thank you very much for all your videos and sharing your great knowledge.
It saves the images as a progressive scan .MP4 video file. Now, you can access each frame with editing software and pull freeze frames from it, and each frame is very clear. I have pulled frames from film for my advertising for the conversion business. It isn't a "scanner" in the conventional context of a scanner, which scans 1 line at a time. It is actually a video camera, with a macro lens that is focused directly on the emulsion layer of the film, which is illuminated from below. The mechanism moved the film 1 frame at a time at 2 frames per second, and the camera shoots an image of each frame when the mechanism signals it that the film is in place.
Good videos. Thanks! We're having good luck with our Wolverine Pro, so far. Quick question; Have you figured out how to change the internal clock-time, so the digital movie-documents are time-stamped correctly?
Thanks for doing this. I had the smaller version of one of these but just sent it back to Amazon. I didn't have a problem with the build but it was unreliable in that it randomly introduced flickering to the top of some frames. I reckon it was a software or electronics issue. The overall image quality isn't that great but then neither is the price!
I admit it looked cheaper than it is, but I think the excessive video compression is a major setback. Are there any compression settings or is it "what you see is what you get"?
Pretty much this. I don't know why the manufacturers didn't put in a software menu option to change the bitrate/compression of the output, as I don't see how that would have greatly changed any costs..As it is the crushed detail and blockiness in the output (for all Wolverine examples I have seen online) puts me off this. The Reflecta Super8+ seems to have much better image quality but it has two drawbacks, cost and it's only Super 8mm.
7 месяцев назад
@@theagg "Reflecta Super8+" Is it the big, iron one with the coils outside the body, or the one that looks like this scanner?
I've wondered, if I only wanted to capture multiple parts of a reel, is it possible to easily advance to a section of a reel, scan, and then advance to another section and scan? I imagine you'd have to lift up the plate that flattens the film to the scanning position, but from there are the reels free to be advanced?
From what I've seen, you have to keep an eye on the lubrication of the takeup spool motor. When it wears down, the gears become very noisy with the resulting friction increasing pull on the film, which also increases the frame jitter.
I don't even use it. The motor failed and i never bothered fixing. I just let the film drop off the desk into a basket and then wind it up afterwards. It's faster then rewinding off the full spool because there is no tension on the film coming out of the basket. The way it drops in it basically coils itself up in the bottom of the basket there's no kinks or anything the film doesn't get dirty because it's a clean basket when done the end of the film is still in the scanner so it doesn't drop into the basket I just take it out of the scanner we put onto the supply real and flip it by hand and it'll wind up really quick.
Great teardown. I'll be experimenting with swapping around the standoffs that are wider on the torque side to see if I can reduce some of the friction on the film. Then onto processing the film twice through another projector to get the audio converted, and then processed through a video editor like ShotCut.
There is a reason the film is wound around the guides like it is. To reduce the torque from the take up reel to close to zero, so the transport moves the film, and not take up torque from the reel. If you remove them then the torque will pull the film as soon as the transport cog drops (this is when the photo is taken of the film by the frame scanner) and if the film moves during this time you will get a blurry picture.
Roger that. I'm still leaving them all in place because jitter is pretty rare on my unit running the 20180323-ZS0 firmware. I plan on only swapping around the pegs due to the widths. #1 (small) and #3 (Large) going left to right from the gate. By the way do you use any film cleaner/conditioners?
I wipe it it down with a dry cloth if it is dirty. I used it for a few large film orders I had to convert, and it has been sitting in the box since waiting for the next order. One of these days I will do my own old film from when I was a kid.
The film gate seems to have fixed width - where most projectors had some sprung arrangement to allow for varying width of film. I have a couple of reels of Standard 8 that jam in the gate. I presume they were not slit very accurately, and are just a fraction too wide. I found the T/U clutch noisy from the start, so do not use a T/U reel - I let the film fall and coil in a clean box.
I do the same. The take up motor on mine actually burned out after the warranty was done so I just let the film drop into a box. The resulting scan is actually better so slip from that clutch pulling too hard. It gets the job done.
Hi, I have bought a Wolverine MovieMaker Pro for my 80s Super 8 movies. Some of the movies produce a blue tint on the digitized version. However the original movies when screened on a projector are not blue. So it is something to do with the digitizing process. Do you have any comment? Can u get a different colored light? The projector has a yellow light but the Wolverine is a white light. Do you think that video editing could solve the problem and take the digitized video back to the approximate original colors?
My wolverine pro seems to jam up a lot, even without film in. I took the back off and it feels like there is resistance on the main drive motor. When you turn it in this video it looked pretty smooth. Is that the case or is there some resistance to be expected after approximately 1 rotation? Many thanks,
Four years later, has your opinion changed? I was surprised to see someone like you who knows how to take stuff apart and build it back, to buy a factory-made scanner instead of building a DIY one. There are many DIY scanner videos on YT, I watched like a dozen of them, and Fresh Ground Pictures shows how to build one step by step, and the result of the scanning, pretty impressive.
Still works as advertised. Why didn't i build one? Because I don't have the time to do it and I could never charge enough to recover my costs. I'm in the business of making money and spending a lot of money to build something and a lot of time to build it for a little gain is not going to cut it. this delivers results that are good enough for my clients in fact every one of them has been very impressed with the quality because many people have tried to do it themself using a projector in a camera and had dismal results and this is a huge step up from that. Could I build one and deliver better quality sure but I'll never get my money out of it because people are only prepared to spend so much to transfer their old movie films. This is not Hollywood, clients are not lining up and wanting to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to do it. I get 10 bucks to do a 50 ft reel and even at that people grumble they want it done for less than that they see $10 for a 3 minutes of film as uneconomical for them. I don't know where people get the idea that people are just willing to Shell out money to transfer tapes and films because they're not around here. I've been doing this long enough, since the 80s and everyone's always been cheap scrapes to try to get any money out of. I'm competing with people that are offering to transfer film using a telecini into their camera for 10 cents a foot. This was a ready-made solution that I can just turn on load the film and walk away. I still have to process the image after it's done on the computer crop it color correct etc but at least I'm not wasting a bunch of time building something and spending a lot of money on it this was cheap it paid for itself on the first order I did and it's been making money ever since, not that it gets used that much I might get one or two reels a month. There's not that much 8 mm and super 8 film to transfer anymore because most people had it done back in the 80s to VHS and that was good enough for them they're not going back and spending money to do it again. Later generations don't care they don't care what was shot back in the 50s and 60s. Even transferring VHS and 8 mm tapes to digital it's tough to get any money out of that I've got ads running all the time and people call and ask what I'm charging I tell them and they say oh company x is doing it for half the price so I tell them go ahead and get it done with them I'm sure you'll be happy with the results. I don't know where you are but here people will not pay for this type of stuff. What I'm up against is people that look at what they've got if they've got maybe 50 or $100 worth of film to transfer they'll bring it to me but if they've got what would cost $300 or $400 to transfer they're not bringing it to me they're buying their own machine and doing it themself and then selling the machine once they're done. Very limited market for this.
How many minutes/hours of footage will fit on an SD card? Also my ultimate media of choice would be to transfer the information to DVD. How would you go from the SD card to a DVD recorder?
MrVideovibes You’ll need a computer with an SD card reader, DVD burner and burning software (although most modern Windows and Mac OS have built-in basic DVD burning software). It's a simple process of plugging in your card and blank DVD, drag the file over and selecting the disc as a playback DVD. Of course if you have the appropriate software you'll have to follow its specific instructions, but same principle.
Is the basic difference to the Reflecta model without the extended arms just that? Reading the specs on both the image resolution looks exactly the same.
Nice to see you're in Canada. Me too. I live in Peterborough, Ontario. That teardown video was very well done . I bought my Wolverine Pro from B&H in New York, and have been basically happy with it. I've noticed that when there are dark scenes, it renders them grey, not black, thanks to the automatic exposure system. The EV settings only make it slightly lighter or darker, but I think a true manual exposure adjustment, like a camera lens f/stop, would be better. If the film is well exposed, the transfer is very good. I recently transferred a 400 ft. Super 8 reel, with no problems, and no stopping at splices, as it sometimes does. Then, today, I loaded another film for transfer, and the take-up reel won't turn, so I'm up the creek !. I emailed Wolverine about it, and they said to spray a little WD40 around the take-up spindle, which I have done, but it still doesn't rotate. Any suggestions ? Another beef I have is that the 1 year warranty is only valid in the U.S. It's a pity there are no Canadian service depots.
Mine came from B&H as well. Had mine shipped to us address thinking I would save some cash but I got Mr. Peckerhead at Canada customs that wouldn't believe the price I showed him in my email receipt and as B&H just had a weigh bill and not a receipt. "Dick" then looked up the unit on amazon and found the most expensive wolverine on the planet and used that to calculate the gst and pst. Would have cost me a flat 50 to have sent to canada. I paid 12 us shipping to my mail box and then 5.50 for them to receive the package. Was charged the Washington state tax of 8.9% which I figured I would get back as I permanently exported it but noooooo they don't refund tax. Upon importing it I was hit with 72.00 in import fees. Now that 50 shipping fee to canada is I believe us funds but it would have still been cheaper than what it cost me. Now to the take up problem. Mine has failed too. It's the motor. I just let the film drop off the desk into a box on the floor. Best image I get is to scan full frame with the sprocket holes in the picture. That sets the camera up into a sort of manual gain as the full white from the light table is seen by the camera and compensated for that locks the gain. Crop out the sprocket in the computer to scale to your desired frame size.
@@12voltvids Sorry to hear about your fiasco with Canadian Customs. I must say I never experienced any problems like that. Your suggestion about doing a full frame scan sounds encouraging. I will try that. So should I send my unit back to Wolverine for repair ?
@@12voltvids I tried scanning full frame with the sprocket holes in the picture, as you suggested, but I saw no difference in the exposure. The dark areas were still washed out.
Something I can't figure out about the Wolverine Pro is how the auto shutdown works after a whole reel has been scanned. Mine usually does but occasionally I'll return to the unit and find that it has been scanning the final frame for the last half hour or so. I can't see any way the unit can sense that film is not moving through it and consequently shut itself off. Does it analyse an unchanging output from the camera? I would very much like to know.
I think this is the best bang for the buck, I will be getting one of these soon! Q: Do you think there is a possible way to step up the motor RPMs or adding a secondary motor with a separate switch for rewinding purposes only? Secondly, would you pick up another one if the film capturing increases?
It is relatively slow, but it does deliver very good quality pictures and for the money it will do the job nicely. A faster capture would be nice, but at what price. I don't get tons of films to transfer these days, and 30 minutes to do a 50 foot reel isn't that bad as I can load it and walk away for awhile. Since I know roughly how long it will take it isn't really a big deal. If I was scanning film for a living I would be looking at something faster and more expensive.
Ever tear down and repair a 16 mm editor from the 50's? Or a complete re-build ofa Bell and Howell 16 mm autoload from the 50's with the old clutch plate assemblies on the rewind spool?
I have an Eiki 16mm projector. It is built like a sherman tank, and probably weighs as much. I had 2 of them and sold, or should I say gave one away last year. Got 100 bucks for it, I think I got ripped off, but I got it for free, and sent it to a film student to get some use out of it.
Hmmm, Really interesting to see inside this machine a bit. I've read a bit about this machine, and there were earlier versions with drive belts that have caused problems, there are also now different variants, and this looks like the 'pro' one. So there are confusing and mixed reports about this device and it's not always clear which generation/version of the machine is being discussed in some of the other reports on it. I suppose this does show the machine has been developed a bit more by the manufactureres since the initial version which is a good thing. From all the reports I've read/seen, it does seem a shame that the captured frames are compressed so much, crippling the image quality this way just seems so unnecessary. I'd hoped the 'Pro' model might offer at least 'less' if not 'no' compression options. I've been trying to build my own device over the years, and I was really hoping to see how the stepper motor in this actually advances the film. Unfortunately the 'teardown' didn't quite go far enough for me to see this. Is there a claw, or a sprocket to drive the film? Also how does this machine actually register the captures and how accurate is the registration? Anyway, I think I'll watch again to see if I've missed anything and thanks for making and sharing this video.
You raise good points. There's a single claw to advance the film, but the cam that drives it just isn't good enough, and transfers done with the perfs in frame show the instability caused by the film being missregistred in the gate. You can have a super sharp lens but that's nothing when all 18 pics/ sec arrive in slightly different places.
7 месяцев назад
Yes, I didn't know it looked so homemade inside. I would say that the price is much higher than the cost. If you wish, you can assemble one yourself for much less. Moreover, the end result is important, and the camera of this scanner is rather weak. By the way, is the camera located on the top or bottom? Just a question arose about the opening of the frame window on the top side: if there should be a camera on one side, then a diffused lamp on the other. Otherwise there will be errors in the white balance.
I don't know where you are but i couldn't buy the parts for less than this unit cost to buy. Not even close. The camera is above the film focused on the film It is lit from below and the quality is good. Been using it for years done hundreds of transfers with it. The camera is 3mp which is fine for the 1440 x 1080 4-3 frame it records. You do need to process the resulting files to make it look its best.
You are thinking 16mm. 8mm is double that as the frame height and width is half 16mm There are 80 frames per foot on 8mm film so 400 feet would have 32000 frames. 2 frames per second = 16000 seconds to scan, 266 minutes, 4.4 hours. For 50 feet, 4000 frames. 2000 seconds to scan, 33 minutes for a 50 foot roll which is right about the time it takes to do, I guestimated 30 minuted per 50 foot roll. No jams at all. The only time it has jammed is when a splice when through that someone had scotch taped together, likely me when I transferred that film 30 years ago the first time. While I was transferring it the film broke after it went through the gate so as the film was stilling on the floor I just spooled it onto the take up spool, and then when I rewound it, just taped it together as I have no splicing equipment for 8mm film. I wasn't expecting to transfer it again after I did it 30 years ago.
Dave, Do you know what kind of light system those have led or bulb what ? I bought one of those to digitize my films have had excellent results your right well built the light source is surely fixable or repairable I hope it's really been worth the money other then this small problem.
@@12voltvids Dave, I appreciate it I very carefully took it apart I still couldn't get in to the compartment the light source is in their are some screws requiring jewelers tools to take out I pulled them still couldn't you would have to pull that whole board and mechanism while I was in I lubed somethings I got lucky I must have moved something because it started working so lucky their I'am impressed with the build quality better then Evan the Japanese I think I bought this one used with about 139 reels on it used it all day today very impressed ..... !!!!!
Oh Boy ...lol I Just ordered and you saved me a lot of time .. i won't have to tear it down now just to see whats inside .. and ....also its been a few month's since you made this vid..whats your opinion of this unit today 10/4/2018..thanks great vid :)
Yes I use an external under scanned CRT monitor for scanning. First it gives me a better picture and I can see immediately as soon as I start if it isn't threaded correctly as it will jump around on the monitor, and I can stop it right away and fix it before scanning the entire roll of film.
Mine had s failure of the take up reel motor. It shorted and killed the power. I have yet to investigate a replacement I just disconnected the wire to the take up motor and it turned back on.
I didn't think about what it was made from, it did the job really well, better than a projection capture, and straight to video file :-D I don't think it would be able to do the gating so well if it was cheap inside, the stepper motor is no supprise. The films are good practice for getting the best out of it, before converting a customers film.
I was just testing it on a film I had kicking around. I have boxes of my parents old films of me and my sister when we were young to convert, and even more boxes of my father inlaws films to convert. I'll get some use out of it.
Mine went dead just after 200 films this past weekend did 18 5 inch reels it was good film didn't get stuck at all I just have to get a new one I am using amazon power director film editing you are able to take a picture of the film currently videotaping a lot of 16mm film off of a movie screen old football games
Mine went dead after about 330 reels of film too. It was the take up reel motor that failed. I opened it up and disconnected the wires for the take up motor and it works fine. I just let the film drop off the table onto a box now and rewind it up out of the box when the reel is done. That seems to be an issue. The motor is put under great stress because the take up spool turns so slow during scanning, the clutch is providing the take up torque but the motor constantly runs under full load and there appears to be many that fail. No wonder the 200 film warranty. They know this part is going to be the straw that broke the camels back.
Hi! I need some help, my Wolverine won't start I've worked with it for a whole year, 500+ files and today it just didn't start at all, I hold the power button and nothing happens, any idea about how to solve this?
Open the back and unplug the wire going to the take up motor. If it turns on now the motor has shorted. You can join my club of scanning and letting the film drop off the desk into a box.
I just bought one and with every roll I have scanned the machine stops, and there is this terrible grinding sound, sometimes it says to check placement other times it says to unplug the unit. And sometimes when it does this I cannot power it down or stop it. I have to unplug it. I have way more troubles with the super 8mm vs 8mm. The last several reels I have cleaned with Filmguard, cleaned one way and dried the other. Although it was not too wet to begin with. I video taped the grinding sound and was going to try to contact Wolverine and send them the video and ask them what I should do.
@@12voltvids I called Wolverine Tech Support and they were great, answered right away. I let them listen to what the machine was doing and they said it was defective. So I am returning it and getting a new one. I have only hand it since Jan. 5th. Thank you. I read through all comments and researched first. I love how you took the machine apart because I also was wondering what was in there. I hope the new one works.
Mine just started turning off in the middle of a conversion. It's a 400' reel and I am guessing that it is overheating? The bad part is that I just restarted it and it looked like everything was okay, but after checking the card, none of the video before a shutdown had been saved. I opened it up and everything looks perfect, checked fan operation, so I went ahead and cleaned everything and hit it with some air, but I am going to wait before trying again. Has anyone had the problem of it just powering off in the middle of a conversion? When I start it back up it advances to the next number like it should. Thank you in advance for any suggestions. The next time I try the conversion I think I will put it in a cooler room and put a fan behind it? 😀
The only problem I had was the motor for the take up spool went bad and made it shut down. I unplugged the motor inside and it has been fine. I just let the film drop into a bin and rewind it up out of the bin. Also a bad SD card can cause issues.
@@12voltvids I guess mine was just overheating. I tried my portable fan behind the wolverine and no stoppage. I have 2 more 400 footers to do tomorrow, so hopefully this is the fix that works for me.
It looked cheap until you took it apart today. We cant tell if it is metal or plastic. Very impressive. I heard that name before, did they make film viewers and splicers years ago? How long has this been on the market? I do have some 8MM home movies I used a box to transfer with a Sony 8 camcorder years ago. The flicker was the biggest deal. I think interaction between frame rate and shutter speed.
Yes the frame rate is different. I used to use a modified projector that I could run at 15 frames for 8mm and 20 for super 8. (8mm normally runs at 16, and super 8 18) This eliminated the shutter roll because both 16 and 20 go into 60 nicely, which is the field rate of NTSC. I got good results, and it was find in the DVD days and VHS days, but is unacceptable in the HD era, and I have lost business due to not being able to offer a frame by frame scanner. It will come in handy and as far as photography gear goes was relatively cheap. I will probably end up renting it out to people, as that way I am not the one sitting around for it to process.
Good idea, rent it out. that's cool. It has always been an issue, those flickering old movies. I get it, as long as it is a multiple of 60., it works. So what rate do you need for HD?
Anyone else experience grinding noise from the take-up spool side? Machines worked nice for 5 or 6 reels but now has this funny noise. I'm not sure if it's my takeup spool itself or the motor working hard. I'm curious if anyone knows anyhtign about those take up spool gears? Perhaps I need to replace one or both. Any thoughts on teeth/dimensions?
Yes. My take up motor burned out. I unplugged it and just let the film drop off the table into a box on the floor and rewind from there. Don't worry it doesn't tangle up it will roll up into loops and wind up nicely when you thread it back onto supply and spin it by hand. Much faster too. Also, the quality is better too because the tension from the take up spool tends to sometimes cause the film to slip slightly resulting in vertical jitter. Even since i stopped using the take up spool and just drop into a box the quality has dramatically improved. After unplugging the motor for take up the unit is very quiet. The machine runs almost silent now. Mine has over 600 reels run through it, most were 400 footers.
@@12voltvids thanks. Definitely something to think about. I contacted Wolverine who actually recommended i spray WD40 inside the take reel spindle clutch and it’s definitely improved the crunching sounds. I’ll have to run some reels thru to see if it still fails or not. I do have a bunch of larger reels that don’t fit my non Pro wolverine. I may let the leader just fall off as you stated. I have some 35mm film rewind cranks jere but maybe I should look for an 8mm one too. Thanks
@@wirelessguyny3787 The quality (stability) improvement was so great that I told a friend to scan his that way too so now he uses a large garbage bin but in his case he didn't rewind. After transferring his d home movies he tossed the film in the trash. Once a good scan no need to do it again he said.
Is it 1080p? a girl reviewer said 720p What is the light source? LED , halogen bulb, what? How much heat does it throw off ? Have you tried : projector- telecine converter - capture with 3ccd 1080p/4k Cannon, Sony Prosumer Cam? Then you can walk away, no worries fast, real time, Does this device output the audio? over what interface? Wouldn't it be better to capture with variable speed pro quality 70's projector to telecine to 1080p or 4k use firewire to log to Apple or Adobe edit suite -repair any defects there? I know it would
There are two versions. One is 720P, but the one he is reviewing is the professional version that is 1080P. I suspect you are not a native English Speaker. He has already explained that he is not looking for professional results. What do you expect for $400?
Never used the unit to rewind. For that matter i don't mount a take up spool. I let the film drop into a box and spin it back by hand when done. I can rewind a 400 foot reel in about 2 minutes.
What it does is moves the film at 2 frames per second, and takes a 1440x1080 image of each frame of film, and stitches the images into a 20 FPS .MP4 file and saves it on an SD card. 3 minutes of film takes about 500 megs of space. You can load the file into your favorite editing software and change the frame rate to whatever you want. 16FPS, 18FPS 24FPS 30FPS ect. 20 was chosen as the output as it falls between standard speeds used on 8mm and super 8. Most 8mm was shot at18 frames, and super 8 18 or 24, so 20 is a good compromise as 18 frame file won't appear too fast, and 24 frame super 8 won't appear too slow. Again easy enough to change in the computer. The quality is good, and time will tell how long it lasts. I am sure I will make my money back on the machine before it wears out, as I won't be using it every day. Perhaps a few times a month.
Yes 1080P. The resolution is 1440x1080 as it is a 4x3 output. 1920x1080 is 16x9. That is the trouble I have with premiere, as it has a setting 1440x1080 for the old HDV video format, which is a 16x9 format that used rectangular pixels as opposed to square. When I load files from this, Premiere thinks it is a 16x9 HDV type format as it is looking as frame size, and stretches out accordingly. I am sure there is a setting in premiere that I can override this automatic setting.
Maybe a converter like FreeMake or such could re-encode it? I have had occasion to fix files that played back in the wrong format myself. Worth investigating anyway.
Nothing wrong with the camera. It does 1440x1080. Once set up properly it actually looks dam good. Sure it's not up to laser graphics quality but it also isn't well into 6 figures
How many megapixels do you think an HD image uses? Let me give you a hint a 4K image uses about 8 megapixels. 4K has twice the vertical and twice the horizontal pixel count. So just over 2 megapixels are required for an HD video stream. Anything above that in the pixels are bend. My high-end 4k camera has a 20 megapixel sensor but the only time all those 20 megapixels are actually used is when I use it as a still camera to take still photos. In 4K video mode it uses about 8.5 megapixels in HD mode it uses just under three the rest of them are binned. you would put a higher quality sensor in if you wanted to say capture it 4K but here's the problem, 8 mm is Super 8 film does not have the resolution. I have a client that I maintain video equipment for that has a laser graphics scanner. This is a piece of equipment that costs in the six-figure range and he can scan everything from 8 mm to 65 mm film. He does a lot of 16 and 35 mm scanning for government and archiving and can scan at 5K. When he's dealing with 8 mm he generally doesn't go beyond 720 or maybe to 1080 because the green of the film becomes too apparent. 8 mm film especially the old Kodachrome stuff that goes back to the 1950s was quite grainy if it's properly exposed it can look good but if it's not properly exposed you can see all the film green looks like random noise running through the picture which has to be processed out and processing it out removes some of the quality a bit. I found that the scanner looks great with the settings that I'm using now which is 5 F stop down and I scanned it no magnification so the edges of the film and the sprocket and everything is shown I scanned it the full 3 megapixels and then crop it in my computer for the correct frame size and render it back out and it looks good. If you use the digital magnification built in to crop the frame on the scanner itself the quality I find is not as good. So for me it's always a two-step process. I scan the film then imported into the computer where I can crop to the correct size adjust the speed to the correct frame rate and do any color correction needed. The quality looks good and I've never had one person saying they wish the quality was better. if someone did that would send them off to my friend that runs the laser graphics machine and he would charge them five times the price that I charge but wouldn't be able to give them five times the quality it would be marginally better at best because again we're dealing with 8 mm film which was not very good to begin with and sitting around for 60 or 70 years hasn't improved it. And it has been that long because Super 8 came out in the early 60s and regular 8 mm was phased out at that time so this stuff is all at least 60 years old if not older and film changes the dies starting to fade the film itself starts to rot so it's not going to get any better. For those still fiddling around with film all I have to say to anybody that's shooting Super 8 today you're getting a negative back because there are no reversal films made anymore so you have to scan it and most of the labs process films have their own in-house scanning anyway and most of them are using laser graphics equipment which is the industry standard these days for a scanning but you're going to pay the price for it because that equipment cost but half a price of a house.
@@12voltvids Thanks for the reply, but I spent the afternoon trying to take the back off. The top portion (of the back) was easy to pull away but the bottom was just inpossible. I'm sure I am doing something wrong, obviously. It's possible that you have to pull the back off while keeping the top and bottom pulled off at the same rate (no pulling the top then pulling the bottom). Very frustating.
It would be very handy to see what CPU this thing is running. Wolverine seems, as you've shown, to be good hardware, but lousy software. The open-source community could fix that.
Software has not been an issue. The file stored is a 20 fps 1440x1080 .mp4 file at 17mbits. Nothing wrong with that. The trick to getting good pictures is learned from experimenting with settings. For starters i scan the entire frame. No cropping on the scanner. This adds a mandatory post production step to crop the image to the correct frame size however generally you are going to do that anyway because the frame rate is 20. Why did they pick 20 you might wonder. Well 8mm and super 8 was shot at either 16, 18 or 24 frames. 20 was a happy medium. 4 fast for 16fps 2 for 18 and 4 slow for 24. Obviously this was easier to work with than fixing it at 16 or 18 for the 24 film. A switch would be nice but that adds to the cost and 99% of the time the file is going on the computer for other things anyway like color correction because nobody back in the 50s or 60s knew anything about color filters and film type. Also the dye in the film has certainly shifted so it needs to be corrected. So crop, color correct and adjust speed and what comes out isn't half bad at all. I've done hundreds of reels now and every customer loves the quality. Are there better systems. Sure, one of my repair clients has a big system that is well into 6 digital. He was telling me that an upgrade to handle 8perf (normal 35mm is 4 oerf) which is essentially film that ran through a horizontal gate camera like IMAX does but 35mm, the software upgrade to handle that obscure film frame was 50,000. Needless to say he sent that client to a company in LA that has the same scanner and purchased the upgrade. Anyway he does 8mm on his scanner but also charges 5x what i charge and has a minimum order size that puts it out of reach for all but professional clients which is the majority of his work. He was telling me that he was doing evaluation scans for the new 5500.00 use Kodak super 8 camera that has just been released. Camera was being evaluated here and the processed negatives were going to his facility to be digitized on his 5k scanner. That's in a different league though. The wolverine is a home scanner. I got mine to do all my old family movies which not all have been done yet as I am keeping it busy with others films. Most people buy this so they don't have to pay an arm and leg to have it done and then sell it off to someone else after they are done.
Show us a complete 16 mm B&H projector, worm gear, aperture assembly, and set up the auto loop restorer upon rebuild. Throw the parts in an ultrasonic cleaner, re-build, rebuild, replace the lamp socket, and caps on the audio board, re-build the impeller motor and re-sycn when done, that pos is childs play junk.
For an average user I think it is ok, But by the cinematography standards it is junk for the following reasons: - The film rollers are fixed to the base and plastic, I wouldn't rum my valuable film over those rollers to damage it or scratch it - Stepper motors doesn't mean high quality and they are not expensive either - The camera should be isolated from the daylight and dust - The modern professional telecine machines use continuous motion they don't rely on film perforations. - The captured footage should have the aspect ratio flag in it so any video player can play the footage in the correct aspect ratio without having to set it. I could go on and on but those just the major flaws I noticed from the video. Never the less I do enjoy your videos and everyone is entitled to his opinion. By looking at the parts used such as a $10 microscope camera, $15 stepper motor, some electronics and plastic parts this should not cost more than $120 by the Chinese manufacturing standards. But because they are probably the only ones who put a such idea together they charge a high premium for it.
You can't just count what the parts cost. There are engineering costs that have to be factored in. This unit uses custom ASIC to control it. There is the cost of the parts, cost of the materials to make up the cabinet, assembly costs. These are low volume units compared to say a cell phone or bluray player. There is no way these things only cost a few dollars to make. Sure they are making money, viable business models dictate that there has to be profit, or a business won't stay in business, but for someone to just pull numbers out of the air as to what they think devices cost just shows their ignorance. When you factor in what the actual R&D costs they arn't making as much as you think they are.
These are not marketed to cinematographers. They are targeted at consumers that have a ton of old films that their parents, or grandparents shot back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and even into the 80's. These films have already been scratched, burned broken ect by the old projectors that were not very gentle on film. This unit is actually very gentle, as there in no high tension involved, and the film is moved slowly through a straight film path. The film guides on the take up side are actually tension reducers to reduce the constant pull from the take up spool, and are rubber coated where they contact the edges of the film. Again, it is not a professional film scanner. There are professional scanners available that cost 10x or more what this costs. No consumer in their right mind would invest in that. Perhaps a filmmaker might, but then again these days people that shoot film are going to send the film to the processing lab, and have it scanned on their professional scanner, and sent back as a digital file, just like all the hollywood producers that still use film. They shoot the negative, send it out, and get back their negative, and digital daily copies and raw image digital files which goes to the editor. My unit was paid for by the first 2 or 3 paying customers I had, and now anything I make on this is pure profit, plus I have the unit to scan all the films that my dad shot, and my father inlaw shot. For the consumer with many reels of film this is a no brainer, considering that production companies are charging 10.00 to 15.00 for each little 50 foot reel. If someone has a bunch of films to convert this makes sense. If they only have a few then it makes more sense to send em out to have them done.
@@12voltvids You can get a modern 3D printer today, that uses 4 of these motors, along with a whole bunch of metal high precision machined framework, linear motion and hot plastic melting & extrusion components, not to mention the electronics and sophisticated software to run 3 axis synched linear motion with micrometer precision, for under 200 dollars. So no, James Bordon is right, given the hardware of this machine it could easily be sold for as little as 50 dollars in fact. But since they have a monopoly on a very niche subject, and there arent 100s of companies trying to sell you the same thing (as is the case with 3D printers) they can charge a premium at a ridiculous 250+ dollars.
@@imvisier9925 Once again someone has to chime in about the cost of parts vs the cost of the equipment. I seriously doubt a 1,000,000+ Bugatti has 1,000,000 in parts in it. Of a 300,000 Ferretti . These cars have the same basic parts at a run of the mill Chevy. Pistons, valves, bearings, gears, wheels ect. A car is a car and yet they go from 15,000 to over a million. Your iPhone has about 20 max in parts and they sell millions of them for 1000+. So speciality low volume products for 400 is not that bad considering what they do. The people that designed them are making back their investment and turning a profit. This is a requirement in any sustainable business model. Those that don't follow this formula do not remain in business no matter how good their product is. The cost of the parts in the unit is insignificant in the selling price.
My view is that for $500 it looks cheap and nasty and you certainly don`t get your moneys worth given how little there is inside. Would be interesting to know how long it lasted before it broke, cos I am sure it must have broken down at least once by now!!
Still working. Have done about 500 reels now. Unit has paid for itself 3x over so if it breaks next time I use it, I will just buy another. Sure I could have spent 5 grand on a higher end unit, but I would still be paying for it, and my clients are very, very happy with the results. If they weren't then they wouldn't be bringing me all their film and paying me 10.00 per 50 foot reel to put it through this "piece of crap" as the trolls call it. It is built for a price point and does the job good enough to satisfy 95% or more of the home movie people that just want to get film of their childhood onto digital. I paid 500 for it and have made about 4000 in transfers. Take the 500 I paid off and my profit about 3500. Now a film maker or someone that does really high volume might be better off with a higher end 5000.00 machine but for moderate and low volume conversion work this does the job.
There are so many things about the scanner that could be better. Fixed white balance, a 4K camera, ability to record raw into an SSD via usb-c. A contrast adjustment and much more. I wish I had an engineer that could help me design something better to address all of these issues. The take up motor is too weak so the film gets stuck unless you bypass some of the guides.
4k would be useless. 8mm and super 8 frame size is so small that even at 1080 you see the film grain. The motor is more than strong enough and the guides are there to reduce the torque on the take up spool causing the film to slip. The only issus I have had is poor quality splices done by amateurs getting hung up from time to time. I have done hundreds of films in mine. Zero issues. Paid for itself on the first big order I got.
12voltvids I disagree with you about 4K, as I work professionally for the last 30 years in high end film production on major studios productions and am currently working on a documentary series for a major cable documentary channel. Through postproduction with some of my high-end tools I’ve been up to increase the resolution and sharpness of the image. There’s a lot of AI technology coming out that can analyze a low resolution image and upscale it to a phenomenal degree as if it was a native resolution. The take up motor on mine is definitely not strong enough as it was jamming on 50 foot reels that had no spices. The films were wound cleanly. It works fine on 8mm film but jams on Super 8.
@@beachcomberfilms8615 8mm and super8 had very large grains. It was a terrible format even when just projected. You know the saying garbage in garbage out. That plus 95% of home movie malers had no idea how to light, and what exposure was so an already bad format looks terrible, and scanning it at a higher resolution isn't going to make a difference. Sure there are higher end scanners available,at 10X the cost, and when there is very little money in the film conversion business these days it really doesn't make economic sence to spend 5 grand on a higher end system. You can't charge more than people are willing to pay, because they for the most part don't care about the extra 1% quality you might be able to squeak out of the film. For starters, the vast majority of people already had their films transferred to VHS years ago and the films were disposed of. Second, many of the prople in the films are dead or close to it, and the kids or grandchildren just don't care. I don't think for 1 second that my kids, for example would ever digitize the films that my dad shot of me and my sister when we were kids. You get the odd person on a family that becomes the archivist and wants to get all the old family pictures and films scanned, but those folks are few and far between. I recently quoted a client on a small film order. 10 50 foot reels. I quoted them 10.00 per reel to do it with the wolverine. What did they do? Projected it on the wall and shot it off angle with their old hi8 camcorder and then they brought me the tape to digitize. Looked like crap, but they didnt care. They wanted it only for a funeral video. For what the wolverine costs, there is nothing that can touch it. If yours was jamming then it should have gone back as they would have replaced it if it was defective. It doesn't like damaged films mind you. I have had films where the sprocket hole was damaged by a projector that just will not run though, but that is not a fault of the unit if the film is damaged. As you said, you work in a professional lab. Good for you, that means that the films you are scanning were shot by professional cinematographers that know about exposure, and f-stop and lighting. Home film is not pretty. Very few home moviemakers knew what they were doing. The exception was my father inlaw. His films always looked amazing, but then he properly lit the scene, and knew what he was doing.
Not cheap Chinese junk eh, lol that's precisely where it's built. I've had two, first one died on the first film scanned. Second one has been doing ok so far. Its also a 5mp sensor and it's 720 not 1080.
Got news for you, they use plastic gears in everything. This is not a high stress part. In fact there is no stress on anything in this unit. The gear wil be fine. The reason that the plastic gear broke so often on Sony VCRs was because it was in a high stress point.
my underlying with these machines is sub par picture quality that would not have been an issue if it were implemented a little differently and possibly cheaper than an asic. The gear in question is also a high stress point the big difference between this and a VCR is the VCR is not moving those high stress gears continuously during playback where as this machine does it for each frame.
Explain exactly what is high stress? It is a gear that moves a metal arm back and forth to move the film 1 frame at a time. That gear is driven by the stepper motor, which turns another gear that moves the framing pin back and forth. No stress, and it is a big beefy gear, one of of these little plastic gears that were in VCRs. I don't anticipate it breaking any time soon.
to some one like you who knows how to maintain it, im sure it will be fine, but if you are interested enough, googling can reveal just how unreliable these things are mechanically on top of how sub par the picture quality actually is. I regret the one I bought.
Did you buy this unit, or one of the other similar models. There have been a few of these devices floating around. I looked at a few similar units a year or so ago, and took a pass because for starters it was only 720P but the picture was horrible and it was even slower. 1 frame per second. It's not perfect for sure, but it should get the job done.
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Enjoyed the video (and subscribed). I have one of the early 720P (5" reel) models with the belt drive for the take-up reel. I did add a small fan to the case to help keep the innards cool. But that was after I scanned over 120 reels of film from the mid '50's through the late '70's with no mechanical issues.
*Glad I decided to get the **Bestt.Digital** slide scanner. It us very easy to use, and as an added bonus it can hook up to HDMI on a TV and be used as a slide projector.*
Awesome video!!!
I was hoping you were going to post an upload of the film your dad shot of the stores' customer purchase set up procedure. Love your videos & stop by from time to time to see what's on the boilerplate! LOL!
I did, but on a different channel. I want to re scan that film as I didn't have the framing set correctly when I did it. I just have to find the reel of film again.
Somehow I missed this the first time around. I'm glad I found this after the fact. I've just completed scanning ALL my Mother's old Super8 with the non-Pro 720p version, and my device kept working. I would still like a firmware upgrade that would allow more manual control over the scan settings.
I agree. The machine's auto exposure effectively undoes the manually locked exposure that I shot my Super 8s with. Same with the white balance - you can see this machine altering the colours within a scene because of its variable white balance.
Nice series!!
That was an excellent review and instruction video of the wolverine.I’m gonna have to like. and subscribe to this video and your channel.
Quality build! Found it a bit cheaper at one of the discount photo houses that advertise in some of the photography magazines. Tempted to buy one and have it sent to me. Was ready to buy a used dual eight projector but in the long run this is still a better deal.
I just got one from Amazon. Even though this one does not have the Wolverine name on it , when it starts up the screen says Wolverine. and it works the same way as in the video.
from the outside , on video here, it looked kinda cheap. that really is nicely made!! Ive seen others that were all plastic and didnt work right. I rented one from a public library and it wasnt the best either. Ended up just shooting the video on a white wall and recording it with 1080 camera. I still have a bunch of very old 8 mm movies from Vietnam, Korea, Philippines an uncle recorded during his time in the military during those wars.
Thanks for sharing this it might be something i look in too.
It's slow, but has worked flawlessly on the 2 films I have run through it.
Results have been much better than the old modified projector and HD camera. Sure the Reflecta is faster, but it is also 4,500.00 and that is just too much to justify considering that the film to digital transfer business is not what it used to be. Most people have already paid to have their old films put on VHS or DVD, and many tossed the old films once they had them put on video. I used to get film orders every day, and did the work for 2 photo labs. I now get a few orders a month. I bought this unit so I could up the quality now that the remaining film owners want the best quality, and I will also rent it out to people wanting to do their own.
I watched the other video about this scanner and I was about to ask you to make a tear down. You read my mind. I wonder if the scanner can be upgraded because I'm planning to buy the non pro (720).
Also, does the scanner allows you to save the each frame as a picture?
Thank you very much for all your videos and sharing your great knowledge.
It saves the images as a progressive scan .MP4 video file. Now, you can access each frame with editing software and pull freeze frames from it, and each frame is very clear. I have pulled frames from film for my advertising for the conversion business.
It isn't a "scanner" in the conventional context of a scanner, which scans 1 line at a time. It is actually a video camera, with a macro lens that is focused directly on the emulsion layer of the film, which is illuminated from below.
The mechanism moved the film 1 frame at a time at 2 frames per second, and the camera shoots an image of each frame when the mechanism signals it that the film is in place.
Good videos. Thanks! We're having good luck with our Wolverine Pro, so far. Quick question; Have you figured out how to change the internal clock-time, so the digital movie-documents are time-stamped correctly?
That's on my wishlist too
Thanks for doing this. I had the smaller version of one of these but just sent it back to Amazon. I didn't have a problem with the build but it was unreliable in that it randomly introduced flickering to the top of some frames. I reckon it was a software or electronics issue. The overall image quality isn't that great but then neither is the price!
I admit it looked cheaper than it is, but I think the excessive video compression is a major setback. Are there any compression settings or is it "what you see is what you get"?
Pretty much this. I don't know why the manufacturers didn't put in a software menu option to change the bitrate/compression of the output, as I don't see how that would have greatly changed any costs..As it is the crushed detail and blockiness in the output (for all Wolverine examples I have seen online) puts me off this. The Reflecta Super8+ seems to have much better image quality but it has two drawbacks, cost and it's only Super 8mm.
@@theagg "Reflecta Super8+" Is it the big, iron one with the coils outside the body, or the one that looks like this scanner?
I've wondered, if I only wanted to capture multiple parts of a reel, is it possible to easily advance to a section of a reel, scan, and then advance to another section and scan? I imagine you'd have to lift up the plate that flattens the film to the scanning position, but from there are the reels free to be advanced?
From what I've seen, you have to keep an eye on the lubrication of the takeup spool motor. When it wears down, the gears become very noisy with the resulting friction increasing pull on the film, which also increases the frame jitter.
On my Wolverine Pro, the take-up reel has stopped turning.
I don't even use it. The motor failed and i never bothered fixing. I just let the film drop off the desk into a basket and then wind it up afterwards. It's faster then rewinding off the full spool because there is no tension on the film coming out of the basket. The way it drops in it basically coils itself up in the bottom of the basket there's no kinks or anything the film doesn't get dirty because it's a clean basket when done the end of the film is still in the scanner so it doesn't drop into the basket I just take it out of the scanner we put onto the supply real and flip it by hand and it'll wind up really quick.
Great teardown. I'll be experimenting with swapping around the standoffs that are wider on the torque side to see if I can reduce some of the friction on the film. Then onto processing the film twice through another projector to get the audio converted, and then processed through a video editor like ShotCut.
There is a reason the film is wound around the guides like it is. To reduce the torque from the take up reel to close to zero, so the transport moves the film, and not take up torque from the reel. If you remove them then the torque will pull the film as soon as the transport cog drops (this is when the photo is taken of the film by the frame scanner) and if the film moves during this time you will get a blurry picture.
Roger that. I'm still leaving them all in place because jitter is pretty rare on my unit running the 20180323-ZS0 firmware. I plan on only swapping around the pegs due to the widths. #1 (small) and #3 (Large) going left to right from the gate. By the way do you use any film cleaner/conditioners?
I wipe it it down with a dry cloth if it is dirty. I used it for a few large film orders I had to convert, and it has been sitting in the box since waiting for the next order. One of these days I will do my own old film from when I was a kid.
12voltvids I forgot to ask what cleaner you prefer. 😁
The film gate seems to have fixed width - where most projectors had some sprung arrangement to allow for varying width of film. I have a couple of reels of Standard 8 that jam in the gate. I presume they were not slit very accurately, and are just a fraction too wide. I found the T/U clutch noisy from the start, so do not use a T/U reel - I let the film fall and coil in a clean box.
I do the same. The take up motor on mine actually burned out after the warranty was done so I just let the film drop into a box. The resulting scan is actually better so slip from that clutch pulling too hard. It gets the job done.
Off topic, but, have you repaired the old rotary tuners with a broken shaft and replaced and re-aligned the 13 channel "sticks" in same?
Many years ago I used to rebuild them. Haven't seen a turret type tuner is at least 25 years
Hi, I have bought a Wolverine MovieMaker Pro for my 80s Super 8 movies. Some of the movies produce a blue tint on the digitized version. However the original movies when screened on a projector are not blue. So it is something to do with the digitizing process. Do you have any comment? Can u get a different colored light? The projector has a yellow light but the Wolverine is a white light. Do you think that video editing could solve the problem and take the digitized video back to the approximate original colors?
Metal screws, wow!
My wolverine pro seems to jam up a lot, even without film in. I took the back off and it feels like there is resistance on the main drive motor. When you turn it in this video it looked pretty smooth. Is that the case or is there some resistance to be expected after approximately 1 rotation?
Many thanks,
Mine still working good and has had several hundred reels put through it. I would suggest you contact the manufacturer
Four years later, has your opinion changed? I was surprised to see someone like you who knows how to take stuff apart and build it back, to buy a factory-made scanner instead of building a DIY one. There are many DIY scanner videos on YT, I watched like a dozen of them, and Fresh Ground Pictures shows how to build one step by step, and the result of the scanning, pretty impressive.
Still works as advertised. Why didn't i build one? Because I don't have the time to do it and I could never charge enough to recover my costs. I'm in the business of making money and spending a lot of money to build something and a lot of time to build it for a little gain is not going to cut it. this delivers results that are good enough for my clients in fact every one of them has been very impressed with the quality because many people have tried to do it themself using a projector in a camera and had dismal results and this is a huge step up from that. Could I build one and deliver better quality sure but I'll never get my money out of it because people are only prepared to spend so much to transfer their old movie films. This is not Hollywood, clients are not lining up and wanting to spend hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to do it. I get 10 bucks to do a 50 ft reel and even at that people grumble they want it done for less than that they see $10 for a 3 minutes of film as uneconomical for them. I don't know where people get the idea that people are just willing to Shell out money to transfer tapes and films because they're not around here. I've been doing this long enough, since the 80s and everyone's always been cheap scrapes to try to get any money out of. I'm competing with people that are offering to transfer film using a telecini into their camera for 10 cents a foot. This was a ready-made solution that I can just turn on load the film and walk away. I still have to process the image after it's done on the computer crop it color correct etc but at least I'm not wasting a bunch of time building something and spending a lot of money on it this was cheap it paid for itself on the first order I did and it's been making money ever since, not that it gets used that much I might get one or two reels a month. There's not that much 8 mm and super 8 film to transfer anymore because most people had it done back in the 80s to VHS and that was good enough for them they're not going back and spending money to do it again. Later generations don't care they don't care what was shot back in the 50s and 60s. Even transferring VHS and 8 mm tapes to digital it's tough to get any money out of that I've got ads running all the time and people call and ask what I'm charging I tell them and they say oh company x is doing it for half the price so I tell them go ahead and get it done with them I'm sure you'll be happy with the results. I don't know where you are but here people will not pay for this type of stuff. What I'm up against is people that look at what they've got if they've got maybe 50 or $100 worth of film to transfer they'll bring it to me but if they've got what would cost $300 or $400 to transfer they're not bringing it to me they're buying their own machine and doing it themself and then selling the machine once they're done. Very limited market for this.
it looks good but it's way too slow and it stops for no reason....I had to return mine
How many minutes/hours of footage will fit on an SD card?
Also my ultimate media of choice would be to transfer the information to DVD. How would you go from the SD card to a DVD recorder?
MrVideovibes You’ll need a computer with an SD card reader, DVD burner and burning software (although most modern Windows and Mac OS have built-in basic DVD burning software). It's a simple process of plugging in your card and blank DVD, drag the file over and selecting the disc as a playback DVD. Of course if you have the appropriate software you'll have to follow its specific instructions, but same principle.
Is the basic difference to the Reflecta model without the extended arms just that? Reading the specs on both the image resolution looks exactly the same.
Reflects uses a PC doesn't it?
Nice to see you're in Canada.
Me too. I live in Peterborough, Ontario.
That teardown video was very well done . I bought my Wolverine Pro from B&H in New York, and have been basically happy with it. I've noticed that when there are dark scenes, it renders them grey, not black, thanks to the automatic exposure system. The EV settings only make it slightly lighter or darker, but I think a true manual exposure adjustment, like a camera lens f/stop, would be better.
If the film is well exposed, the transfer is very good.
I recently transferred a 400 ft. Super 8 reel, with no problems, and no stopping at splices, as it sometimes does.
Then, today, I loaded another film for transfer, and the take-up reel won't turn, so I'm up the creek !. I emailed Wolverine about it, and they said to spray a little WD40 around the take-up spindle, which I have done, but it still doesn't rotate. Any suggestions ?
Another beef I have is that the 1 year warranty is only valid in the U.S.
It's a pity there are no Canadian service depots.
Mine came from B&H as well. Had mine shipped to us address thinking I would save some cash but I got Mr. Peckerhead at Canada customs that wouldn't believe the price I showed him in my email receipt and as B&H just had a weigh bill and not a receipt. "Dick" then looked up the unit on amazon and found the most expensive wolverine on the planet and used that to calculate the gst and pst.
Would have cost me a flat 50 to have sent to canada. I paid 12 us shipping to my mail box and then 5.50 for them to receive the package. Was charged the Washington state tax of 8.9% which I figured I would get back as I permanently exported it but noooooo they don't refund tax. Upon importing it I was hit with 72.00 in import fees.
Now that 50 shipping fee to canada is I believe us funds but it would have still been cheaper than what it cost me. Now to the take up problem. Mine has failed too. It's the motor. I just let the film drop off the desk into a box on the floor.
Best image I get is to scan full frame with the sprocket holes in the picture. That sets the camera up into a sort of manual gain as the full white from the light table is seen by the camera and compensated for that locks the gain. Crop out the sprocket in the computer to scale to your desired frame size.
@@12voltvids Sorry to hear about your fiasco with Canadian Customs. I must say I never experienced any problems like that. Your suggestion about doing a full frame scan sounds encouraging. I will try that.
So should I send my unit back to Wolverine for repair ?
So should I send my unit back to Wolverine for repair, or what ?
@@12voltvids I tried scanning full frame with the sprocket holes in the picture, as you suggested, but I saw no difference in the exposure. The dark areas were still washed out.
Something I can't figure out about the Wolverine Pro is how the auto shutdown works after a whole reel has been scanned.
Mine usually does but occasionally I'll return to the unit and find that it has been scanning the final frame for the last half hour or so.
I can't see any way the unit can sense that film is not moving through it and consequently shut itself off. Does it analyse an unchanging output from the camera? I would very much like to know.
Yes if an image doesn't change such as a jam it will shut down and wait for you to move the jam past the gate and start it again.
12voltvids Thanks, that explains it.
I think this is the best bang for the buck, I will be getting one of these soon! Q: Do you think there is a possible way to step up the motor RPMs or adding a secondary motor with a separate switch for rewinding purposes only? Secondly, would you pick up another one if the film capturing increases?
It is relatively slow, but it does deliver very good quality pictures and for the money it will do the job nicely. A faster capture would be nice, but at what price. I don't get tons of films to transfer these days, and 30 minutes to do a 50 foot reel isn't that bad as I can load it and walk away for awhile. Since I know roughly how long it will take it isn't really a big deal. If I was scanning film for a living I would be looking at something faster and more expensive.
12voltvids doesn't that go without saying ? After all budget equip destroys client film they sue your ass, yes even in "Vancouver "
Ever tear down and repair a 16 mm editor from the 50's? Or a complete re-build ofa Bell and Howell 16 mm autoload from the 50's with the old clutch plate assemblies on the rewind spool?
I have an Eiki 16mm projector. It is built like a sherman tank, and probably weighs as much. I had 2 of them and sold, or should I say gave one away last year. Got 100 bucks for it, I think I got ripped off, but I got it for free, and sent it to a film student to get some use out of it.
Hmmm, Really interesting to see inside this machine a bit.
I've read a bit about this machine, and there were earlier versions with drive belts that have caused problems, there are also now different variants, and this looks like the 'pro' one. So there are confusing and mixed reports about this device and it's not always clear which generation/version of the machine is being discussed in some of the other reports on it. I suppose this does show the machine has been developed a bit more by the manufactureres since the initial version which is a good thing.
From all the reports I've read/seen, it does seem a shame that the captured frames are compressed so much, crippling the image quality this way just seems so unnecessary. I'd hoped the 'Pro' model might offer at least 'less' if not 'no' compression options.
I've been trying to build my own device over the years, and I was really hoping to see how the stepper motor in this actually advances the film. Unfortunately the 'teardown' didn't quite go far enough for me to see this. Is there a claw, or a sprocket to drive the film? Also how does this machine actually register the captures and how accurate is the registration?
Anyway, I think I'll watch again to see if I've missed anything and thanks for making and sharing this video.
You raise good points. There's a single claw to advance the film, but the cam that drives it just isn't good enough, and transfers done with the perfs in frame show the instability caused by the film being missregistred in the gate. You can have a super sharp lens but that's nothing when all 18 pics/ sec arrive in slightly different places.
Yes, I didn't know it looked so homemade inside. I would say that the price is much higher than the cost. If you wish, you can assemble one yourself for much less. Moreover, the end result is important, and the camera of this scanner is rather weak. By the way, is the camera located on the top or bottom? Just a question arose about the opening of the frame window on the top side: if there should be a camera on one side, then a diffused lamp on the other. Otherwise there will be errors in the white balance.
I don't know where you are but i couldn't buy the parts for less than this unit cost to buy. Not even close. The camera is above the film focused on the film
It is lit from below and the quality is good. Been using it for years done hundreds of transfers with it. The camera is 3mp which is fine for the 1440 x 1080 4-3 frame it records. You do need to process the resulting files to make it look its best.
FYI it took 3:45 to scan 400 feet.
How many frames in 400 feet? What is it, about 40 frames / foot? Perhaps 16k frames, give or take a few? btw, any splice jams?
80 frames/ft for double8,72 frames for super8.
You are thinking 16mm. 8mm is double that as the frame height and width is half 16mm
There are 80 frames per foot on 8mm film so 400 feet would have 32000 frames. 2 frames per second = 16000 seconds to scan, 266 minutes, 4.4 hours.
For 50 feet, 4000 frames. 2000 seconds to scan, 33 minutes for a 50 foot roll which is right about the time it takes to do, I guestimated 30 minuted per 50 foot roll.
No jams at all. The only time it has jammed is when a splice when through that someone had scotch taped together, likely me when I transferred that film 30 years ago the first time. While I was transferring it the film broke after it went through the gate so as the film was stilling on the floor I just spooled it onto the take up spool, and then when I rewound it, just taped it together as I have no splicing equipment for 8mm film. I wasn't expecting to transfer it again after I did it 30 years ago.
Dave, Do you know what kind of light system those have led or bulb what ? I bought one of those to digitize my films have had excellent results your right well built the light source is surely fixable or repairable I hope it's really been worth the money other then this small problem.
It's an LED light source.
@@12voltvids Dave, I appreciate it I very carefully took it apart I still couldn't get in to the compartment the light source is in their are some screws requiring jewelers tools to take out I pulled them still couldn't you would have to pull that whole board and mechanism while I was in I lubed somethings I got lucky I must have moved something because it started working so lucky their I'am impressed with the build quality better then Evan the Japanese I think I bought this one used with about 139 reels on it used it all day today very impressed ..... !!!!!
Oh Boy ...lol I Just ordered and you saved me a lot of time .. i won't have to tear it down now just to see whats inside .. and ....also its been a few month's since you made this vid..whats your opinion of this unit today 10/4/2018..thanks great vid :)
Wouldn't it be a detailed photo of the founding of the film's track? should there be such white clips?
Frame adjustment is better done if you attach your Wolverine video output to a monitor.
Yes I use an external under scanned CRT monitor for scanning. First it gives me a better picture and I can see immediately as soon as I start if it isn't threaded correctly as it will jump around on the monitor, and I can stop it right away and fix it before scanning the entire roll of film.
How did you get one that takes 7" Reels? Mine will not take anything bigger than a 5" Reel.
I bought the pro version. Totally different machine. It does 1080 as opposed to 720 of the cheaper model.
Ive been using mine for about 30 hours and it just quit turning on. Connected to electricity but won't turn on, suggestions??
Mine had s failure of the take up reel motor. It shorted and killed the power. I have yet to investigate a replacement I just disconnected the wire to the take up motor and it turned back on.
I didn't think about what it was made from, it did the job really well, better than a projection capture, and straight to video file :-D
I don't think it would be able to do the gating so well if it was cheap inside, the stepper motor is no supprise.
The films are good practice for getting the best out of it, before converting a customers film.
I was just testing it on a film I had kicking around. I have boxes of my parents old films of me and my sister when we were young to convert, and even more boxes of my father inlaws films to convert. I'll get some use out of it.
Mine went dead just after 200 films this past weekend did 18 5 inch reels it was good film didn't get stuck at all I just have to get a new one I am using amazon power director film editing you are able to take a picture of the film currently videotaping a lot of 16mm film off of a movie screen old football games
Mine went dead after about 330 reels of film too. It was the take up reel motor that failed. I opened it up and disconnected the wires for the take up motor and it works fine. I just let the film drop off the table onto a box now and rewind it up out of the box when the reel is done. That seems to be an issue. The motor is put under great stress because the take up spool turns so slow during scanning, the clutch is providing the take up torque but the motor constantly runs under full load and there appears to be many that fail. No wonder the 200 film warranty. They know this part is going to be the straw that broke the camels back.
Hi! I need some help, my Wolverine won't start I've worked with it for a whole year, 500+ files and today it just didn't start at all, I hold the power button and nothing happens, any idea about how to solve this?
Open the back and unplug the wire going to the take up motor. If it turns on now the motor has shorted. You can join my club of scanning and letting the film drop off the desk into a box.
HELP MY ( WOLVERINE FILM 2 DIGITAL) displays PLEASE RECHECK FILMS PLACE no mention of this in manual of how to respond to this can you help ???
I just bought one and with every roll I have scanned the machine stops, and there is this terrible grinding sound, sometimes it says to check placement other times it says to unplug the unit. And sometimes when it does this I cannot power it down or stop it. I have to unplug it. I have way more troubles with the super 8mm vs 8mm. The last several reels I have cleaned with Filmguard, cleaned one way and dried the other. Although it was not too wet to begin with. I video taped the grinding sound and was going to try to contact Wolverine and send them the video and ask them what I should do.
Have had no problems with mine. Contact tech support. I understand there is a firmware update.
@@12voltvids I called Wolverine Tech Support and they were great, answered right away. I let them listen to what the machine was doing and they said it was defective. So I am returning it and getting a new one. I have only hand it since Jan. 5th. Thank you. I read through all comments and researched first. I love how you took the machine apart because I also was wondering what was in there. I hope the new one works.
@@Travelnurse47
Shouldn't be a problem. Money has been fine for 2 years and I use it regularly.
Reel to reel repaire guy,, Nice thing on the wolverine..
Mine just started turning off in the middle of a conversion. It's a 400' reel and I am guessing that it is overheating? The bad part is that I just restarted it and it looked like everything was okay, but after checking the card, none of the video before a shutdown had been saved. I opened it up and everything looks perfect, checked fan operation, so I went ahead and cleaned everything and hit it with some air, but I am going to wait before trying again. Has anyone had the problem of it just powering off in the middle of a conversion? When I start it back up it advances to the next number like it should. Thank you in advance for any suggestions. The next time I try the conversion I think I will put it in a cooler room and put a fan behind it? 😀
The only problem I had was the motor for the take up spool went bad and made it shut down. I unplugged the motor inside and it has been fine. I just let the film drop into a bin and rewind it up out of the bin. Also a bad SD card can cause issues.
@@12voltvids I guess mine was just overheating. I tried my portable fan behind the wolverine and no stoppage. I have 2 more 400 footers to do tomorrow, so hopefully this is the fix that works for me.
It looked cheap until you took it apart today. We cant tell if it is metal or plastic. Very impressive. I heard that name before, did they make film viewers and splicers years ago? How long has this been on the market? I do have some 8MM home movies I used a box to transfer with a Sony 8 camcorder years ago. The flicker was the biggest deal. I think interaction between frame rate and shutter speed.
Yes the frame rate is different. I used to use a modified projector that I could run at 15 frames for 8mm and 20 for super 8. (8mm normally runs at 16, and super 8 18) This eliminated the shutter roll because both 16 and 20 go into 60 nicely, which is the field rate of NTSC. I got good results, and it was find in the DVD days and VHS days, but is unacceptable in the HD era, and I have lost business due to not being able to offer a frame by frame scanner. It will come in handy and as far as photography gear goes was relatively cheap. I will probably end up renting it out to people, as that way I am not the one sitting around for it to process.
Good idea, rent it out. that's cool. It has always been an issue, those flickering old movies. I get it, as long as it is a multiple of 60., it works. So what rate do you need for HD?
Anyone else experience grinding noise from the take-up spool side? Machines worked nice for 5 or 6 reels but now has this funny noise. I'm not sure if it's my takeup spool itself or the motor working hard. I'm curious if anyone knows anyhtign about those take up spool gears? Perhaps I need to replace one or both. Any thoughts on teeth/dimensions?
Yes. My take up motor burned out. I unplugged it and just let the film drop off the table into a box on the floor and rewind from there. Don't worry it doesn't tangle up it will roll up into loops and wind up nicely when you thread it back onto supply and spin it by hand. Much faster too. Also, the quality is better too because the tension from the take up spool tends to sometimes cause the film to slip slightly resulting in vertical jitter. Even since i stopped using the take up spool and just drop into a box the quality has dramatically improved. After unplugging the motor for take up the unit is very quiet. The machine runs almost silent now. Mine has over 600 reels run through it, most were 400 footers.
@@12voltvids thanks. Definitely something to think about.
I contacted Wolverine who actually recommended i spray WD40 inside the take reel spindle clutch and it’s definitely improved the crunching sounds. I’ll have to run some reels thru to see if it still fails or not.
I do have a bunch of larger reels that don’t fit my non Pro wolverine. I may let the leader just fall off as you stated. I have some 35mm film rewind cranks jere but maybe I should look for an 8mm one too.
Thanks
@@wirelessguyny3787
The quality (stability) improvement was so great that I told a friend to scan his that way too so now he uses a large garbage bin but in his case he didn't rewind. After transferring his d home movies he tossed the film in the trash. Once a good scan no need to do it again he said.
Is it 1080p? a girl reviewer said 720p What is the light source? LED , halogen bulb, what? How much heat does it throw off ? Have you tried : projector- telecine converter - capture with 3ccd 1080p/4k Cannon, Sony Prosumer Cam? Then you can walk away, no worries fast, real time, Does this device output the audio? over what interface? Wouldn't it be better to capture with variable speed pro quality 70's projector to telecine to 1080p or 4k use firewire to log to Apple or Adobe edit suite -repair any defects there? I know it would
There are two versions. One is 720P, but the one he is reviewing is the professional version that is 1080P. I suspect you are not a native English Speaker. He has already explained that he is not looking for professional results. What do you expect for $400?
HI the rewind on my unit is now going really really slow any ideas? worm gear motor? anyone have any ideas on how to fix.
Never used the unit to rewind. For that matter i don't mount a take up spool. I let the film drop into a box and spin it back by hand when done. I can rewind a 400 foot reel in about 2 minutes.
The tabs that hold the film in place keep breaking on my unit.
You must be forcing the film in or something because the tabs do not support the film except when you are loading it until you close the gate.
I think a splice took them off. It wasn’t properly done, still the tabs broke.
@@ColeGaskins Hmm, possible I guess. Have not had any problems with mine yet.
I'm guessing this takes the film off the reel and stores it on an sd card?
What it does is moves the film at 2 frames per second, and takes a 1440x1080 image of each frame of film, and stitches the images into a 20 FPS .MP4 file and saves it on an SD card. 3 minutes of film takes about 500 megs of space. You can load the file into your favorite editing software and change the frame rate to whatever you want. 16FPS, 18FPS 24FPS 30FPS ect.
20 was chosen as the output as it falls between standard speeds used on 8mm and super 8.
Most 8mm was shot at18 frames, and super 8 18 or 24, so 20 is a good compromise as 18 frame file won't appear too fast, and 24 frame super 8 won't appear too slow. Again easy enough to change in the computer.
The quality is good, and time will tell how long it lasts. I am sure I will make my money back on the machine before it wears out, as I won't be using it every day. Perhaps a few times a month.
12voltvids that's awesome I need to get one. My grandparents have alot of film like yhat but nothing to play them on..thanks
What is the resolution of that puppy? HD? 1080p?
Yes 1080P. The resolution is 1440x1080 as it is a 4x3 output. 1920x1080 is 16x9. That is the trouble I have with premiere, as it has a setting 1440x1080 for the old HDV video format, which is a 16x9 format that used rectangular pixels as opposed to square. When I load files from this, Premiere thinks it is a 16x9 HDV type format as it is looking as frame size, and stretches out accordingly. I am sure there is a setting in premiere that I can override this automatic setting.
Maybe a converter like FreeMake or such could re-encode it? I have had occasion to fix files that played back in the wrong format myself. Worth investigating anyway.
It's really not a big deal as I won't be editing films anyway.
I will be archiving film and sending out out as the files come out of the machine.
Certainly Premiere elements handles the 1440 files correctly, making a 4:3 timeline image.
What do you think about putting a better camera in it?
Nothing wrong with the camera. It does 1440x1080. Once set up properly it actually looks dam good. Sure it's not up to laser graphics quality but it also isn't well into 6 figures
Wasn't it just 3 mega pixels? We could do way better.
How many megapixels do you think an HD image uses? Let me give you a hint a 4K image uses about 8 megapixels. 4K has twice the vertical and twice the horizontal pixel count. So just over 2 megapixels are required for an HD video stream. Anything above that in the pixels are bend. My high-end 4k camera has a 20 megapixel sensor but the only time all those 20 megapixels are actually used is when I use it as a still camera to take still photos. In 4K video mode it uses about 8.5 megapixels in HD mode it uses just under three the rest of them are binned. you would put a higher quality sensor in if you wanted to say capture it 4K but here's the problem, 8 mm is Super 8 film does not have the resolution. I have a client that I maintain video equipment for that has a laser graphics scanner. This is a piece of equipment that costs in the six-figure range and he can scan everything from 8 mm to 65 mm film. He does a lot of 16 and 35 mm scanning for government and archiving and can scan at 5K. When he's dealing with 8 mm he generally doesn't go beyond 720 or maybe to 1080 because the green of the film becomes too apparent. 8 mm film especially the old Kodachrome stuff that goes back to the 1950s was quite grainy if it's properly exposed it can look good but if it's not properly exposed you can see all the film green looks like random noise running through the picture which has to be processed out and processing it out removes some of the quality a bit. I found that the scanner looks great with the settings that I'm using now which is 5 F stop down and I scanned it no magnification so the edges of the film and the sprocket and everything is shown I scanned it the full 3 megapixels and then crop it in my computer for the correct frame size and render it back out and it looks good. If you use the digital magnification built in to crop the frame on the scanner itself the quality I find is not as good. So for me it's always a two-step process. I scan the film then imported into the computer where I can crop to the correct size adjust the speed to the correct frame rate and do any color correction needed. The quality looks good and I've never had one person saying they wish the quality was better. if someone did that would send them off to my friend that runs the laser graphics machine and he would charge them five times the price that I charge but wouldn't be able to give them five times the quality it would be marginally better at best because again we're dealing with 8 mm film which was not very good to begin with and sitting around for 60 or 70 years hasn't improved it. And it has been that long because Super 8 came out in the early 60s and regular 8 mm was phased out at that time so this stuff is all at least 60 years old if not older and film changes the dies starting to fade the film itself starts to rot so it's not going to get any better. For those still fiddling around with film all I have to say to anybody that's shooting Super 8 today you're getting a negative back because there are no reversal films made anymore so you have to scan it and most of the labs process films have their own in-house scanning anyway and most of them are using laser graphics equipment which is the industry standard these days for a scanning but you're going to pay the price for it because that equipment cost but half a price of a house.
@@12voltvids What about replacing that bulb in the projector with an LED? I was wanting to do that so as not to set my film and hand on fire.
It is an led.
Is your name Doug? I recognized your voice the your thumbnail , then you said Vancouver , sounds like Doug
Nope. Not Doug. Not in Vancouver. Close to Vancouver.
Modificate 16mm possible
No 16mm not possible on this one.
Getting the screws out is easy, but getting the back off is very hard. That part was skipped in the video.
Back just lifts off.
@@12voltvids Thanks for the reply, but I spent the afternoon trying to take the back off. The top portion (of the back) was easy to pull away but the bottom was just inpossible. I'm sure I am doing something wrong, obviously. It's possible that you have to pull the back off while keeping the top and bottom pulled off at the same rate (no pulling the top then pulling the bottom). Very frustating.
It would be very handy to see what CPU this thing is running. Wolverine seems, as you've shown, to be good hardware, but lousy software. The open-source community could fix that.
Software has not been an issue. The file stored is a 20 fps 1440x1080 .mp4 file at 17mbits. Nothing wrong with that. The trick to getting good pictures is learned from experimenting with settings. For starters i scan the entire frame. No cropping on the scanner. This adds a mandatory post production step to crop the image to the correct frame size however generally you are going to do that anyway because the frame rate is 20. Why did they pick 20 you might wonder. Well 8mm and super 8 was shot at either 16, 18 or 24 frames. 20 was a happy medium. 4 fast for 16fps 2 for 18 and 4 slow for 24. Obviously this was easier to work with than fixing it at 16 or 18 for the 24 film.
A switch would be nice but that adds to the cost and 99% of the time the file is going on the computer for other things anyway like color correction because nobody back in the 50s or 60s knew anything about color filters and film type. Also the dye in the film has certainly shifted so it needs to be corrected. So crop, color correct and adjust speed and what comes out isn't half bad at all. I've done hundreds of reels now and every customer loves the quality. Are there better systems. Sure, one of my repair clients has a big system that is well into 6 digital. He was telling me that an upgrade to handle 8perf (normal 35mm is 4 oerf) which is essentially film that ran through a horizontal gate camera like IMAX does but 35mm, the software upgrade to handle that obscure film frame was 50,000. Needless to say he sent that client to a company in LA that has the same scanner and purchased the upgrade. Anyway he does 8mm on his scanner but also charges 5x what i charge and has a minimum order size that puts it out of reach for all but professional clients which is the majority of his work. He was telling me that he was doing evaluation scans for the new 5500.00 use Kodak super 8 camera that has just been released. Camera was being evaluated here and the processed negatives were going to his facility to be digitized on his 5k scanner. That's in a different league though. The wolverine is a home scanner. I got mine to do all my old family movies which not all have been done yet as I am keeping it busy with others films. Most people buy this so they don't have to pay an arm and leg to have it done and then sell it off to someone else after they are done.
Show us a complete 16 mm B&H projector, worm gear, aperture assembly, and set up the auto loop restorer upon rebuild. Throw the parts in an ultrasonic cleaner, re-build, rebuild, replace the lamp socket, and caps on the audio board, re-build the impeller motor and re-sycn when done, that pos is childs play junk.
For an average user I think it is ok, But by the cinematography standards it is junk for the following reasons:
- The film rollers are fixed to the base and plastic, I wouldn't rum my valuable film over those rollers to damage it or scratch it
- Stepper motors doesn't mean high quality and they are not expensive either
- The camera should be isolated from the daylight and dust
- The modern professional telecine machines use continuous motion they don't rely on film perforations.
- The captured footage should have the aspect ratio flag in it so any video player can play the footage in the correct aspect ratio without having to set it.
I could go on and on but those just the major flaws I noticed from the video.
Never the less I do enjoy your videos and everyone is entitled to his opinion.
By looking at the parts used such as a $10 microscope camera, $15 stepper motor, some electronics and plastic parts this should not cost more than $120 by the Chinese manufacturing standards. But because they are probably the only ones who put a such idea together they charge a high premium for it.
You can't just count what the parts cost. There are engineering costs that have to be factored in. This unit uses custom ASIC to control it. There is the cost of the parts, cost of the materials to make up the cabinet, assembly costs.
These are low volume units compared to say a cell phone or bluray player. There is no way these things only cost a few dollars to make. Sure they are making money, viable business models dictate that there has to be profit, or a business won't stay in business, but for someone to just pull numbers out of the air as to what they think devices cost just shows their ignorance. When you factor in what the actual R&D costs they arn't making as much as you think they are.
The unit was designed in the USA according to the instructions. They just build them in china.
These are not marketed to cinematographers. They are targeted at consumers that have a ton of old films that their parents, or grandparents shot back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and even into the 80's.
These films have already been scratched, burned broken ect by the old projectors that were not very gentle on film. This unit is actually very gentle, as there in no high tension involved, and the film is moved slowly through a straight film path. The film guides on the take up side are actually tension reducers to reduce the constant pull from the take up spool, and are rubber coated where they contact the edges of the film.
Again, it is not a professional film scanner. There are professional scanners available that cost 10x or more what this costs. No consumer in their right mind would invest in that. Perhaps a filmmaker might, but then again these days people that shoot film are going to send the film to the processing lab, and have it scanned on their professional scanner, and sent back as a digital file, just like all the hollywood producers that still use film. They shoot the negative, send it out, and get back their negative, and digital daily copies and raw image digital files which goes to the editor.
My unit was paid for by the first 2 or 3 paying customers I had, and now anything I make on this is pure profit, plus I have the unit to scan all the films that my dad shot, and my father inlaw shot. For the consumer with many reels of film this is a no brainer, considering that production companies are charging 10.00 to 15.00 for each little 50 foot reel. If someone has a bunch of films to convert this makes sense. If they only have a few then it makes more sense to send em out to have them done.
@@12voltvids You can get a modern 3D printer today, that uses 4 of these motors, along with a whole bunch of metal high precision machined framework, linear motion and hot plastic melting & extrusion components, not to mention the electronics and sophisticated software to run 3 axis synched linear motion with micrometer precision, for under 200 dollars. So no, James Bordon is right, given the hardware of this machine it could easily be sold for as little as 50 dollars in fact. But since they have a monopoly on a very niche subject, and there arent 100s of companies trying to sell you the same thing (as is the case with 3D printers) they can charge a premium at a ridiculous 250+ dollars.
@@imvisier9925
Once again someone has to chime in about the cost of parts vs the cost of the equipment. I seriously doubt a 1,000,000+ Bugatti has 1,000,000 in parts in it. Of a 300,000 Ferretti . These cars have the same basic parts at a run of the mill Chevy. Pistons, valves, bearings, gears, wheels ect. A car is a car and yet they go from 15,000 to over a million.
Your iPhone has about 20 max in parts and they sell millions of them for 1000+. So speciality low volume products for 400 is not that bad considering what they do. The people that designed them are making back their investment and turning a profit. This is a requirement in any sustainable business model. Those that don't follow this formula do not remain in business no matter how good their product is. The cost of the parts in the unit is insignificant in the selling price.
My view is that for $500 it looks cheap and nasty and you certainly don`t get your moneys worth given how little there is inside. Would be interesting to know how long it lasted before it broke, cos I am sure it must have broken down at least once by now!!
Still working. Have done about 500 reels now. Unit has paid for itself 3x over so if it breaks next time I use it, I will just buy another. Sure I could have spent 5 grand on a higher end unit, but I would still be paying for it, and my clients are very, very happy with the results. If they weren't then they wouldn't be bringing me all their film and paying me 10.00 per 50 foot reel to put it through this "piece of crap" as the trolls call it. It is built for a price point and does the job good enough to satisfy 95% or more of the home movie people that just want to get film of their childhood onto digital. I paid 500 for it and have made about 4000 in transfers. Take the 500 I paid off and my profit about 3500. Now a film maker or someone that does really high volume might be better off with a higher end 5000.00 machine but for moderate and low volume conversion work this does the job.
is good to have money
There are so many things about the scanner that could be better. Fixed white balance, a 4K camera, ability to record raw into an SSD via usb-c. A contrast adjustment and much more. I wish I had an engineer that could help me design something better to address all of these issues. The take up motor is too weak so the film gets stuck unless you bypass some of the guides.
4k would be useless. 8mm and super 8 frame size is so small that even at 1080 you see the film grain. The motor is more than strong enough and the guides are there to reduce the torque on the take up spool causing the film to slip. The only issus I have had is poor quality splices done by amateurs getting hung up from time to time. I have done hundreds of films in mine. Zero issues. Paid for itself on the first big order I got.
12voltvids I disagree with you about 4K, as I work professionally for the last 30 years in high end film production on major studios productions and am currently working on a documentary series for a major cable documentary channel. Through postproduction with some of my high-end tools I’ve been up to increase the resolution and sharpness of the image. There’s a lot of AI technology coming out that can analyze a low resolution image and upscale it to a phenomenal degree as if it was a native resolution. The take up motor on mine is definitely not strong enough as it was jamming on 50 foot reels that had no spices. The films were wound cleanly. It works fine on 8mm film but jams on Super 8.
@@beachcomberfilms8615 8mm and super8 had very large grains. It was a terrible format even when just projected. You know the saying garbage in garbage out. That plus 95% of home movie malers had no idea how to light, and what exposure was so an already bad format looks terrible, and scanning it at a higher resolution isn't going to make a difference. Sure there are higher end scanners available,at 10X the cost, and when there is very little money in the film conversion business these days it really doesn't make economic sence to spend 5 grand on a higher end system. You can't charge more than people are willing to pay, because they for the most part don't care about the extra 1% quality you might be able to squeak out of the film.
For starters, the vast majority of people already had their films transferred to VHS years ago and the films were disposed of. Second, many of the prople in the films are dead or close to it, and the kids or grandchildren just don't care. I don't think for 1 second that my kids, for example would ever digitize the films that my dad shot of me and my sister when we were kids. You get the odd person on a family that becomes the archivist and wants to get all the old family pictures and films scanned, but those folks are few and far between.
I recently quoted a client on a small film order. 10 50 foot reels. I quoted them 10.00 per reel to do it with the wolverine. What did they do? Projected it on the wall and shot it off angle with their old hi8 camcorder and then they brought me the tape to digitize. Looked like crap, but they didnt care. They wanted it only for a funeral video. For what the wolverine costs, there is nothing that can touch it. If yours was jamming then it should have gone back as they would have replaced it if it was defective. It doesn't like damaged films mind you. I have had films where the sprocket hole was damaged by a projector that just will not run though, but that is not a fault of the unit if the film is damaged. As you said, you work in a professional lab. Good for you, that means that the films you are scanning were shot by professional cinematographers that know about exposure, and f-stop and lighting. Home film is not pretty. Very few home moviemakers knew what they were doing. The exception was my father inlaw. His films always looked amazing, but then he properly lit the scene, and knew what he was doing.
Teardown??? lol!
Not cheap Chinese junk eh, lol that's precisely where it's built. I've had two, first one died on the first film scanned. Second one has been doing ok so far. Its also a 5mp sensor and it's 720 not 1080.
It's a 3mp sensor and it is 1440x1080. You have the cheaper 960x720 version. 1080 is only 2mp. 4k is only 8mp sensor btw.
... its still a piece of junk. Baring what is inside that metal gear box can, i still see a plastic gear in a critical place.
Got news for you, they use plastic gears in everything. This is not a high stress part. In fact there is no stress on anything in this unit. The gear wil be fine. The reason that the plastic gear broke so often on Sony VCRs was because it was in a high stress point.
my underlying with these machines is sub par picture quality that would not have been an issue if it were implemented a little differently and possibly cheaper than an asic. The gear in question is also a high stress point the big difference between this and a VCR is the VCR is not moving those high stress gears continuously during playback where as this machine does it for each frame.
Explain exactly what is high stress? It is a gear that moves a metal arm back and forth to move the film 1 frame at a time. That gear is driven by the stepper motor, which turns another gear that moves the framing pin back and forth. No stress, and it is a big beefy gear, one of of these little plastic gears that were in VCRs. I don't anticipate it breaking any time soon.
to some one like you who knows how to maintain it, im sure it will be fine, but if you are interested enough, googling can reveal just how unreliable these things are mechanically on top of how sub par the picture quality actually is. I regret the one I bought.
Did you buy this unit, or one of the other similar models. There have been a few of these devices floating around. I looked at a few similar units a year or so ago, and took a pass because for starters it was only 720P but the picture was horrible and it was even slower. 1 frame per second. It's not perfect for sure, but it should get the job done.
Wow $399,99 = R$ 1.309,17 at B&H.com salty haha...
These are shit. Mine didn't last very long and the image sucks. Not worth the money
Mine still working. Has not been trouble free but it has also had hundreds of films run through it.