The concept is great, the execution in this machine is horrid. There should be sharpness enough to clearly see grain with 5 mpix sensor and there should be no compression artifacts from the frame by frame capture.
Well, I managed to digitize all of my wife's family home movies from the 3 inch reels, 14 of them. And just finished all 15 of my own family home movies from the 5 inch reels. Took just over one hour 35 minutes for each 5 inch reels. Only real serious complaints I have is that this 'Kedok' machine, maybe all of them, only digitizes in MP4 format. Most DVD players will NOT show MP4 format! We can only watch our newly digitized home movies on the computer. It's okay I guess...can't get bulbs for projects any more. Now what to do with a used Kedok 8mm converter.
Hello! I recently acquired a Super 8 Camera for the purpose of B-roll in my Vlogs - I know this video is almost 3 years old, but does this still hold up? This is one of the few videos I've seen on RU-vid reviewing this at-home digitizer
Good job on this! Videoing a screen is always the worst option, even if it is projected directly to a chip. There is no way to completely eliminate the flicker; the best I've seen is an occasional, yet annoying wave. Frame by frame is the only way to go, everything else just depends on your budget.
I just ordered mine and looking forward to using it. Just wondering if the memory card needs to be formatted? Does the option come up on the screen to do that?
It does come with an option to format the card. I don’t remember if I did the format when I unboxed it, but it wouldn’t hurt. It’s on the 3rd page of the menu and it will ask you to confirm before formatting.
Enjoy your video. I bought the machine and digitized 10 home movies so far. I lost the little conversion thingies that convert the small shaft to the large shaft. How can I get some extra pieces. ? Also can I ask what the counter in the lower right corner is counting ? Mine says 34 after about 10 reels of 3 minutes each which is 30 minutes total . So the counter seems to be counting minutes of film.
Just bought one of these and am eager to try it out. Did you try redoing this video with the exposure set to normal or +1? Perhaps the digitizer would be a little bit brighter if you did.
I just sent mine back for a refund. It was badly out of focus and their was no way to focus. It didn't pull film through the gate properly, it kept slipping and getting frames as it was moving. Maybe I got a total lemon but I am totally burned and don't care to try another one of these. It looks like most of the film digitizers are exactly the same machine with different brands.
Essentially this product seems a toy. Scanning or direct projector-to-camera transfer of small gauge film is relatively expensive. And the scan/ transfer doesn't stop at that. Ideally it is best to take these digital files in to post and de-noise, sharpen, stabilise and colour grade.
Thank you. You definitely don’t need the manual after watching your video, you made it all very easy to follow. I’ve now almost finished digitising all my mum’s super 8 cine films. It’s been such a trip down memory lane
I have the Wolverine version and was very surprised at the quality of the output! I actually paid costco services to transfer a 8mm film and they did a terrible job. This did a much better job! Great Review!
My friend also send couple of his films to I think it was Walgreens AMD quality was not that good plus he will end up paying almost as much as buying this proyector since he has lot of films to convert just like me. How much Costco charged you?
Unfortunately there’s no quality setting. Even though it produces a 1440x1080 video, I think it’s too much compression. I’ve watched some other reviews on the Wolverine 1080p and I think it might do slightly better.
Я тоже такой приобрёл Magnasonic. Правда, не сразу разобрался в нём, но когда разобрался - понравился, сканирует нормально. Молодцы китайцы - до всего первые додумываются! Я давно мечтал о таком недорогом сканере. Теперь остаётся ждать, пока они начнут делать сканеры для 16-мм. киноплёнки.
I just purchased this that you have, same box and all. I have a couple minor issues, but all in all, it does as advertised. The fast forward for rewinding is not great, have to help it. After watching your video again, could I just use the USB to my computer, transfer my home movies to my computer, then transfer them to DVD? The Kedok comes with a '32 gb' SD card, but after using it, it only holds 1.1 gb' only.
great to see what this can do - was looking for a "professional" service to scan old reels for me and it ranges from someone re-filming the output onto a wall to people asking to see the footage before quoting - this will be the better option , me doing it myself as have 30 plus from the late 1960's to 70's . thanks for showing that the device actually works!
Excellent Vid demoing the scanner! Certainly the footage looks better than copying from a screen. My only concern, is that the recorded data is so compressed! Pity there's no way of having an option to lessen the compression and resulting file size? Anyway, cheers from the UK!
When you post such an opinion, it would be much more valuable for others if you give a detailed explanation. For example: "I liked the even lighting." or "The colors seemed more realistic."
Hi Eric, Thanks for posting this video, it's an excellent comparison test between projecting and scanning! I've just got the Reflecta scanner and yes, it's a shame about the high degree of compression. Pity that output compression couldn't be set before scanning, still the results are better than projecting overall as you've clearly shown. The next step is to edit my footage in FCPX where I can reduce noise, sharpen and crop in slightly too. As in my setup, I set to scan just beyond the whole frame! Cheers from the UK! PS I'll probably do a 'How To' on my channel at some point to!
Clearly Film digitizer is winner, there is no question about it. Film digitizer scan (take pictures) directly from each frame, same as what film studios do for transport movies to DVD or Blu-ray for selling in the market, but Video transfer system use cheap conventional method, recording directly from projector screen you will get issues like brighter in the middle and darker and shades on the edges and specially on corners, blinking frames , color inaccuracy.
HI Eric, I found your video very helpful yesterday (being Saturday 14th Jan 2023), when I was using my 8mm and Super 8 movie film scanner for the first time. The movie I scan was an old 8mm home print of the 1936 film The Charge Of The Light Brigade, which I brought off eBay two years ago. I was very happy with the result of the frame-by-frame scanning of this home movie. Because of my success with this device, I have got more old 8mm home movies to scan, in which I shall forward to doing with great enjoyment.
Pretty good! I've digitized 18 small reels on a Wolverine (720P) so far, so I have some notes that may be useful for people using either one: - The Wolverine has a third clip for the film on the right side. Yours may as well. - I love maximizing resolution (I'm a photographer and software developer), but honestly, anything beyond 720P feels like overkill when scanning consumer 8mm stock. - I always use the frame adjust, it allows me to capture as much as possible, including video captured around the sprocket holes. The holes are visible, but I'm not bothered by it, and this results in movies that are closer to the 16:9 framing of modern TVs. (I also figure in the future, it'll be easy to use neural networks to fill in the holes.) - I agree about setting the Sharpness to Low. Sharpening in post gives me a lot more control and fewer MPEG artifacts. - I'm using DaVinci Resolve for video editing, it's free and *really* good. The paid version also has an excellent temporal dust and scratch removal filter. - The Wolverine I'm using (newer firmware?) saves MP4 files at 20fps, so it only needs to be slowed down to 80%. DaVinci Resolve makes this pretty easy, and has an Optical Flow setting to create smoother interpolated frames (I'm saving my final files at 24fps). - For digital capture, it's better to mildly overexpose your source video (just not to the point of clipping highlights). This gives you better information for your post-production grading, noise reduction, etc. I've been pretty happy with the default exposure on most of the reels I've scanned so far.
Thanks for all the great info! I, too, am a software developer. RU-vid and film are more or less my side hustle! Most of my film is 16 fps, so inferring the footage at 16fps in premiere works for a lot and I can export at 15 fps which is close but if I'm embedding at another frame rate, I'll have to see about optical flow or frame blending and how those look. I really appreciate you adding to the discussion! When I posted this there wasn't a lot of detail out there and have been really happy with how this video has performed. For some reason my scanner has issues with the white balance if I over expose. Whites appear yellow. Thanks again!
Wow this is awesome thank you I will look to you for any advice I made I appreciate everything to comment is great because I'm a newbie to this I collect 8 mm super 8 and 16 mm films I also have projectors for all.. but since I couldn't afford the crazy money they want for one of these when I seen it online here in the US on the East Coast I had to have it.. I will look forward to your help I'll be able to email you I hope I'm also on Facebook thank you sir thank you I look forward to any help you can give me doing this with what you have described when transferring films thank you
@@EricCosner that's awesome Eric and preserving films I've top notch whether they be 8 mm super 8 regulator or 16 mm they all need to be preserved these are history I have a lot of home movies and a lot of feature films they need to be preserved and this is my forte I'm doing this preserving
Great review. I bought the larger Wolverine Machine 2 years ago and transferred about 1600 feet of film dating from 1950 to 1975 (8mm and Super8). The machine did break on me and I had to replace it. What broke was the film advance mechanism. It simply would not advance the film anymore. Thank goodness I was within the 30 day return period on Amazon. You're right, the graininess you are seeing with the Wolverine machine is JPG compression digital artifacts which has to do with the quality of the compression ratio used. If they used a faster processor, they could increase the quality of the transfer compression ratio and increase the frame rate at which it moves through the machine. So the graininess is not the film grain. However, the quality of the Wolverine is the best consumer frame by frame transfer machine you can get for the money. It is better than using a video transfer machine like you showed. Anything better than the Wolverine and you'll be paying over a thousand dollars for, so if you want the best quality, it would be better to go with one of the professional services that specialize in this. A major problem I had was keeping the frame centered. So I had to stop the transfer and adjust the frame position frequently, probably due to film shrinkage as I live in a very dry climate.
I bought the same one as on this review, and the same thing happened. It began to skip and wouldn’t advance the film smoothly. This seems to be a weak point with these items.
Does the super 8 film still need to be developed to be able to insert it into the digital scanner or can I pop the reel straight out of the camera and scan it using this machine? Someone pls help honestly stuck!!!!
Film of a snow scene is probably less sharp than in a non-snow scene with better contrast. As I recall Super 8 image was sharper and steadier than regular 8mm. I tried a transfer system, toy like poor results.
That makes sense. The snow likely softened the light and should have produced less grain. Recently I've been playing with this new unit the Kodak Reelz. It's a little bit better than this film scanner, but the film jams at the splices. Hoping to release that video as soon as I can find a work around for the jamming issue.
I have to re splice a lot of my regular 8 films, since back then it was shot on 1side and flipped over and spliced together at the processing place, you shot 25ft and flip for the other 25ft, the tape or glue has worn off. I had my movies transferred in the late 80s and early 90s. The video all the white looked yellow as well. I'm hoping to digitally transfer them soon. We have about 4 or 5 hours of regular 8 and super 8 films total.
Hi Eric, thanks for the video. I have used the wolverine but today stop working the lamp. The whole mechanism works well, advance film without a problem. You know if there's a way to change the lamp? Saludos from Chile!
Hello, great video, I'm curious about the two different scanners (720 and 1080) if one would capture faster than the the other. They probably take the pictures at about the same rate I'm guessing, probably about two pics/sec? But when the capture is done, the machine must take some time to render I would think. So, just wondering if the 720 would take less time? Thanks
Hello and thanks for excellent question! As far as rendering, the unit will be finished the second that you hit stop, or it detects the end of the reel. It essentially writes a file on the SD card in real time each time you start and stop. The playback of most machines is set to 30 fps which is too fast so you almost always have to edit it on a computer to adjust the frame rate. That frame rate is encoded in the mp4 file. So depending on your computer, if you have to edit the footage to slow it down or make other adjustments then 720p would be less taxing on the computer. I have another machine made by Kodak that I never finished reviewing and that one actually outputs the file at a similar frame rate. I think it was 15 fps. The issue with that Kodak machine is it always jams the film. I kinda gave up on it during the reviews. Hope this is helpful! Thanks again!
@@EricCosner thanks for the information. I've been looking to get one of these soon. I use Pinnacle studio for editing, not sure if I can change frame rate like in premiere, but I know I can definitely slow it down to 60% for super 8. Thanks
both transfers are crap. Good for home use, easy and fast. but for archival purposes are crap. probably a recording from canvas would be better (and realtime).
I have two questions. How much time in either hours or minutes will the 32gb memory card hold? And how do you know when you are getting close to the end of the 32gb 's ability to hold any more film (or information)? Thanks. Enjoyed the presentation. Very informative.
about 75MB per minute (1200 frames at the fixed 20fps MP4 frame rate of the video saved). I don't know how much if any compression is applied. I have never filled a card so no clue what happens with a full one, I move them to my PC after every reel scan to review and name the videos. A fairly full 7 inch reel was 1.7GB.
Watched to compare to my Wolverine. Looks very similar, but the menus have some differences. Good idea on slightly underexposing. It's easier to add gain, but when the levels are blown out, that can't be fixed. Nice job.
@@scottbaker4534 My Wolverine outputs 720p. They also sell a Pro unit that outputs 1080p. What specifically is "horrible" about the film scanner featured in this vid?
@@ThriftyAV Easily answered. The Wolverine's main problem lies in the mp4 encoding process, which seems to lean heavily on "removing scratches" but leaves behind so many digital artifacts (tiny rectangular shapes that obscure details) that it leaves a resulting image which resembles, as one comment I read says, "Frosted glass." I was going to say "shower door glass" but not all shower doors have obscured glass. Perhaps your screen is not HD, or your vision has deteriorated due to some health condition. I certainly don't mean to insult you, in either case, I assure you, the quality is rather poor, even if you don't see it. One of my fondest memories of my late grandfather was when we stayed up late into the night talking and he suggested we watch one of his favorite late night shows, The Howard Stern Show. In this particular episode, Howard's guest was an exotic dancer. At one point, she performed for the audience, wearing rather large "pasties" over two particularly large identical regions of her upper anatomy. My grandfather laughed gleefully, looked over at me and said, "Isn't that terrific!? They can show a beautiful nude woman on TV now!" My grandfather, I should stress, had respect for women. He merely believed the human body is beautiful and is nothing to be ashamed of. What I realized is that my grandfather's poor eyesight meant that he didn't see the pasties. They blurred in his vision so that the woman's body appeared to have no covering anywhere. I didn't have the heart to clarify for him that he was not seeing what he thought he saw. My eyes, thank goodness, are still quite sharp. What I can praise about Wolverine is the evenness of the light, which potentially makes for not merely crisp, fine details, but eliminates a great amount of both overexposed "bleaching" and underexposed "blackout" regions that would otherwise not just obscure details, but eliminate them altogether. But in what I would bet money was their hamfisted attempts both to reduce scratches and reduce file size, the makers of the probably re-branded Wolverine transfer unit have made an unforced fatal error, easily corrected with better software. I'd recommend the makers of the unit talk to the makers of HandBrake and some computer science grads looking to make a name for themselves who can improve the quality of the output without much, if any, file size increase.
This was one of the best RU-vid instructional videos that I have seen in a long time. You were very informative deliberate and easy to understand. I found that given the choice, I would chose to use the Film Digitizer as the content that you showed was clearer and cleaner. I wish I had known about this converter before I had Costco digitize about 2 dozen fifty foot reels. Since I just subscribed to your channel, hopefully, I will be able to view more well done videos by you about other topics.. Keep it up.
Yeah, unfortunately, these units don't do sound. You would have to capture the sound separately using a projector or some other device and that doesn't guarantee that the timelines won't drift apart when you try and connect everything up in editing software. Sorry man!
@@EricCosner That merely means that my piles of super 8 films are just stacked alongside all those VHS compact tapes, beta tapes, and 1" commercial video samples that are far too expensive to otherwise digitize. Deep sigh.
@@sdovas Do you mind if I sigh with you as well? I have about 500 reels of regular and super 8mm film, as well as 9.5mm film and 16mm film, many have optical and magnetic sound currently sitting in the loft. I have calculated trying to get all this film scanned digitally it’s going to cost me more than if I do it myself, not to mention the cost of postage and packaging and the risk of it getting lost in transit, i’ve also heard horror stories from digital services like legacybox with some of the films got lost or badly damaged, it’s like playing a game of russian roulette. Yet many people wonder why so many films have become lost or wonder why we don’t shoot on film anymore, it’s a very niche market. It’s gotten to the stage where I’m personally glad film is gone and replaced with digital as it’s far easier, less of a headache to deal with and much cheaper to work with. (Very deep sigh.) Sorry mate, I had to get my frustrations out as I’ve been dealing with this since 2015. Regardless, I hope you do well in the future to get your collection scanned. On a sidenote, great video.
Hey unfortunately it does not support audio and we haven’t found one that does. At least not at the consumer level. If you capture audio separately it could be combined, however the time codes will probably drift because most projectors are analogue and would need to be fixed in editing software
Digitizer is better than the transfer system. Once on computer one can play with contrast and colour and brighten up the darker scenes. No flicker is a great advantage. I appreciate your efforts and sharing your experience with us. Thanks a lot bro
1080p is the (declared) pixel/bit maximum resolution of the digital image chip - and does NOT relate to the original quality / grain and focus, nor lighting of the original 'stock film'. It just means more pixels/bits are available (used) per millimeter area. - Garbage in quality = garbage out ,... in other words, beyond post transfer digital enhancement or manipulation,... you can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear. LOL .
thanks for the info...just bought one and was looking for a video for some tips...NOT tech savvy (65)...was wondering if i can use it without putting the SD card in ???? i have a LOT of films that i am not sure if they are any good at all....was hoping to play them; see if they are still good; splice them together and then put them to the card...also any tips on finding a place that still sells splice kits ??? thanks.
Unfortunately no sound. If you find one that has sound, let me know. Would love to review one. I only thought it was the super8 that had sound but I could be wrong
Excellent video Eric,although I have no films to transfer it was interesting to watch and this could help many people that want to do something like this,for me I think the transfer system did a much better job,the colours look much more natural IMO
Hi Mister... I want to collect "old school" movies. 8mm, 16mm etc ... But I have no place to install a projector. Don't these have a player that works with hdmi? How do I solve this job?
From the vids I'm seeing about these types of digitizes, I'm not impressed at all. This video was excellent to show a side-by-side of results from this machine and that of the old-school method with the Ambico transfer system. The one thing that I don't like about the digitizer is that these clearly are using really crappy optical sensors and LCD screen. The color from the original film is totally messed up with the digitized version. While the Ambico's results where very yellowish, you could still see better, saturated colors. But with the digitized version, the colors were muted a lot and not really correct. The thing is, if the manufacturers would use better quality sensors and LCD screens, ALONG WITH an RGB adjustable LED light source, and an actual potentiometer where the "color" of the LED light source could be adjusted on the fly, allowing you to see the proper color on the LCD. But the LCD in this is clearly a really REALLY cheap on. Not cheap as in $$$, but cheap as in the quality of the image. These cheap ones often display everything very blue (cool) and there's no adjustments. When I design fun gadgets, I use really good LCDs that produce accurate color. The ones I use are not THAT expensive either. As for the pickup sensors, I haven't played around with any of those yet, other than what's in my Lab Electronic Microscope, which produces accurate color, down to super macro (300 magnification). Hopefully, some company will bring out an updated version with perfect color. Oh, and the other thing is that these use a toothed sprocket to advance the film. This can be VERY BAD for very old film. With an OLD projector, it chewed up some very old film from the 1950s and on. I trashed that projector. I was able to land 2 projectors that don't use the toothed sprockets. They use rubber pinch rollers, much like a reel-to-reel uses. These NEVER chew up the film and in fact, the film moves through the machine(s) smoothly, producing a non-jerky, non-skipping movie. If I can get off my butt, I'd get my project done of converting one of those into a digitizer using Arduino (or ESP32). Oh what fun.
Thanks for the excellent review. I just ordered the Wolverine Pro version and am curious about file storage size. Most of the reels I'll be transferring are 3" super 8. How many megapixels do this size reel requires on the SD card? Any thoughts? Thanks
Hey sorry it took me so long to get back to you! The 5" reels on this unit come out to about 1.0 GB per transfer. I would venture to say a 3" reel would be about half of that. I'm using an 8 GB card and it works well. It's nice not having to clean it off every time! Thanks!
Nice find! As a kid I watched footage of 8mm recorded by my parents. I think the digitizer did good. Don't forget that the 8mm film never recorded in 1080p and that filmgrain could be seen on your projection screen in those days. Just look at old movies and tv-shows in comparison.
Super8 resolution on the film is somewhere in the 800 to 1000 lines range, slower film is better, ie Kodachrome 25 is slightly higher resolution than Kodachrome 64. Scanning above 1080 is not really useful.
The flicker is caused by the difference in video speed and film speed. Video records at 30 frames per second. Super 8 at 18, 8 can be at 15 or 16 fps. Changing the projection speed can help with the flicker, but the speed of the film will probably be too fast. What you need is a projector with a five bladed shutter, which was used in professional tele-cine projector set ups, usually 16mm. That shutter eradicated flicker. Very hard to find an old 8mm or Super 8mm projector that had this. The digital transfer you used seems a much better option because each frame is scanned digitally rather than optically. Film shot at 24 fps would look better because that film/video standard is used today. Your iPhone can shoot 24 fps. 24 fps came about to accommodate sound film. If you can match up all the shooting, shutter and projection speeds to the same speed, your film would look perfect. High end film production can use up to 60 fps, but the projectors would have to run at the same speed. Not practical as every theatre would have to convert to this format. Thus video has become a defector standard in Hollywood film production, because it can be shot and shown at 24 fps. Also, the old silent movies from the 1920’s were all shot at 15 fps. When projected at 24 fps, the scenes look fast and jerky. If you project those old Chaplin movies at 15 fps, the motion would be normal.
I saw a video showing to NOT zoom with the Wolverine and do the crop later in post editing. This makes a huge difference. The video with the digital zoom of the converter is riddled with compression artifacts. The video with no zoom is virtually artifact free.
Thanks for the video Eric. I have about 20-30 rolls of 8mm I can’t wait to process. I think the digitizer did great. What’s the better software to use for editing and such? Do we need the Adobe software or does Apple have something free already?
So I bought a cannon 518 camera, and it takes this kodak film in a plastic square, not a cylinder how to get that into a reel? Unless I made a compatibility mistake? The camera actually doesn't work anyway, :< just wondering, thanks!
Great instructive video. Personally I prefer the VTS as it brighter whilst the FD looks a bit dark although the frames are better and less dirt spots. . . but it looks too dark? Anyway a great video to give some ideas. Thanks.
I think the digitizer looks darker because you set the exposure for darker, since you said the movie was a little too bright, and you were trying to compensate. Perhaps not set at minus0.5, but rather a middle setting to have less contrast. Also, the transfer is notably yellow. Guess it depends on what you prefer. After all, unless you take your home movies to a professional ($$$$$), you expect compromise to save the film from deteriorating to nothing.
This is awesome. I have boxes of 8mm and super 8mm films from grandparents on both sides. Also have the old film projectors, but have never taken the time to look at them. I see a Winter project coming on. So awesome to see the past come back to life. Those remind me of the big snow storms we used to have in Minnesota -- always remember super high drifts, but then again I was a kid so had a different height perspective. So cool --- thanks for sharing! :)
Projected image is super better than the scanned image, but the problem is the projector lamp. They have a life measured in hours - less than 20 - and are either unavailable or super expensive. Whatever video transfer service he used did a HORRIBLE job.
HA! I've been using this for the past month and I just realized I was looping the film the wrong way! :) Also it doesn't 'notice' the difference from Super 8 to 8MM...the Super 8 function at all! I have to use the 8mm for all of it. I also never 'realized' you could go straight to digital rather than frame by frame! I have done about 100 hours of work thus far not knowing that! ... Frame adjust is something I have to do every few minutes...so there is no 'default'...
But my transfers are the BIGGEST HIT EVER! I went to a boarding school 50 years ago and all my friends are in the movies so it's been a GREAT time of reconnecting! I prefer to keep the videos 'subject matter' related and 3 minute clips at a time so I stop and start every 15 or 20 minutes and then use a movie editor to splice them together or remove unrelated content.
Hello! I also missed a loop when I was threading it in the video lol. I realize you have a slightly different machine so perhaps there are differences. The unit I reviewed does seem to keep the frame adjusted by default, but you can use those settings to capture the film perforations (sprocket holes) or make other adjustments if needed.
Nice job 👍 was looking into what kind of quality, you can get from that unit. Side by side of the 2 options, very helpful. The other option was to use a pro service. Now I know that the machine at a service should be of a much higher caliber, but at close to $90 a reel, it works out much better for my bank account to buy one of these units!
What program do I need to get the speed at the correct speed on the film I have video transfer system and that's correct you get if you don't have the fifth blade on the projector you get that shutter problem I work with films for a long time I want to pick one of these things up can you please help me what program do I need to buy so I can get the film to play at the correct speed at this time I do not have a computer but I want to be able to get the proper speed on the film like everything else I do I make sure the film is clean lots of people don't know that you can use adhesive remover to clean the film it works perfectly so please can you send me a link so I can purchase the program like I said I don't have a computer yet my computer broke down I do all style cinematography so I want to make sure that if I do put it on the computer how do I control the speed Super 8 is regularly 18 frames per second depends on the speed that you recorded the film I have a Minolta XL 64 it also records up to 24 frames per second the Minolta XL 64 can record on Super 8 from 18 frames per second and 24 frames per second thank you very much first time using this kind of Technology I'm old style but I have some films that I would like to transfer over and then even later on if possible put it on a DVD is there any other way that you can slow the speed down if you want to hook it up to a DVD recorder is there a setting in the system if you will see use the video cable and plug it into DVD recorder is there any way that the playback system on the device can put it back to the proper frame per second thank you very much green Harvest Productions Joseph Velez
Just discovered these on sale in UK. Great sales pitch and with the films I have I think i will commit. At least if it comes quickly enough plenty of time locked down with the corona virus.
Interesting! I have the Reflecta version which is pretty much the same machine, though the menu options are slightly different. I am digitising my father's old Standard 8 films which date from around 1961 to 1977. It's all Kodachrome, as I suspect most home cine film from that time is. I haven't got Premiere Pro, but there is another way of changing the frame rate using MyMP4boxGUI. You basically have to de-mux the mp4, then remux it and specify the frame rate. It's a faff, but it does work. As I expect to be viewing the films on a PC with 60Hz or 75Hz refresh, I actually change the frame rate to 15 fps. This means it's about 7% slow - pretty unnoticeable IMO. I also reduce the resolution to half size, i.e. 720 x 540. Standard 8 frames are tiny, so it's no surprise that the graininess shows at 1440 x 1080
Penso che a questo devono averlo pagato bene per fare un video del genere esaltando lo scanner per pellicole 8mm e super 8mm. Io l'ho acquistato e reso dopo due giorni perchè scannerizzava sfuocato e nel menu non è presente una voce per aggiustare la sfuocatura. Una vera MMMmerda di scanner....
I saw some horrible results from that racket. I scan my own and do very careful post production. They don't even try. It's a quick scan, jumps, bad edits and all. Mass production guarantees you won't get a lot of TLC; just the bare bones scan.
Thanks for the perfect review and instruction video. This really helps with the decision to get this digitizer. The Reflecta scanners are absolutely amazing. We already have the RPS 10M for scanning image negatives of which the quality is unbelievably good.
Eric, when the machine saves the video it saves it at a default 30 frames per second. I know you can modify that to view on your computer screen to the correct 16 or 18 frames per second, but then how do you save it to a DVD at the correct FPS?
For exporting, I think the best approach would be to set your timeline to match your export media. If you are in an NTFS country, then 30 fps for dvd and if you are in a PAL country then 25 fps for DVD. This assumes, of course, you can interpret the input fps as I did. If not, you may have to make your timeline 16 or 18 fps. Regardless, when you export, I would export to the format & fps the dvd prefers. The video I shot was exported at 23.976 because I almost always use that fps for my youtube videos. It's possible a frame will be dropped or blended, depending on how the video software translates the frame-rates. At least that's how I would approach it. Thanks for the question!
Thanks for sharing this. Sadly I lost my super 8 films and the project some time ago from a foreclosure of a storage facility that the stuff was in. This would have been great.
You might try adjusting the shutter speed on your camera when doing a real time transfer. I used to transfer with a variable speed projector. I find at about 20 f/s you get total flicker free transfers. The digitizer makes the people look like you're looking through a frosted glass. It's nice that there's less scratches, but the picture quality is not there. Next time try projecting it on a screen and put it beside a flat screen TV and you'll see how much better the raw projection is in comparison to the digital transfer.
Thanks for the feedback. I used an app called FiLMiC pro that allowed me to select the frame rate. I tried quite a few of them, but it seems like my projector's motor doesn't run at a perfect speed. I may try 20 fps again just to see. I think the issue with quality on the digitizer is the software/codec and the camera just doesn't have the dynamic range to properly get at the shadows and highlights. Thanks again!
I agree AND disagree with you, Simon. I agree this unit is junk and produces "frosted glass" images. But frame-by-frame digitization, when done with the right sensor and software combination, is far superior to telecine, unless you project into a theater-sized screen and have super high-speed digital video camera positioned at a near zero angle from the projector. The ultimate telecine setup would be a digital camera synced to the projector some how, so that each frame is captured only once. Again. though, an HD scan of each frame, combined with software which does not destroy the scan image when compiling the video makes for the best quality.
@@scottbaker4534 I agree, the right sensor and software combination would be superior, but we are talking about this particular scanner and off the wall projection comparison.
On Amazon, there is the Wolverine PRO selling for $399 and a Eyesen PRO selling for $299. Both have the extended arm for larger reels. The Wolverine has a black front and the Eyesen has a silver front. (Another RU-vid video said their Eyesen $299 said "Wolverine" when it was turned on.) Are these the same machines, but packaged differently? What is the difference?
