A BIG GIANT THANK YOU, ALL I EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE WOLVERINE SCANNER, AWESOME

*Glad I decided to get the **Bestt.Digital** slide scanner. It us very easy to use, and as an added bonus it can hook up to HDMI on a TV and be used as a slide projector.*

One thing I forget to mention, there is a felt pad that cleans the film directly before it is scanned. It is just to the left of the light table. Works great is cleaning debris off the emulsion side of the film, which is where the camera is focused.

Fantastic walkthrough and review - thank you! I did notice that your demo of captured footage from "Mr Gullible" was stretched to 16x9 for the digital part, but kept the original 4x3 for the analog capture. The analog capture looked pretty good!

Does the film scanner itself stretch the aspect ratio to fake widescreen, or did you do that in video editing? Showing it at 4:3, like your VHS copy, is a lot closer to the correct aspect ratio.

Mr. Voltivids, thank you for your video. I have been looking at videos about the wolverine or scanners like it. I see so many videos on KZfaq about almost anything, and I wish I coud have recorded a few of the surgical procedures I scrubbed in on; But in the 80s and 90s no easy way to record a surgical procedures like a brain surgery for teaching or personal purpose. I see in your other videos you repair electronic devices all those little components look the same to me. Good job on the videos your a good teacher thank you!

Perfect example of just how far we have come with technology.

As you say, the image quality of the transfer looks pretty good, however it seems that there are digital compression artefacts visible. I wonder what the bitrate of the recorded mp4 is? Or what is the output filesize of the mp4 per minute of film?

I have one of these, but read the manual and found that there are three tabs not 2 that you have to place the leader under. That alone could affect the sharpness of your copy and definitely was why it jammed when you first started it.

nice to see inside of the new machine, I have the original 200ft machine. I notice the 'new' take up motor is widely available at ebay if you search for 3rpm motor. thank heavens for that, I am sure it wont be long before i need another new motor! Thanks for opening this up and making a video

This looks really nice. I would use my actual movie projector for the rewind as it's super fast.

Well, based on your great vid reviews I went ahead and purchased the MovieMaker Pro. I could not be happier with this unit. It's performed very well so far. Thought I'd post a quick review and comments if you don't mind! The footage coming out of this thing looks fantastic; with very little artifacts or noise. Any noise seen in these or other clips are the result of two things: KZfaq encoding and/or improper workflow and export settings from your editing software of choice. Improper export and encoding settings are the biggest culprit by far... Some of the more fanatical criticisms are unwarranted for the MovieMaker Pro. These aren't datacine machines costing as much as a small car, and complaining about many aspects of the MMP is like whining that your Honda doesn't have the handling of a Bugati. It's hard to just walk away from this unit for very long and let it do it's thing. Quite often old film stock will already have some sprocket holes chewed up from years of viewing, and the unit will simply get stuck on a frame. A gentle tug of the film and it's put right again. While eventually it will shut off, I'd rather not let the unit just sit there grinding away. The tabs on the latest model have changed. Instead of 3 tabs all on the same side of the gate, 2 are now on the opposite side. Seems like a better configuration that keeps the frames more stable.. I always pull the first 1/4" of film past the gate edge. The transition splice from the leader to the film almost always gets hung up on that last bit of gate edge. Ambient light does NOT affect the scanning. I've blasted the gate area with my iPhone light and unless you put the thing almost directly on the gate light window, there's no change at all. For rewinding, I like to pull the takeup reel out just a little bit, then do the 'rewind with the help of a pen' move that 12voltvids pioneered, lol. In this way the reel spins around the pin freely - without engaging the gearing. Saves a bit of wear n tear. The amount of dust and gunk that collects on the felt and gate area is no joke. Get yourself a large Giottos AA1900 Rocket Air Blaster. Also be prepared to carefully clean out the gate side walls with an Xacto or similar. The emulsion residue and other crap will build up. Check those nylon spindles as well. Gunk will build up on those. Lastly, encoding. If people are using Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects, there's no reason to do the time stretch trick with your clips in the timeline. I see that method everywhere, and it's a bad way to go - mostly because it's unreliable in terms of how many frames are added and where they are added. Sometimes it works great, many times it doesn't. All you need to do is take your imported clip and interpret the footage. With Super8 you put 18fps in 'conform to frame rate' dialog box. With standard 8mm it's 16fps. This will add duplicate frames in a precise order, then you can export out at 23.976fps. Don't get hung up on the this process. People spend agonizing, PhD quality hours trying to fiddle with the fps (like entering 17.982fps instead of 18 in the interpret dialog because of some very technical reasons). Ignore that crap. It will absolutely not matter with the outcome. Remember, we aren't trying to restore a long lost silent film from Tod Browning here...just getting some great old home movies into the digital age. Remember, most noise and artifacts are the result of timestretching a clip and/or incorrect fps manipulating. Hope that helps! Thanks again for the great vids, 12voltvids!

ahhh, memories! i still own a Fumeo 9131 variable speed telecine. Used to be in this field for years

Pretty good evaluation! Lots of nice techniques that you showed us as well. My Wolverine arrives today. Thanks, Tim in Colorado

Loved this review! Have had my eyes on this since they came out. Ordering it FINALLY. I have 50 years of some pretty amazing footage that I haven't seen since my projector broke. Hope I can use this forum for questions! Wish me luck, everyone, and Happy Trails to all from the Land of Enchantment!

Hi. I purchased one of these recently and so far I'm pretty pleased. I do have an issue that I would like to know if you would agree with. If I play the video file from the Wolverine Scanner hooked up to a monitor (yellow RCA cable to HDMI converter to monitor) it looks better than if I play the exact same video file played on the same monitor but played from my computer (Display Port to monitor). When the video is played on the computer (using Windows Media Player or VLC) the image looks way over saturated and sharp. When the file is played from the Wolverine the image looks way better. Do you find this to be true as well? Update: I just turned down the sharpening and saturation in Premiere Pro and the video looks like it does coming out of the Wolverine Pro. Looks way better now!!

I bought one of these because my brother was dying and I wanted to show him films of himself that he hadn't seen in 45 years. Sadly, I did not have enough time, even with fast shipping and converting the films on the day the device arrived. I'm impressed with the quality of the output of this device. In spite of the fact that I bought the 720P version of the device and rushed the job (as can be seen by the framing and dust on some films) I was amazed by the clarity and colors of the films. For under $300 I think this was a bargain. It allowed me to do something I had put off doing for far too long! I put the results on my channel so my brother's family could see them. If you want to see what kind of results you can get with what you are likely to find in the back of your closet. Have a look at the raw and rushed results and decide for yourself. If you think you could build one cheaper and better, why aren't you?

I have used this machine to copy many old family 8 and super 8 films. I found you need to remain in the room doing other things and listen for jams. The machine does a nice job and faithfully copies your movies. I transferred over to dvd and computer and made copies for family members living in different locations.

to rewind my film reels, I use my real to real tape deck. the spools fit the roll and that's it.

Mine arrived today, and I've been using it for several hours now. One thing I've noticed, is that in some bright scenes, it will dim the exposure a bit, then raise it, then dim it, then raise it....which, at the slow scan speed, creates a rather annoying flicker. It's not a jitter, and the film is not damaged, and plays on projectors and editors just fine. It's definitely being generated by the Wolverine Scanner. This is happening on any scene that's got hot spots..., and it happens on every 8mm film I've tried. It doesn't do this if you're lucky enough to have a perfectly exposed scene, which, let's face it, with 60 year old home movies made by my mom, those perfect scenes are few and far between! This flicker is pretty bad. I will attempt to try the over and under exposure settings, to see if that makes a difference.

Not bad at all. The film grain is well defined so the image is very sharp. Exposure looks good on the exteriors. The interiors look over lit and/ or over exposed when originally shot. Stretching out the 8mm film aspect ratio to 16:9 is not to my taste. I'd rather have the black borders at the sides. However, we know some people like full frame regardless of the distortion. I suppose one could ask the customer for their preference.

I’m a bit concerned this device may scratch the film - Not comfortable that it manually moves film one frame at a time against plastic (the gate), etc. from your experience have you had any issues with this machine scratching the film? Thanks

Thank you for the rewind tip! You're right....that's a major flaw with this product.

Hello I’d like to think you for posting this. You swayed me into buying this and it’s awesome I have had a few jams but nothing catastrophic. Thank

i didn't think the quality of it was that bad for its age, celulose film does go strange in time, and it burns too easy. My dad filmed me as a baby (52 years back) with mum and my brother and sister down the local park. it was done on super8, expensive in its day. it was transfered using a projection method then finally saved on vhs. (bad idea). The original film is lost now, but it was falling apart, every playback it snapped. I was given a copy on dvd taken from the vhs, not good, the colours were all over that place and the grass was pink, faces were really odd. I used an old copy of Tmpenc to change all aspects of each frame, it took bloody hours :-(. The film looked so much better :-D (grass was green, faces were pink ish, hair was correct).

The companies need to design a Super 8 / Standard 8 mm converter that plays the film at normal speed, with sound as well, but which scans it like this one. So you get a well defined picture with sound as well. To do it frame by frame like that is sheer madness.

I'll be darn. Neat seeing your old light up there.

i don't think i've ever seen a sound stripe/track on the leader, neat! TBF a lot of the films i've transferred are missing leaders, 100% amateur and family home movies. definitely not a fan of zooming/cropping/stretching old films to 16:9 aspect ratio, would rather be able to do full-frame visible transfers, even the sprocket holes if i so choose. I love this stuff regardless tho, reading all the comments here i see you figured out how to get the whole frame properly captured :D

I have the Pro model. The more I look at the output, which is 1080x1440, the more I realize that it is not being scanned/recorded at that resolution, but rather at a much lower resolution and up-rezzed on the fly to 1080. Digital artifacting, like bad aliasing, is quite evident in these files. I wonder if it's the same for the 720p model?

Yeah, that's the thing. Most people have already transferred to DVD years ago. I had a special case though. I once had to clear out the film department of a local high school and send 1300 16 mm films to the dump. As a film buff, that broke my heart. But I retained about 20 or 30 canisters of things I might have liked to have seen, including documentaries I've not seen since and several cartoons. I did once buy a set of 16 mm projectors and their amps and speakers but never got around to doing anything with them. Might be good for a restoration project. Who knows. Anyway, the newer transfer equipment would be ideal for doing the 16mm films at the very least with some really good transfers so long as the films have held up. I don't have much interest in doing this as a business however, so I'd probably just sell the equipment once I was through with it (much as people do with slide and filmstrip scanners once they have finished archiving their material). But if the costs are too high, I'll probably forgo this idea until (if ever) it does become feasible...

hi! great first review. it looks like you did the transfer for this super8 film with switch on 8mm mode, don't you?. is there an analog output signal which you're using to monitor it? and it includes text on it. sometime ago there was an internet project where a guy transfered films using a normal photo scanner.. if i'm not wrong, that included the sound track, so throught the scan process they got video and audio. regards.. very useful info on your channel

This is an old video I know, what is your opinion of the Wolverine Pro today?

I resently bought one, the thing is that the take up reel is mid sized, I use an Elmo Film Projector which has the magnetic tape pick up heads.

I love history of Vancouver cuz I live in Vancouver BC since born

I'm convinced that you could build a similar device for about a third of the price, but with a sturdier gate, better camera, larger screen, and auto-winding without needing to swap the reels. I hate to sound like that guy who always says "Rasp Pi", but... Rasp Pi. lol You can even get the small camera modules for the Pi that plug in directly, and with a bit of Python script, you could add the menu stuff, and even allow it to send the frames or video clip to a PC via WiFi / Ether. It's not such a bad device though. It looks like it does the job, and the quality looks fine for the size of the film.

I understand that the sensor and the electronic part have not changed in the new version?

This is excellent, I would love to do this with all my original film, which was done via projecting to a screen and videoing it. It was a pain to do.

fantastic! an old projector can be used as a rewinder.

The image is noisy, the blacks are crushed. The digital noise is actually hiding the actual film grain. I think the light source is too weak, therefore the noise. It is obvious how much of the existing image quality of the film is left on the table. It's all neatly integrated though and reasonably easy to use. But the end result is still much worse than a professional transfer, especially one using a wet gate. So building one's telecine rig is still warranted. Thanks for the video, very informative.

I think your video here was one that convinced me to buy the Wolverine Pro back in 2019. I've had a lot of fun with it but discovered that the quality of the film scanned has a big influence on the Wolverine output. Also my machine seems to create far more "noise" than yours. Even my best quality 8mm films scan with so much "noise" I have to de-noise the digitized scan through software or the final scan is unusable. So, maybe these machines differ? So far I've scanned almost 2000 feet of double and Super 8 film. It's been fun and I'm glad I purchased the Wolverine but I sure wish there was something better that's reasonably priced. Thanks for doing your video.

Nice machine, I have lots of regular & super 8mm films but the splices are old and done using those KODAK splice tapes. The quality on this machine is FANTASTIC. I did my films from a projector projected on a white sheet of paper years ago and it came out lousy with lots of flicker, I hot prices from places and the cheapest was 15 cents a foot and that was 10 years ago, with all the film I have it would cost me about $800...WOW! Question: Will we see the dentist pull his tooth...LOL

Love that thing .

Good video, Thanks! Is this still the latest technology in 2021? I have one and it's worked as you demonstrate, but it seems kind of primitive...

Time to head down to the Sally Ann or Value Village to pick up an old 8mm/Super 8 projector to use as a rewinder! It would sure save a lot of time. I find them all the time where I am for between $5 and $20 complete with working bulbs. The bulbs are what most people are after anyway. Thanks for the review. Will send the link to interested parties i know. I wonder what the manufacturers have in mind for this in the future as improvements could sure be made. Was looking at a book scanner for my rare books collection but the cost is normally prohibitive. There are some cheap alternatives but they also may be quirky or basically still ion development with the buyer acting as a guinea pig to test and possibly iron out the bugs. Home brew is another option but I'm not real good at that sorta thing so a purchased unit is something I'd be interested in...

My Wolverine (just bought) doesn't take 7" Reels like yours does. Where did you get that model from?

The VHS-segment 22:12 looks alot better, but obviously it's not as sharp compared to the newer digitization.

The picture quality is actually better on the VHS version. My cousin had a film digitized using this, and it has the same digital artifacts, vs the "cleaner" VHS version.

I've heard a bunch of new idioms, thank you! "A month of Sundays", that's something I've never heard))).

I have one these and it really needs a firmware hack with proper adjustments. It turns anything slightly orange into an over saturated yellow and gives me an overly compressed mp4 file. I'd like to have some sort of white balance adjustment and RAW output.

Thank you for this. Great to see such a detailed video of this product. The main thing I was wondering... The specs say it outputs a 1080p file at 20fps... Is that frame for frame, so in terms of Super8 shown slightly faster than original footage or does the device duplicate 2 fps in the output file?

That really shows up the compression articafts on the Wolverine compared with your other transfer.

8mm with sound = Super 8 I would have thought he would know this.

I just subscribed good deal Rewind by hand the heck was waiting for that thing do it by way of motor.

Gostei, meu pai deixou alguns filmes antigos que gostaria de assistir obrigado pela dica. Thank you

I think you did a great job. I have a 400 foot reel of some 1965 Las Vegas stuff I don't care about sound or music or anything in it I just want to get it transferred to DVD I probably will be contacting you soon. Keith Kuhn

Hi, Thank you for the review. We have quite a few 8mm films, many of which are made up of single frame images. My mother attached a 'clicker' which took one image per frame. Would it be possible to use this to view the frames individually on the SD card or the computer?

No high speed dubbing here but priceless playback

Thanks for the detailed review. Maybe it could incorporate a better camera for better color tone and gamma control, but it looks sharp enough. Next, send results to the PC through some snazzy image processing software to remove grain/sharpen/color correct, etc. I bet software exists that can create intermediate images to smooth frame rate to completely correct speed and preserve sound pitch at the same time. At least it does not flicker! (remember 5 blade shutters used on old telecine equipment?)

Thanks 12voltvids, unfortunately the 720 version has just left on its way to me. I may get the PRO version and try and sell the 720 when it arrives. I guess the 1080 version gives a far better finished product?

Have you ever worked on any actual frame to frame projectors with sound like the ones made by Bell and Howell from the 70s?

Notice how the film path bends the film back and forth. A great way to turn an old brittle film into spaghetti. I plan to build a scanner that does not bend the film.

Theres Settings in the unit where u can put it on a frame and play with the Crop Settings!

that stained wood doorway at the end is great. I am 100 percent sure a lazy landlord painted over it by now..

I have noticed a lot of unacceptable compression in the images. Is there an upgrade to a better codec?

The sound is so distorted that it iterates listening to it.

I just ordered the Magnasonic unit at 1080p and 20 frames and will post-process in Adobe Premiere Pro. I have been searching for film cleaners like Film Guard or Filmrenew but can't find it locally. What do you use to clean your Super/8mm film? I'm going to have to resort to Isopropyl Alcohol. Good job with the evaluation btw.

Were you able to tweak it to get better image, if so how did you do it?

I got a similar one but it doesn't have an audio converter option - How can I transfer the audio? do I need a different machine? if so do u recommend any? thx :)

I would just find an old projector for use in rewinding the film.

Hi. Great video. At 11 minutes 50 seconds of your video it looks like a splice went through without catching kin the scanner. I have both ordinary and 'frame line' splicers for repairing film and also one that uses scotch tape to make the join ( not very good) Which do you think would be better to use ?

Thanks!

Just curious if the splices you have trouble with are taped splices or wet (glued) splices? Great review.

I’m curious on what the output frame resolution is?

I see you have a variac next to the machine. Do you use that to slow down the speed so the final video is the correct FPS??

Sometimes a film doesn't seem to be aligned correctly and I don't see anyway to adjust anything physically. I can tell almost immediately, because it sounds louder and wrong while running. It can also completely throw off my frame adjustment very soon after starting and causes jumpiness in the final video. Any ideas?

it loos like an new scanner

Thx for making this video. Any tips on how to clean film before using this machine? is thee a machine that cleans film automatically?

Just keep your film editor handy for the rewinding side of it lots easier. I thought the grain on this device was extremely bad maybe KZfaq couldn't pick up on it high-end quality but I wasn't impressed with the sample shown

It looks like it can also pick up ambient light!

I bought and used the cheaper Wolverine but just recently upgraded to the dearer 'Pro' version as discussed here. I must admit being rather disappointed to find that the image quality of the dearer model appeared to be much the same as the less expensive one. Comparing results obtained with the 'Pro' with exactly the same film scanned on my original Wolverine showed very little perceived difference. Worse still however is a problem that I am surprised hasn't been mentioned here so far. That of vertical jitter. I have found that this fault seems to occur with both machines, old and new. It varies from slight enough to be ignored to severe enough to be unwatchable. About 1 in every 5 films require a second or even third scan to finish up with a reasonable result. Changing the threading path by bypassing one or two rollers on the take-up side can often cure the problem for one film but not necessarily the next.. Any other Wolverine users been plagued with this problem or have I just been unlucky? Any suggestions for a cure would be welcome. For instance, Is there any safe way to experiment with gate the pressure?

IMHO, the VHS version looks better, even if lacking picture brightness and sharpness. The digitized version is much brighter, but also has not the greatest color reproduction - especially the skin tones and red parts - and the picture is heavily oversharped. You can even see aliasing that wasn’t part of the original film. But maybe there are options to turn the image style more neutral. My father bought an analog photo and slide ’scanner’ probably 8 years ago. It proved to be a cheap smartphone-like camera with a low-CRI LED backlight and a fancy user interface. The image quality was comparable with your film scanner. So sadly, the manufacturers don’t seem to improve their products for home users at all.

I'm seeing the film is a little jumpy. Is that the original camera or the Wolverine with poor pin registration?

Does this support the concept of overscanning? In other words, scanning beyond the frame of the film so that the entire film frame and borders are scanned. I see there is a zoom feature. Can you zoom way out? I would like to overscan and then crop in post production. Thanks.

Why don"t you get a manual, hand-cranked rewind machine?

Did you save that movie as an SD file? Did I see that correct? And is it even more slow if you would save to HD? Ooh it was HD? Just heared you say that in the video. :D

Great review, but...how did you get past the initial snag with the splice? You said that you started over but that splice is still there, correct?

@18:54 Is there any difference in sharpness between medium and high? The quality isn't the greatest from this device. I think they should have used a better camera and proper rewind, oh and did I say sound? Even better make one of these where you load a film and hit play and it digitizes in real time and not 2 frames per second.

Considering the cost of alternative telecine equipment, 500$ isn't bad. They have a couple bugs to work out , write them and give feedback of the need to fix it so it doesn't need baby sitting. I'd use an old beater for rewind, um getting rid of two this week. I have a bunch of 60s reels that need transfer from my aunt, um gonna do it the shitty cheap way.

Be ready to change belts. I think they use old stock ones in there units. They go to gum in no time. That thing a few years ago was like $150.00 I fig they pulled them off market after so many just were junk.

What SD card did you use? My copy is coming out very grainy. I have changed shapness, and other adjustment. Nothing is different. The picture looks good as it is copying but when I put it on my computer it isn't very good.

Have you done any with sound? I have some Super 8mm Reels with the magnetic sound strips. The Wolverine doesn't do sound.

Does this work with 8mm 25ft reels like the ones that were used for home movies? Every projector I get for my 8mm reels the reel itself doesn’t fit on the projectors spindle.

Thanks for the vid 12voldtvids - have you run into any issues with 7" reels re: pausing during the frame advance while recording (and subsequently recording the same frame multiple times until it finally advances to the next sometimes after 5-6 shots are taken of the stuck frame)? I have been seeing this a lot on the first 7" reel that I have been trying to digitize. I don't think it's an issue with the sprocket holes as they seem fine. According to the Wolverine manual "A work around this issue is to wind the film to the empty reel and scan the film backwards. This way the unit will scan by grabbing on the good side of the sprocket holes then, using a video editing software you can reverse the playback and save the file playing forward". I couldn't understand how to do this as I don't see how the unit can be set to play (or record) the film in reverse.

Hi, whats about sound, how you do to retreive the original sound, if any, from the film footage?

Do you run into the auto-white balance putting a blue tint on the footage randomly? I seem to be getting this on every reel I digitize.

You are using them MM100-PRO (the more costly unit), Does it perform better than the MM100

What about the audio?? Super8 had the ability to have audio too and this is not transferred with this method. How would you do that in the best manner possible after you have the video transferred? You mentioned the sound projector but I don't have one, not even sure what this is

Great video thanks, audio is a problem though. Is there a machine that does both?

Awesome!!! :)

if only Wolverine or whoever actually made this unit, seen many OEM units around under different names, if only they produced a slightly higher quality model. better cmos, alloy frame.