Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)

[PaulOckenden]

EDIT - see following comment.

Does anyone know what causes the picture to be taken for each frame? Is it mechanical (linked to the frame advance) or optical (perhaps a sensor on the sprocket hole?).

Only I have one film that scans in *really* juddery. It looks OK on the screen while it's scanning, but the video file produced is very juddery, and often shows the line between the frames and sometimes even a bit of the adjacent frame at the top of the video. Like I said, none of this appears on the mini-screen while scanning.

The reason I asked about optical or mechanical shutter triggering is because if I look at the actual film I can see transparent areas around the sprocket holes.

Shame, because this is an important family film, so I'd really like to be able to scan it.

I'm using the latest @Mac84 firmware BTW. I couldn't get the @0dan0 version to work on my machine.

 

[PaulOckenden]

Does anyone know what causes the picture to be taken for each frame? Is it mechanical (linked to the frame advance) or optical (perhaps a sensor on the sprocket hole?).

Only I have one film that scans in *really* juddery. It looks OK on the screen while it's scanning, but the video file produced is very juddery, and often shows the line between the frames and sometimes even a bit of the adjacent frame at the top of the video. Like I said, none of this appears on the mini-screen while scanning.

The reason I asked about optical or mechanical shutter triggering is because if I look at the actual film I can see transparent areas around the sprocket holes.

Shame, because this is an important family film, so I'd really like to be able to scan it.

I'm using the latest @Mac84 firmware BTW. I couldn't get the @0dan0 version to work on my machine.

Scrap that - it's the machine that's broken. Films which scanned perfectly yesterday are now showing this juddering too.

Unless there's an easy fix it'll have to go back for a replacement.

 

[0dan0]

Here is an example of mine during capture. B model v6.8 with a 32GB card. It did the same with 4GB card (just trying anything at this point). I am still willing to hook up a serial reader if I knew what needed to be captured.

Thank you the for video. I think there might be an exposure bias in the non-volatile memory. V6.8 using extra memory locations to store green tint and exposure bias. The firmware assumes these location are zero as initial condition, but what if they weren't. I will work on a variation to test this.

With a serial port it is easy to test. I going to display green tint and ev bias with the histogram in V6.9.

 

[TheElk]

Scrap that - it's the machine that's broken. Films which scanned perfectly yesterday are now showing this juddering too.

Unless there's an easy fix it'll have to go back for a replacement.

I scanned around 1000 films whit @Mac84 s version and some of these films showed jittering too.
I then scanned this film again. if this was not helping, I replaced the glue point at the film start with a new one. If this was not helping either, I changed the selection of the scan window and put it one or two pictures up or down ... Now I have all films with nearly no jittering. But I wait for the newst version from @0dan0 with no jittering and the correct color grading and the correct brightness.

 

[PaulOckenden]

I scanned around 1000 films whit @Mac84 s version and some of these films showed jittering too.
I then scanned this film again. if this was not helping, I replaced the glue point at the film start with a new one. If this was not helping either, I changed the selection of the scan window and put it one or two pictures up or down ... Now I have all films with nearly no jittering. But I wait for the newst version from @0dan0 with no jittering and the correct color grading and the correct brightness.

Mine is definitely a fault. About half way through a film it started juddering, and then subsequently any film I scanned (including those which had previously scanned perfectly) juddered badly too.
Something has obviously come adrift inside the machine. Luckily it’s fairly new so I can just exchange it, if it was a bit older I’d have pulled it apart to see if I could fix it.

 

[Asielus]

So this only happens on 400 foot reels? I'm not sure I have any of those. Making sure this is play length, not scanning time (Reels scanning time.) As at 15m 10s playback, this error occurs after 2h6m hours of scanning?

It is play length!