@0dan0 Like @jackmonte1987, I am sometimes seeing a pronounced blue shift with a +2.0 WB set... See the attached clip, especially the end. I'd much rather see you expand the setting range than return to the crazy AWB in the stock firmware.
Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)
- Thread starter Mac84
- Start date
I will say the 0dan0 FW seems to perform really well with inside scenes, and the disabled AWB will help a ton in post. But if it switches scenes to a brighter scene or a light comes on it seems to just derail the whole project. I wind up having to stop and try and fight the settings to get it to look somewhat right again. The brights are super bright and almost glowing. Turning the WB up only makes it glow worse. I have tried recording for a few frames as suggested, but I cannot seem to nail down the issue. I think maybe the newer FW is better suited for fresh film that has not been aged?
@jackmonte1987 I have scanned dozens of reels from the 50s, 60s, 70s and my own B&W and Ektachrome from 2025, so that is not the issue. Some users report they wanted a brighter images so I added an EV control. Share a photo of the of histogram and your settings. Your images are too bright, as I can see the black level is lifted, see the histogram and setting might help explain why. Is this just after a scene change or it is constantly wrong? I just scanned a 400 foot reel for the 70s, indoors and outdoors, single setting for the whole thing.
I will say it's mostly on a scene change or outdoor scenes in general. I've had multiple scenes that I had to explicitly scan with the Mac FW because all the brightness just turned blue. I have had some good results in outdoor scenes at dusk and indoor scenes. But as you can see from my screenshots even the indoor scenes sometimes have a blown out look to them. It seems no matter how I mess with the settings there is a "glow" to the bright spots in scenes.
Here is a frame I took from the 6.8FW and this reel turned our great, filmed inside and had consistent color. Did not need to re-record this one
Mac84 FW
0dan0 fw 7.1
If you'd like, you can send me a message and we can do a video chat later on and I will demo my unit for you.
Before the above screenshots, there was about 20 frames of emptiness, meaning fully clear on the film. when it came back with color this is how it looked on both FW's. This section of the film is degraded as you can't see much anymore, but i thought it highlighted the issue. I've messed with all the settings in the 0dan0 fw, and it's easy to say "just up the green!" but I did that and it doesn't have the desired effect
Attachments
The blueness here doesn't seem to be a white balance issue, as the bright elements are correct. This is more the film response is non-linear. White balance is a linear RGB gain, this could be the nature of this film stock.
I was commenting and replying to sheider, his video has plenty of contrast, but the shadows are more blue, it is different to white-balance.I may just be stuck with Mac FW then
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I think we need a good instruction manual, because, like others, I’m getting better results from the Mac84 firmware even though I know that 0dan0’s version really should be capable of better results. I just feel like it probably needs more careful setup. And scanning the film several times at different settings if you have normal followed by dark followed by normal followed by bright etc. scenes. (As most old home movies seem to be).
That’s not to dismiss the effort that Dan has made with his firmware - it’s great that there’s this flexibility (and choice). It’s a bit like using a camera in manual or full auto mode. Manual will give you better results, but it takes more work to get there.
That’s not to dismiss the effort that Dan has made with his firmware - it’s great that there’s this flexibility (and choice). It’s a bit like using a camera in manual or full auto mode. Manual will give you better results, but it takes more work to get there.
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Actually I cannot agree with PaulOckenden about the quaity of 0dan0 firmware. I have a load of old Std8mm films, shot on Kodachrome II from about 1967 to 1975. I cannot remember all the cameras I had but the last one was a Soviet made Quarz 5 with a zoom lens. It had a clockwork mechanism which was very good and shot good films. I tried various settings on the original ("Type C") on my Kodak Reels digitizer. I agree with most people here that the quality leaves much to be desired and Kodak should really make an effort to improve things, like a better lens and, more importantly, decent processor board and firmware.
I tried 0dano version 6.9 firmware and did not get on with it very well. I now have v 7.1.1 and I find it much better. I use a sharpen of -1.0 - anything more negative is too smoothed. I use a "white balance" of 0.5 and a properly exposed Kodachrome film comes out just fine. There is no flicker, like you get with the original firmware and with Mac84 firmware. With underexposed stock I get a lot of grain - rather like underexposed digital cameras do - but otherwise it is just fine. No MP4 artifacts. I am so pleased that 0dan0 gives me the option of grabbing at 16fps - perfect for my std8 films. I use Davinci Resolve Studio but the free version will do most of what you want. I use stabillize to sort out the shaky hand held stuff and the colour grading tools are the best! There is a learning curve but actually trhe colour grading is easy - there are some excellent tutorials and video provided by Black Magic Design.
So no, I will not go back to the stock firmware, you are deluding yourself if you think it is better than the fantastic effort that 0dan0 and others have put in.
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say, so badly exposed, out of focus film will produce badly exposed, out of focus digitized versions, but, as I said, if the film is properly exposed and in focus I now get perfectly acceptable results with minimum grain.
I have not changed the lens, frankly for my stuff, it gains you nothing, but the firmware is prima! SO there.
To show the results on my UHD tv I save the end resultas 1440x1080 which produces small files and the tv (Panasonic) scales it up just fine.
I agree that projecting the film is best but the digitized version is OK.
Cheers
I tried 0dano version 6.9 firmware and did not get on with it very well. I now have v 7.1.1 and I find it much better. I use a sharpen of -1.0 - anything more negative is too smoothed. I use a "white balance" of 0.5 and a properly exposed Kodachrome film comes out just fine. There is no flicker, like you get with the original firmware and with Mac84 firmware. With underexposed stock I get a lot of grain - rather like underexposed digital cameras do - but otherwise it is just fine. No MP4 artifacts. I am so pleased that 0dan0 gives me the option of grabbing at 16fps - perfect for my std8 films. I use Davinci Resolve Studio but the free version will do most of what you want. I use stabillize to sort out the shaky hand held stuff and the colour grading tools are the best! There is a learning curve but actually trhe colour grading is easy - there are some excellent tutorials and video provided by Black Magic Design.
So no, I will not go back to the stock firmware, you are deluding yourself if you think it is better than the fantastic effort that 0dan0 and others have put in.
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say, so badly exposed, out of focus film will produce badly exposed, out of focus digitized versions, but, as I said, if the film is properly exposed and in focus I now get perfectly acceptable results with minimum grain.
I have not changed the lens, frankly for my stuff, it gains you nothing, but the firmware is prima! SO there.
To show the results on my UHD tv I save the end resultas 1440x1080 which produces small files and the tv (Panasonic) scales it up just fine.
I agree that projecting the film is best but the digitized version is OK.
Cheers
Nobody, and certainly not me, has suggested going back to the stock firmware. Please re-read what I wrote before criticising it.
I don't believe that my blueness issue is related to the firmware. Instead, my issue appears to be solely with the hardware. The light source has not been illuminating fully. Yesterday its illumination decreased by ~75% in the middle of a scan, and moments later it went completely dark! I was able to restore ~75% of the illumination by slapping the front of the case. Unfortunately, scans are still underexposed even when the v7.1.1 fw pegs the exposure at ISO 200 and ~6 ms shutter speed. So, I have initiated a warranty claim.
While I wait for a replacement unit to arrive, I hope that the great work here continues, both with the fw and the 16mm macro lens trial. I really want to replace the stock lens, but I also really don't want to void the warranty on these rather unreliable units by cutting into the case.
@0dan0 Thanks for your hard work! I was achieving 27 Mbps with the 7.1 firmware, but it has suddenly dropped to 22 Mbps. Is there a way to adjust the bitrate? The difference is quite noticeable. Additionally, post-processing the captured video in Topaz Video AI enhances it even further. This is my latest test with the most recent firmware (7.1 - Capture at 27 mbps).
I do find the recent criticisms odd, as I've only added more user control, but otherwise the base exposure logic hasn't change in 4+ months. WB has changed more, but only for more user control, so please share your settings with your results (one without the other is hard to use.) I've added on-screen feedback to make this easier, this is the main change to the new firmware. Just take a photo of your screen, or write down RGB gains, EV setting, ISO and exposure time.
As @sheider just pointed out, this could be scanner hardware differences or failures.
I was getting great results with v6.6-6.8, which only had manual white balance, without green tint control. The white balance wasn't perfect, but it was easily fixed in post. I get the same or better results from 7.1.1, if you don't change the EV, or completely change WB (under your control.) I never scan reels multiple times for exposure, that is very weird, you should not need to do that. As the exposure is adaptive, show when it is not. I think the EV control has gotten folks confused. EV 0-2 is the only practical range, sets once for user preference, not for a film or scene density. EV 0 is likely best for most.
I have no intention of adding auto WB back, as that is so wrong for a film scanner (it was the old dashcam logic, this is not created by Kodak, I think this is only a brand licensing deal.) When you project film, there is no auto white balance or auto exposure, just your eyeballs. Film only had tungsten and daylight white balance options, if shot wrong that is how it will be scanned (or projected.) The only reason there is auto exposure the my firmware, is the scanner's the 8-bit H264 is more limited in dynamic range than the film supports, so the autoexposure is only try to keep scanned data within the 8-bit range. My bias is film scans that are the most suitable for editing.
As @sheider just pointed out, this could be scanner hardware differences or failures.
I was getting great results with v6.6-6.8, which only had manual white balance, without green tint control. The white balance wasn't perfect, but it was easily fixed in post. I get the same or better results from 7.1.1, if you don't change the EV, or completely change WB (under your control.) I never scan reels multiple times for exposure, that is very weird, you should not need to do that. As the exposure is adaptive, show when it is not. I think the EV control has gotten folks confused. EV 0-2 is the only practical range, sets once for user preference, not for a film or scene density. EV 0 is likely best for most.
I have no intention of adding auto WB back, as that is so wrong for a film scanner (it was the old dashcam logic, this is not created by Kodak, I think this is only a brand licensing deal.) When you project film, there is no auto white balance or auto exposure, just your eyeballs. Film only had tungsten and daylight white balance options, if shot wrong that is how it will be scanned (or projected.) The only reason there is auto exposure the my firmware, is the scanner's the 8-bit H264 is more limited in dynamic range than the film supports, so the autoexposure is only try to keep scanned data within the 8-bit range. My bias is film scans that are the most suitable for editing.
Media looks great. The bit-rate is adaptive, it keeps increase the quality (Qp) until it sees an error, then back off the Qp a little, then slowly increases again, it does this continuously. Sometimes the encoder can crash as the encoder is not great. So there is no user bit-rate control. I would love to set to 80Mb/s and forget it, but the encoder crashed a lot. 35Mb/s is an average (with the new lens), it likely it ranges 25-45Mb/s. The stock lens is lower res, that might not get to 35Mb/s average.
With the new lens, does it maintain a bitrate of over 30 Mbps? If so, would this Lens and Extension ring do the trick? Can it be mounted without modification, or will I need a custom 3D-printed mount?
Thx.
The maximum bitrate the hardware can sustain is a limitation of the hardware of the device, specifically the system chipset and limited memory of the unit. A better lens can provide more detail, which effects the variable bitrate used when capturing images, but the hardware limit of a max bitrate remains.
The new lens sits differently on the camera area, so it needs a bracket to hold it higher (further away) from the plate where the film is passed through. Some designs are posted in this thread, I've been experimenting with a modified one, but it isn't perfect yet - as my focus is uneven.
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As there is 4 times the number of unique pixel processed, so there a more detail and more noise, so the bit-rate does tend to go up. However, more information and higher bit-rate does mean more quality per pixel. It is complex. For the new lens, you will a 3D-printed offset. As for https://www.rmaelectronics.com/ I placed an order about one week ago, they still haven't shipped. I expect that they are getting supplies from elsewhere
The focus is very tight. This likely not helped by the F2.8 aperture. Scorpion has some slower macro lenses, what would be much easier to focus. I've just never tried them, and RMA doesn't offer the slower lenses. e.g. 16mm F4.0 10MP https://shop.scorpion.vision/products/m12-lens-16mm-f4-1 and 12mm F5.6 3MP https://shop.scorpion.vision/products/m12-lens-12mm-f5-6 (although 3MP is concerning.)
Is uneven a left-right tilt issue?