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

[wnt2fly]

Hey all an update here from my side. I've sent back both the wolverine pro and the kodak unit, rest assured I captured the ROM from both. That said, I have a heavily modified/custom built wolverine coming with a hawkeye camera installed (search wolverine hawkeye and you'll get info on it). It has a massive sensor and full control over everything, plus it captures to your PC as a string of images. Will share photos and scan results after it arrives.

With that said, I'm not going to abandon you all here. I've got a developer looking into reverse engineering the kodak rom, I hope to have more details soon. We'll see what that will cost for his time and what he thinks he's able to do with it.

Also thanks to @Mac84 he was able to pull out an image from the rom which has probably the manufacture of the unit. I found a reseller (Winait) and they refuse to work w/me on a custom rom.

Stay tuned...

 

[Mac84]

I'm currently working on a video about this whole saga, including new comparison videos, etc. But in that process I'm re-scanning some film with higher settings. I thought I'd share an example. You can sadly see that the auto exposure and white balance put a blue tint to the opening shot here... but still the quality isn't bad. This is film my father shot at the 1964/1965 World's Fair in NY in '65.

Besides adding a title to the video, no picture adjustments have been made.

 

[fishgee]

Hi folks. What a great project thread you've got here. I've been modifying off the shelf stuff to make it do what I want for years. So this might be a lot of fun for 2025. I just received Kodak Reels digitizer from Amazon, "sold by GadgetBasket". To add to the serial number mix, it has a "K" serial: K3124148BKXXXXX.
The menu "About" page shows it is Version 2.0. So I wonder where it is in the manufacturing lineup. I have yet to crack the case on it, although I did tweak the focus ring a bit. The as-is scans don't look too bad so far really. I'm working on a good workflow process for cleaning up and improving the color rendition of the resulting video now.

 

[0dan0]

Also looking to try this. My brand new unit (version 2.0) has also has a K serial in form K3124148BKXXXXX. No stock firmware image from these new units yet?

 

[Cogniclaw]

Just received a unit today w/ serial K312, Firmware v B resulted in red screen, however I'm writing here to (with a sigh of relief) inform you that the Firmware you linked here, (FW for H323) successfully put her back to normal. Going to try Version C now.

 

[Joe90]

Hey everyone,

I made a bit of a breakthrough with modding firmware for my Somikon 8mm film scanner in mid-late 2024. I made a post with downloads at http://blog.hansom.dev but I've also attached the modified firmware images below. The same hack of forcing the QP to a low-ish fixed value should work for any of the Winait scanners. The QP basically controls how much lossy compression is applied to each image and lower values are better. It seems, from my research, like the scanners have been deliberately crippled by the manufacturer by always selecting really high QP values. You can see from the sample video on my page that pausing it results in an image with no noticeable blocking artifacts.

I don't know yet what happens when a video reaches the 4GB maximum file size for FAT32 as I haven't scanned a 400ft reel.
I'm currently trying to find a way of disabling Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance for these scanners.

Thanks a million to @Mac84 for starting this thread and posting firmware images on an earlier page! I can report that the Reflecta firmware works perfectly on Somikon scanners too! and un-bricked my machine so that I could continue my hacking.

Best,
Joe

 

[Mac84]

Hi folks. What a great project thread you've got here. I've been modifying off the shelf stuff to make it do what I want for years. So this might be a lot of fun for 2025. I just received Kodak Reels digitizer from Amazon, "sold by GadgetBasket". To add to the serial number mix, it has a "K" serial: K3124148BKXXXXX.
The menu "About" page shows it is Version 2.0. So I wonder where it is in the manufacturing lineup. I have yet to crack the case on it, although I did tweak the focus ring a bit. The as-is scans don't look too bad so far really. I'm working on a good workflow process for cleaning up and improving the color rendition of the resulting video now.

Yes, sadly the "About" screen is pretty useless. It has only displayed 1.0 (in very early units) and now displays 2.0. Externally the only difference is the number on the serial number sticker, and perhaps the LCD hardware inside the device.

Also looking to try this. My brand new unit (version 2.0) has also has a K serial in form K3124148BKXXXXX. No stock firmware image from these new units yet?

It appears (assuming the serial numbers are going alphabetically) that the "K" series is following the "H" series. The post below confirms that this series should work fine with the Firmware "C" - originally labeled for the "H" series devices matching that serial number. Good luck!

Just received a unit today w/ serial K312, Firmware v B resulted in red screen, however I'm writing here to (with a sigh of relief) inform you that the Firmware you linked here, (FW for H323) successfully put her back to normal. Going to try Version C now.

Good to know, thanks so much for testing! And for being brave!

Hey everyone,

I made a bit of a breakthrough with modding firmware for my Somikon 8mm film scanner in mid-late 2024. I made a post with downloads at http://blog.hansom.dev but I've also attached the modified firmware images below. The same hack of forcing the QP to a low-ish fixed value should work for any of the Winait scanners. The QP basically controls how much lossy compression is applied to each image and lower values are better. It seems, from my research, like the scanners have been deliberately crippled by the manufacturer by always selecting really high QP values. You can see from the sample video on my page that pausing it results in an image with no noticeable blocking artifacts.

I don't know yet what happens when a video reaches the 4GB maximum file size for FAT32 as I haven't scanned a 400ft reel.
I'm currently trying to find a way of disabling Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance for these scanners.

Thanks a million to @Mac84 for starting this thread and posting firmware images on an earlier page! I can report that the Reflecta firmware works perfectly on Somikon scanners too! and un-bricked my machine so that I could continue my hacking.

Best,
Joe

Ah interesting - you may want to check out this post by @Branchus who posted about mods they did to their Wolverine model. It seems there are many similar models to the Wolverine that are simply marketed under different names.

 

[0dan0]

Just received a unit today w/ serial K312, Firmware v B resulted in red screen, however I'm writing here to (with a sigh of relief) inform you that the Firmware you linked here, (FW for H323) successfully put her back to normal. Going to try Version C now.

Did version C work on K312 hardware?

 

[0dan0]

I braved it. Firmware C works on serial K3124148BKXXXXX hardware. I have tried original resolution, high bitrate, and got and output of 17698kbps vs 8736kbps of the stock firmware. Both at sharpness -1.5.

Stock:

high bitrate:

Clearly more texture not compressed away in the HBR version. I still see some differences between the I and P-frames of the compression, suggesting there are still compression issues to solve, but it is a huge step up.

 

[0dan0]

Adding back to your hacking options. I found I could push the bit-rate a lot more if I dropped to the resolution only slightly to 1600x1200, still plenty for an oversampled 1080p scan. I was running 24Mb/s. I scanned a 5" Super-8 reel twice, once with stock firmware, and again with these settings:

24Mb/s for a 1600x1200 (the pixel count is very near Full HD), feel about right for a 15 frame GOP H.264 with only I and P frames. This is not a very efficient compressor. A stock classic (original) GoPro HERO used a 15-frame GOP with only I and P frames with h.264, it shoot 1080p30 at around 20Mb/s. HERO2 did 1080p 24p at 35Mb/s (Protune). So I'm happy with 24Mb/s.

Here is the same frame scanned at 1600x1200 at the highest bit-rate.

 

[Mac84]

Thanks for sharing your examples! Great work - I'm glad you were successful in your mod.

And yes (at least in my tests) it doesn't seem you get too much of a quality increase if you go beyond a certain bitrate. However, it certainly improves things and reduces compression artifacts from the stock bitrate. That's good to know that 1600x1200 is also an acceptable resolution.

 

[fishgee]

I was using the Frame Adjust feature, and zooming all the way out showed quite a bit of area around the film frame itself. So I started wondering if there would be any benefit to physically moving the camera mount so the camera is closer to the film table. That way you wouldn't have to digitally zoom in so much, and you'd use more of the pixels that the camera has to capture the actual image you want. Or would the software itself negate any improvement?

 

[Mac84]

I was using the Frame Adjust feature, and zooming all the way out showed quite a bit of area around the film frame itself. So I started wondering if there would be any benefit to physically moving the camera mount so the camera is closer to the film table. That way you wouldn't have to digitally zoom in so much, and you'd use more of the pixels that the camera has to capture the actual image you want. Or would the software itself negate any improvement?

That's a good idea, however it would requite quite a bit of modification due to the way the camera and plastics are seated.

Furthermore, I think when you are zooming the image via the menu it just performs a crop. I don't think it's performing any digital zoom. I've confirmed this (in my eyes at least) by taking numerous samples and it doesn't seem to degrade the image as a digital zoom would.

 

[Mac84]

I'd like to share a special preview of my Kodak 8mm Reels video saga. This is only half of the video, and not all the shots and bits are complete. But I wanted to share it because I show and discuss the sharpness settings and the results of them. Later in the video I go into the resolution modding (not shown in this clip) but I wanted to show some examples.

Let me know what you think of this preview! I hope to have the full video done soon.

 

[0dan0]

Nice video, I look forward to part two.

I'm auto interested in disabling the auto white balance. In the decompressed firmware, the .rbn file I can see the function names related to white balance.

If we could find the offset to the AWB_IsLock() function (auto white balance is locked?), it could be change to always be true, removing the white balance from the exposure control loop. In your Novatek hacking investigations, has anyone found good disassembler?

 

[0dan0]

Custom boot and shutdown images. So firmware is changeable is more ways:

 

[Mac84]

Yep! The images are certainly able to be modified. Attached is an example of me putting my logo on a screen. It's funny that all the menu options are actually images - you think it would be easier to build it with text for multiple languages...

As far as the white balance and exposure - yes, there's plenty of references in the firmware. However, after consulting with a few programmer friends, they suspect this is likely references to code or "strings" that were comments to functionality. However, without decoding the surrounding code and understanding the structure, I'm sure if you can make much of an impact.

The code also references HDMI and Wi-Fi, which aren't presented on this device. If you're inclined, I'd strongly recommend messing with the Serial Monitor hack - there you can actually send commands to and from the device. There are white balance and exposure commands in the list of commands, but these may just be leftover test functions. I can't seem to wrap my head around how to call them.

In addition, the routine (or pipeline) that the system kicks off when you start a capture is seemingly not in the list of commands (or it's not labeled as such to find it easily).

 

[Joe90]

Hey @Mac84

Really like the video! You're a great presenter.

I had a quick look at the Kodak C firmware. The code is so similar to the Wolverine firmware that I'd say it was forked from it at some point.

I made a lossless compression (QP 0) version of it for you. I don't have one of these Kodak machines yet so I can't test it. I can more or less guarantee it won't brick your machine though. You should get bit-rates of 50Mbps or higher using this firmware. Your machine may complain during scanning that it doesn't have enough memory. If this happens you just need to revert to known working firmware image.

Best,
Joe

 

[Joe90]

If the QP 0 firmware doesn't scan film or generate output, you can try these firmware images with the QP fixed at 5 and 10.

 

[Mac84]

Thank you. Can you explain what you did to modify the firmware? Since you don't have a Kodak unit to test this on, I'm very curious of the changes you may have done. Was it just to the resolution / bit rates? Because I've tried higher bit rates and it will crash during the recording process.

I've gotten close to 20-30 but no where near 50. I think there's certainly a ceiling on the limited compression routine built into these things, as demonstrated above by @0dan0