Hello, I flashed the firmware today. But I will test it tomorrow, it's now to late for today
Can you tell me your used settings for exposure and tint?
Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)
- Thread starter Mac84
- Start date
Can you tell me your used settings for exposure and tint?
Just ran my first reel with this firmware and the results are glorious. Love the bitrate, and having a set WB avoids a LOT of problems. Kudos on the great work!!
Hello,
I am living in Germany and I have the Kodak Reels (Model No. RODREELSEU) with firmware no. 2 (type B) since last year and I have it successfully converted to 23 Mbit/s with the instructions on this page.
What I am still missing now is
1. the manual white balance,
2. the manual exposure and
3. the possibility to create files larger than 4 GB with exFat formated SD cards.
Is there a manual on how to turn off the automatic white balance in the firmware?
Or a firmware version B where this is already done.
If there is a firmware that solves the problems mentioned, I will digitize my Super 8 films again
Andreas
I am living in Germany and I have the Kodak Reels (Model No. RODREELSEU) with firmware no. 2 (type B) since last year and I have it successfully converted to 23 Mbit/s with the instructions on this page.
What I am still missing now is
1. the manual white balance,
2. the manual exposure and
3. the possibility to create files larger than 4 GB with exFat formated SD cards.
Is there a manual on how to turn off the automatic white balance in the firmware?
Or a firmware version B where this is already done.
If there is a firmware that solves the problems mentioned, I will digitize my Super 8 films again
Andreas
Hello Andreas,
Thank you for your interest in this project.
The process of adjusting the white balance and exposure is not easy. People are working hard at looking at the code and trying to reverse engineer it. It is still be looking at by a number of great people here. When there is enough progress to be shared it will be.
Recent Kodak firmware updates did promise "longer recording times" but I am unsure if this bypasses the 4 GB limit of files.
Hello 0dan0,
I tested it now with a short film sequence. Overall it looks very good. Sometimes I thought that yellow is a little bit to much.
But maybe it's just the age of the film. Left is stockfirmware with Mac84 Firmware, right image with your FW V2. The look feels not so cold.
I will test other movie reels
I was only "calibrating" to a one reel, so it might be too warm on other reels. So ultimately a white balance control is want I hope for. But as the white balance is not changing, it is easier to fix in post for each shot or reel, rather than for each frame with auto WB.
Especially compared to the original firmware, the colors are really much more stable when the light changes. I'll see which program is best for adjusting the colors. Do you have a recommendation? You have to cut and crop it anyway
I use Premiere Pro, which is a bit pricy. DaVinci Resolve is free and can easily do it.Especially compared to the original firmware, the colors are really much more stable when the light changes. I'll see which program is best for adjusting the colors. Do you have a recommendation? You have to cut and crop it anyway
I have a new concern and maybe more extreme hack potential. We increase the bit-rate to get a more natural grain, rather than compression artifacts, yet the resolution (even 1920x1440) seems insufficient to resolve the grain. While it likely resolving something close to the film's potential (subject resolution), it is not resolving the grain, and I'm wondering why. Why is a high-end scan, even at 2K, have better grain structure than the output of Reels/Reelz 3280x2464 sensor? I'm not expected miracles, but something is less than optimal.
The first assumption we need to throw out, is the whole 1/3" sensor area is used. Wishful thinking: the whole 3280x2464 was being read in, cropped to the user requirement then scaled down to the output resolution. If this was the case, there should be more information in 1920x1440 scan, than a 1440x1080, but I'm not seeing it. Leads to these possibilities:
1) the filmmed image is only using a fraction of the sensor.
2) the camera is using a binned mode.
I expect the camera is using a combination of the two.
As this is based on dashcam technology, another clue is the weird 20fps. I filmed the LCD as the film was pulled through with a GoPro 120fps, and observed the sensor image is updating at 20fps. This is a bad sign. As a 20fps readout at 3280x2464 on this old SoC, is very unlikely. If the sensor is an OmniVision OV8810 (or similar), they can only read 3K at 10fps (it would have been better to see a 10Hz update)
Yet the same sensor does do 1080p up to 30fps. This is either binned or cropped, but likely binned. A binned sensor has a minimum of 2x2 resolution drop. 1640x1232 is the likely input image to the pipeline. This is still okay, way more information than Super 8 film is likely to hold. But I see less than that. When I test how much the reframing allows for left/right movement, to scan off the film, only about 56% is used for active picture. That would be around 932x700 for the good part of super-8. I'm resolving slightly less than that, more like 640x480. This part I've yet to determine.
I felt the resolution is so low as I'm seeing odd artifacts at the spocket hole. From a 1920x1440 scan (Mac84's spocket here) the smallest detectable detail is always about 3 pixels wide. 1920/3 = 640.
This could be a binning/debayer artifact at that bright edge, so I confirmed this by scanning some writing on the leader. Here is a crop of a leader only scan, no film grain involved. The image has aliasing that shouldn't be there, the aliasing is again around 3 pixels wide. Crudely confirmed but scaling the image down and up again, to see at what resolution the image information/detail is maintained.
As we are not getting the original source code, so the native sensor read-out is not available to us. I gather this is a M12 lens, that you can unscrew, and some users are changing the focus. My theory this is a 12mm lens (focal length), whereas it could be a 16mm, this would be 33% bump in scanned resolution, just be tighter in the framing (so camera alignment might be an issue.) A manufacture might choose a wider lens, to ease the tolerances, to make the device cheaper.
Can anyone help confirm this is a 12mm lens? What are the steps to remove the lens cover (focusing or lens replacement)?
I'm still missing a step where the potential drop is from 930 to 640 is happening, so all ideas are welcome for what could be fixed with firmware or hardware tweaks.
The first assumption we need to throw out, is the whole 1/3" sensor area is used. Wishful thinking: the whole 3280x2464 was being read in, cropped to the user requirement then scaled down to the output resolution. If this was the case, there should be more information in 1920x1440 scan, than a 1440x1080, but I'm not seeing it. Leads to these possibilities:
1) the filmmed image is only using a fraction of the sensor.
2) the camera is using a binned mode.
I expect the camera is using a combination of the two.
As this is based on dashcam technology, another clue is the weird 20fps. I filmed the LCD as the film was pulled through with a GoPro 120fps, and observed the sensor image is updating at 20fps. This is a bad sign. As a 20fps readout at 3280x2464 on this old SoC, is very unlikely. If the sensor is an OmniVision OV8810 (or similar), they can only read 3K at 10fps (it would have been better to see a 10Hz update)
Yet the same sensor does do 1080p up to 30fps. This is either binned or cropped, but likely binned. A binned sensor has a minimum of 2x2 resolution drop. 1640x1232 is the likely input image to the pipeline. This is still okay, way more information than Super 8 film is likely to hold. But I see less than that. When I test how much the reframing allows for left/right movement, to scan off the film, only about 56% is used for active picture. That would be around 932x700 for the good part of super-8. I'm resolving slightly less than that, more like 640x480. This part I've yet to determine.
I felt the resolution is so low as I'm seeing odd artifacts at the spocket hole. From a 1920x1440 scan (Mac84's spocket here) the smallest detectable detail is always about 3 pixels wide. 1920/3 = 640.
This could be a binning/debayer artifact at that bright edge, so I confirmed this by scanning some writing on the leader. Here is a crop of a leader only scan, no film grain involved. The image has aliasing that shouldn't be there, the aliasing is again around 3 pixels wide. Crudely confirmed but scaling the image down and up again, to see at what resolution the image information/detail is maintained.
As we are not getting the original source code, so the native sensor read-out is not available to us. I gather this is a M12 lens, that you can unscrew, and some users are changing the focus. My theory this is a 12mm lens (focal length), whereas it could be a 16mm, this would be 33% bump in scanned resolution, just be tighter in the framing (so camera alignment might be an issue.) A manufacture might choose a wider lens, to ease the tolerances, to make the device cheaper.
Can anyone help confirm this is a 12mm lens? What are the steps to remove the lens cover (focusing or lens replacement)?
I'm still missing a step where the potential drop is from 930 to 640 is happening, so all ideas are welcome for what could be fixed with firmware or hardware tweaks.
That's great deal of data, and interesting to think about.
Concerning the camera/lens, MAC84 in his Nov 12, 2023 (page 3 of this forum post) shows a great picture of the camera with the cover removed. Notice the 6 rectangular holes in the metal frame. The cover clips into these holes. I used an old credit card inserted from the front around the cover to depress the plastic clips carefully and removed the cover. The credit card is a soft plastic, so no damage to the case was seen. I tweaked the focus, but I think it was pretty spot on to begin with. The lens assembly seems to just unscrew, so another lens could conceivably screw right on in place of the OEM one.
@fishgee Thank you. I have lens out now, and it appears to be an 8mm lens.
This is not great news, the lens is wider than I had expected. The active Super-8 frame will use 5.46x4.01mm out of an effective FOV of around 13.4x10mm. This about 40.7% on the active capture area. As I believe the image is binned to 1640, the active useful pixels are 688x516, very close to the 640x480 artifacts I was detecting. Marketing a 1728x1296 capture that is up-res'd from about 688x516 is a tad evil.
I have a 12 and 16mm lens on order to experiment.
This is not great news, the lens is wider than I had expected. The active Super-8 frame will use 5.46x4.01mm out of an effective FOV of around 13.4x10mm. This about 40.7% on the active capture area. As I believe the image is binned to 1640, the active useful pixels are 688x516, very close to the 640x480 artifacts I was detecting. Marketing a 1728x1296 capture that is up-res'd from about 688x516 is a tad evil.
I have a 12 and 16mm lens on order to experiment.