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

[thjakob]

What Blocksize did you use ? See my answer on post ( #859 ). May be try to put a small file on the card when attached to your PC.

What you all knew already...

Based on TheElk's suggestion, I formatted a few cards with Fat32 32kb blocks (only possible in Windows with additional tools such as Rufus – Windows does not allow this formatting > 32GB with 32kb block (although it is actually valid according to the FAT standard definition))...
... and what can I say : the scanner scans and scans

maximum test: 64 GB of nonsense written to the 128 GB card – and then continued scanning with the scanner – so far so good

Belongs to the topic: good to know – but not really necessary...

I'll keep quiet for now that this also works with a 64kb block size...

 

[thjakob]

The random stopping is known, and happens more with the sharper lens. It will most often happen when the scene has a lot of texture and details, for which the new lens reveals more. The encoder is crashing with so much information (it is a crappy encoder from ~2011.) user control, a lower sharpness can help. Things I can try for this. 1. At least display the error message, so you can know why it stopped. 2. Allow user controlled bitrate, by setting Qp new limit. 3. Lowering the overall bitrate/quality (not planning on.). The issue for 2., I have run out of buttons in their current usage method. I have tried to stop the crashing, but without source code, not much more I can do.

thanks for pointing that out (sorry – I had overlooked that information before).
Well, we don't want the images to be any less sharp – what's strange is that these previously “broken” areas then slip through on a second attempt... memory leak – or something like that...

It's fine by me – no feature request for me.

 

[ThePhage]

I've taken the opportunity to revise the User Guide to 0Dan0's Custom Firmware to include some Known Issues. Will try to keep these updated as progress is made. I've also revised the Version Release notes section.

Also, @eyeidea, while I think it would be great for someone to put together a summary of lens modification efforts, that's one topic I've decided to not add in. For anyone who would like to do that, that would be most welcome and I'll gladly cross reference that information in the User Guide I'm maintaining.

 

[0dan0]

thanks for pointing that out (sorry – I had overlooked that information before).
Well, we don't want the images to be any less sharp – what's strange is that these previously “broken” areas then slip through on a second attempt... memory leak – or something like that...

It's fine by me – no feature request for me.

Qp - compression quality - will ramp up over time. Often a tough segment will be at a low Qp (high quality) at the time of the encoder crash. The next capture for the same frames uses a higher Qp, almost always solving the issue.

 

[hasi]

I have installed Version A7.1.1.
The colors are sensational and no fame flicker occurs anymore. Thank you for your excellent work!
With this firmware, my Kodak Reels allow only to access the Record and the Rewind function. On all the other commands like view my recordings etc., the machine freezes. in addition, I guess that the limit of 16700 frames per recording is due to the limited file size of FAT? My USB- Stick with NTFS works fine with large MP4 files. if these items could be fixed, the firmware would be absolutely perfect.