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

[Federico]

I love how you have restored the camera cover. You should add some cover for the circuit board, as there is a small amount of light that can leak through the PCB. In very dark images, with a lot of sensor gain, you can see circuit outlines, which is a tad bizarre. I just did my third unit, with the same F2.8 Lens.
With a piece of black masking tape over the circuit board.

HI @0dan0 thank you: I was thinking of the same iris reduction as well; thank you for the models!
The new holder looks nice: is the cable long enough to allow the front slide?
With the old model I struggled a bit because this is the part that required a very high cut in the main body of the scanner, only to allow the top half of the holder to slide down: now it should allow a tighter fit.

I've added the masking tape, for precaution, thank you!

One request on the firmware: could you please make the text beside the histogram a bit bigger? It's not a priority, but I believe that many of us struggle a bit wo read the values

One suggestion on the 3D printing: I the little grey tensors of the film seem eager to scratch the surface; do you think that printing some small pipes to put around (the tensors can be removed from the inside, the pipe slide in and the tensor fixed again) could help? something free to spin around the tensor. Besides they could be cover with something soft as suggested some post before, but moving the friction from the film to the pipes.

Ciao! Federico

Thank you!

 

[0dan0]

HI @0dan0 thank you: I was thinking of the same iris reduction as well; thank you for the models!
The new holder looks nice: is the cable long enough to allow the front slide?

One request on the firmware: could you please make the text beside the histogram a bit bigger?

Yes the cable (on my unit) was long enough, and it was much easier to mount the lens from the front than the top.

Font could be made bigger, but I had to create the font by hand, with some LLM help. So it is not a small task.

I'm not sure what scratches the film, I haven't done anything more than put PEC PAD on the rollers (which seems to help.)

 

[lrussell887]

Let me know if you seeing much jitter in 7.0, as the preview auto exposure was originally disabled to reduce jitter. Now the preview auto exposure biases to a short shutter, hopefully to achieve the same jitter reduction. I'm not seeing any jitter my brief testing.

I've been working on digitizing old family films on my Type B scanner and have more often than not been running into frame jitter issues with v7.1.1. I've tried two different SD cards, one Onn 64GB U3 card and now a SanDisk 64GB Extreme PRO U3 card with a V30 rating. Both formatted to FAT32 (not exFAT) with an allocation unit size of 32768 KB. I've also tried both default sharpness 0.0 (which results in a higher bitrate) and -2.0 and it still frequently happens with both, so best I can tell it has nothing to do with write speed. It starts and the beginning of the recording and persists throughout.

Do you have any idea what might be causing or it, or have any suggestions? I may try v6.9 but I'm hesitant to lose the other improvements you've made since.

I also really do want to thank you for your work on this firmware, the results overall really are a night and day difference compared to the stock firmware.

 

[ThePhage]

I can also report that several instances of my scans on a type C with 7.1.1 have frame jitter (frankly it happens more often than it doesn’t happen. Sometimes it’s significant, but sometimes very subtle and I have to look closely for it or compare to older scans of the same footage.

Would lowering the exposure bias using the provided controls potentially help? (Increasing shutter speed)

Or are there any other tweaks you can think of to reduce it?

I haven’t tried a wide variety of footage yet, but I have noticed that jitter happens more often with Super8 than 8mm (probably due to frame size).

Thanks again! When they are stable, my recent scans of 7.1.1 are blowing away the previous scans, including detail and color.

 

[omega]

I've written about it here before. Maybe it will help here too.
#573

 

[0dan0]

I'm only seeing this now in 5% or fewer captures, but maybe I'm lucky. As stated before, it also happens on stock firmware, but it would appear more often with the hacked firmware as it allows for a wider field of view. This is a design flaw, as it appears there is no good sync between the motor moving the film, and the frame grab. As @omega mentions, the friction and the tension from the take up reel are a contributing factor. I've decreased some friction on mine with Pec pads (and reduce scratching.)

The frame is only stationary of 50% of the time, 250ms per frame. As this unit is PAL 25Hz based, 40ms per frame (I'm assuming the worst rolling shutter timing.) So 40ms from 250ms should be easy, yet sometimes the tearing is on top, and sometimes the bottom (250ms apart), so the frame grab timing is a super sloppy (again this is in the original firmware design.)

I shot the screen at 360fps (GoPro HERO13 burst slow motion) and presented at 3.3% speed, so you can see all the subtle frame movement that is causing this problem.

I did another slomo test with slack on the track up reel, so the film movement is only from the sprocket feeder, and all the same extract motion is present. The cam that drives the sprocket is just a bad design.

 

[Grandson]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to scan some of my grandfather's 8mm films and was not satisfied with the scan results from the Kodak Reels. It is a newer device, model number RODREELSEU, with serial number H282... and version 2.0 on the "About Us" screen.

I started with Steve's Kodak 8mm Digitizer Firmware Lookup Tool. Results:
"Your serial number was NOT found on the list.
Use Firmware B labeled files for your device."

In the second step, I installed Firmware B FWDV280.bin v7.1.1. Reboot and start logo are normal, but all the buttons no longer work. I can't adjust any settings or start scanning. I then tried v7.1 and v7.0, but the buttons still didn't work.

Please help! Kodak no longer offers original firmware either. So I'm currently stuck :-(

Many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
The grandson

 

[ThePhage]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to scan some of my grandfather's 8mm films and was not satisfied with the scan results from the Kodak Reels. It is a newer device, model number RODREELSEU, with serial number H282... and version 2.0 on the "About Us" screen.

I started with Steve's Kodak 8mm Digitizer Firmware Lookup Tool. Results:
"Your serial number was NOT found on the list.
Use Firmware B labeled files for your device."

In the second step, I installed Firmware B FWDV280.bin v7.1.1. Reboot and start logo are normal, but all the buttons no longer work. I can't adjust any settings or start scanning. I then tried v7.1 and v7.0, but the buttons still didn't work.

Please help! Kodak no longer offers original firmware either. So I'm currently stuck :-(

Many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
The grandson

I suspect that newer units are more likely compatible with the C firmware (the unit lookup tool doesn't accurately report on newer units). Give this one a try: FWDV280-TypeC-V7.1.1-0dan0

 

[fishgee]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to scan some of my grandfather's 8mm films and was not satisfied with the scan results from the Kodak Reels. It is a newer device, model number RODREELSEU, with serial number H282... and version 2.0 on the "About Us" screen.

I started with Steve's Kodak 8mm Digitizer Firmware Lookup Tool. Results:
"Your serial number was NOT found on the list.
Use Firmware B labeled files for your device."

In the second step, I installed Firmware B FWDV280.bin v7.1.1. Reboot and start logo are normal, but all the buttons no longer work. I can't adjust any settings or start scanning. I then tried v7.1 and v7.0, but the buttons still didn't work.

Please help! Kodak no longer offers original firmware either. So I'm currently stuck :-(

Many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
The grandson

AFAIK Steve's lookup tool was copied from the Kodak tool and is 2 years old so it doesn't have all the recent serial numbers. I would try earlier Firmware B versions, or even C versions. It appears from discussions on here that even if you try to install the wrong version, you won't completely brick your machine. It just won't work correctly. You can always try another version till you get it running.

When rebooted, did your startup screen show the new firmware number 7.1.1 and Odano's notes on what changed? If not, then the update didn't work. Should look something like this:

 

[Grandson]

Thank you very much for your replies ThePhage and fishgee!

I tested the firmware from 0dan0 (post Oct 22, 2025) v7.1 for both TypeB and TypeC. Unfortunately, without success.

With TypeB, as before, all buttons are dead.
With TypeC, nothing works either, and the screens also have color shifts.
4 attachments are included for reference.

What can I try next?

Many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
The grandson

 

[fishgee]

Thank you very much for your replies ThePhage and fishgee!

I tested the firmware from 0dan0 (post Oct 22, 2025) v7.1 for both TypeB and TypeC. Unfortunately, without success.

With TypeB, as before, all buttons are dead.
With TypeC, nothing works either, and the screens also have color shifts.
4 attachments are included for reference.

What can I try next?

Many thanks in advance!
Best regards,
The grandson

I noticed your model number is RODREELSEU. Mine (in US) is just RODREELS without the EU. Is your unit a European one? If so, maybe that is the reason the firmware isn't working 100%. If you go way back to the first posts of this thread, I think the original Kodak versions of firmware were posted. Sort of a fall back position in case things went sideways. Look for an original B version, since the C you tried screwed up the display. Best of luck.

 

[0dan0]

@Grandson Try the original firmware from https://mac84.net/8mmlookup/

If that doesn't work, either the unit has failed (return) or model RODREELSEU is something new not covered by Type A, B or C.

 

[Grandson]

Yes, that's right, fishgee, it's a model purchased in the EU.

I've now tried various firmware versions, including the ones without the hack—Kodak firmware.
Unfortunately, without success so far.
It boots up, the screen appears, but all the buttons are dead—they don't work.

 

[0dan0]

@Grandson did you also try Type A? I think if not Type A the screen with remain blank.

Is this the first we have seen RODREELSEU on this thread?

 

[omega]

Yes, that's right, fishgee, it's a model purchased in the EU.

I've now tried various firmware versions, including the ones without the hack—Kodak firmware.
Unfortunately, without success so far.
It boots up, the screen appears, but all the buttons are dead—they don't work.

Hi,
I also have a device from EU. Try using firmware from #511
It works for me.

 

[Grandson]

@Grandson did you also try Type A? I think if not Type A the screen with remain blank.

Is this the first we have seen RODREELSEU on this thread?

Thanks 0dan0.

Firmware A also tested, without success.
See attached screenshots.

 

[Grandson]

Hi,
I also have a device from EU. Try using firmware from #511
It works for me.

Hi omega,
good to know that someone else here is still using an EU model.
I unzipped the MyFW_H2324148BK00769 folder. It contains two files: DUMPCODE.BIN and UITRON.BIN.
Are these supposed to go on the SD card for a firmware update?
I tried it, but nothing changed. See screenshots above (my last post).

 

[omega]

I'm really sorry. I forgot to write that the file UITRON.BIN needs to be renamed to FWDV280.
Big apologies again.

 

[Grandson]

I'm really sorry. I forgot to write that the file UITRON.BIN needs to be renamed to FWDV280.
Big apologies again.

No problem omega . I'm grateful for any help.
Unfortunately, it didn't work. I renamed the file, but your firmware doesn't work with this Kodak either.

 

[omega]

I'm sorry. All the versions of C mentioned here worked for me. Try going through this page firmware, you can see the same problem there.