8mm & Super 8 Films Digitizer Converter, Film Scanner

It’s been working overtime over the weekend converting both 8mm and Super 8, 50+ year old cine films from a generation gone by. Obviously the machine cannot rectify degredation of the films quality and the results are as would be expected but the memories flood back. Nice piece of stand alone kit the only possible hint of problems that I am encountering is that the frame movement has started to slip, this may be the films, although I now wind them from reel to reel prior to recording as they have laid dorment for so long. Fingers crossed that it is a minor glitch. Been happy with the results so far and with computer video editing you can improve the films considerably disguising some of the film degradation. The cost is as good as the product results and in meeting my expectations which so far is good. It is easy to use just a bit fiddly loading the film in the scanner and the controls are resonably easy to get to grips with. On the whole good bit of kit to date.

With this terrific little machine, I have just converted three old cine films that have laid in the attic for
fifty years . It is pure joy to see how we all were fifty years ago .
Now then , several reviews mention the frame scan speed and this may be an issue if your films have lots of fast moving content , mine don’t .
What’s happening is that the scanner records faster then super 8 was ever recorded at , so that in the play
back everything is slightly speeded up . If you think this is going to be problem , you will be better off
going for the more expensive 20 frames per second model .
Another issue is that the manufacturer has only painted one tab on the film gate when they should have painted all three tabs on the film gate . But it is very obvious where the film should be threaded and the instruction book is clear enough .
So for the price it’s a great little machine . It certainly does me . Super 8 was never ever high fidelity .
One last tip , I have changed the large SD card that came with the machine and record to a micro SD
card , then pop that card into my phone where the playback is really good and I can do all sorts of
editing tricks , like even makes GIF’s

After a faulty SD card caused a few issues, a replacement sorted it out and now (so far) all is good. I can only say that after digitizing 2 old 50ft cine films, it appears to be working well. I need to get to grips with some of the intricacies of the system like judder etc but I am sure I can get that sorted with experience.

I am really looking forward to seeing so many old films my late Father took in the 60’s and early 70’s before transferring to video.

This was a joint family buy to digitise our collections of cine films dating back 60 years.

It wasn’t straightforward out of the box at all and it took an evening to fathom everything out. It’s smaller than I expected and I worry from the noise whether the build quality makes it very long-lasting. Setup has taken a while to get it sorted out; the main problem was in trying to fathom how the on-screen menu worked and in the threading of the film through the gate. Neither the instructions nor the diagram painted on the front of the scanner matched what was actually there; two small black lugs and a single white tab. Once that was sorted the challenge was to position the frame within the viewer in the right place. Trial and error through the menus proved the best way, using films that weren’t so important as the ones we were really intent on scanning.

It has coped with 8mm and Super 8, but seems happier with 8mm.

As for results; it’s not HD but it’s better than trying to film these using a projector, and a heck of a sight easier. See the attached clip – bear in mind the film was sixty odd years old. The .mp4 files straight off the card are usable, but they run at 30fps instead of 15 or 16. I’ve used FCPX to stretch them (for some reason 64% seems to work best); I also use it to do the framing and tinker with the colour balance.

Couple of tips; always change or select the film type (8mm or super 8) BEFORE threading the film in; switch off before removing or inserting the SD card; keep an eye on the light and the gate – they get dusty very, very quickly. And you have to swap the reels round and rethread the scanner to rewind, using the ‘fast forward’ function.

After having tried many times to get a collection of family 8mm films into digital format but always being dissatisfied by poor flickering finally decided to purchase this scanner. Read all the reviews and nearly put off by the negative comments. However found it works well, true the resulting image does have some artifacts but these are minor compared to the lovely clean image. I have run through about 40 4min films and not have any broken or damaged films. The instructions are very light weight, but if followed will enable the digitiser to be operated very simply. Some of the negative feedback must be as the result of improper use as the comments don’t relate to my experience. My only concern may be about the durability of the unit, as there has been some change in the noise of the feed mechanism during the time I have been using it. I will continue to assess this while I complete my digitisation of my collection. It may be wearing in or wearing out…. at the present I am very satisfied.

Initially I tried to feed the film as shown on the instructions book / diagram on the unit itself, but the film path on the unit was completely different.
The film was jamming and juddering badly producing files which were useless. However, closer examination revealed that there are now a total of three tabs, one at each end of the front edge of the film guide (they are not marked in white) and one central tab (marked in white) nearest the machine. It’s a little tricky at first to feed the film in but once completed it feeds reliably and produces a pleasing result, worth persevering.
The instructions and film path on the machine need updating, in fact the booklet makes quite entertaining reading with some of the translated descriptions.
Overall, a useful unit which will digitize your home cine films, though at 30 minutes for a 3 minute film it’s not a speedy process – fortunately once it’s set in motion it can be left to its own devices as long as you don’t have too many bulky splices.
The overall appearance of the unit is very plasticky and cheap looking but it functions well enough so I feel that can be forgiven. The output mp4 files have to be slowed down but there’s lots of free software out there which will accomplish this very speedily. Well worth considering.

Purchased to transfer a number of home movies from the 50s to the 70s. Easy to use, the only fiddly thing is getting the film under the little tabs, you need better eyesight than me. I wish I had paid the extra for the version that took 7″ reels of which we had a few but transferring and splitting them to 5″ reels was not too difficult. The quality of the output is very good and much better than the previous attempts with a screen and mirror using an analogue camcorder. The only minor annoyance was setting up the framing. After setting the zoom and X, Y layout carefully as soon as I started to record it shifted slightly showing a portion of the adjacent frame. Easily solved by trimming in your favourite movie editing software to give a more widescreen look or zooming out and trimming, my preferred option. Something that might affect some users is poor joins on film as some of the 5″ reels broke or jammed during recording. This was caused by poor or weak joints made 50 years ago (overlapping joints in our case) and two sticky tape joins. I would recommend checking your film before you attempt to record for any damage section of bad joins. Finally the machine is noisy, not particularly loud but as each 50ft reel takes around 35 mins I suggest you put it in another room and set a timer to check periodically. Glad I bought it, and although it is more costly than sending off to a commercial company you don’t have to worry about films being lost in the post (It happened to us once). Don’t forget to adjust the film speed in your favourite movie editing software.

I purchased this as i had bought a number of really old super 8 reels at a car boot i wanted to convert into digital media. The process for this is really straight forward as it scans directly through this unit onto an SD card (keep in mind this is max 32GB but i haven’t topped that out yet and it’s included).

You can also watch the film on the built-in LCD screen or do what i did and project onto your television to make it a little easier to watch / keep an eye on.

The added bonus to doing this was that i had a number of family members who came over with various formats i could convert asking to pay me to do them, which i could do there and then whilst i wait, so all in it’s actually paid for itself easily and i have my conversions. Not only that i can keep buying the old super 8’s without any worries about not being able to view them repeatedly or damaging them.

Next step will be connecting it onto my pc for direct transfers so i don’t have to keep removing the SD card, every little bit of time saving helps.