Even though so far, my restoration articles and reviews have been about capturing, de-interlacing and upscaling classic videotapes, I am delighted to discover via an excellent ≈58-minute video by Steve of Mac84 that unofficial community firmware modifications now allow higher resolution and lower compression when using the Kodak REELS US$420 8mm film-to-video scanner, compared with the relatively low resolution and excessive compression offered by default by the device. In fact, Steve of Mac84 is one of the community volunteers who have done the painstaking work of reverse engineering the official stock firmware to allow for these improvements and freely shared the results.

Film scanner to video versus telecine

First, I will clarify how a film-to-video scanner works, because it is quite different from a telecine. A telecine projects a motion-picture film in real-time to be converted to video. A video scanner is usually not a real-time process. A film-to-video scanner usually scans each frame of celluloid film and then creates a video frame for each one. Then it creates a sequence of those scanned frames at a preset (or adjustable) rate as a video file. This is the case with the Kodak 8mm film-to-video scanner: It’s slower than real time, although potentially higher quality.

Above: A notable exception is Blackmagic’s Cintel Scanner for 8mm and 16mm film, which is real-time and starts at US35,255 which just a bit more costly than Kodak’s REELS at US$420.

Kodek REELS 8mm film-to-video scanner, stock versus modified

The Kodak REELS 8mm film-to-video scanner is designed to perform the above task from either standard 8mm celluloid film or the later Super 8mm version. The Kodak REELS has a built-in single slot SD/SDHC/SDXC reader/writer. (Even though the Kodak REELS formats as FAT32, Steve confirms that if you format your SDXC card elsewhere as the much preferred ExFAT, the Kodak REELS can read and write to it with no problem for general use, although FAT32 format is required for flashing firmware.) Using the official stock firmware, The Kodak REELS captures only 1728×1296 at 20 FPS (which can be changed later in your video editing program if desired) a bitrate of 8.7 Mbps using H.264 to an .MP4 file. (Most original 8mm films were shot at 16 frames per second and most Super 8 films were shot at 18 frames per second, so 20 fps is a middle ground.) Like its competition in this price range, the Kodak REELS does not capture audio. (My research indicates that over 90% of 8mm and 16mm home movies did not have sound.) Many users have quite justifiably complained that the stock 1728×1296 resolution is too low (and lower than the hardware’s capabilities) and the 8.7 Mb/s compression is too high, i.e. not enough bitrate. Steve of Mac84 speculates in the video that Kodak likely limits the potential quality to avoid competing with Kodak’s associated film capture service (which Steve of Mac84 condemns for frequent documented negligence when damaging or losing customers’ original films). Fortunately, now the community firmware modifications greatly improve this, upgrading from only 1728×1296 to 1920×1440 (4:3 which is the approximate aspect ratio of the original film), from 8.7 Mb/s to 12500Mb/s for less compression and artifacts, optionally replacing the stock lens and more.

Steve even created a Firmware Lookup Tool based upon your serial number. Please be patient watching this almost 58 minute video by Steve of Mac84:

Also see the same video on YouTube to see other related links, to download firmware (at your own risk) and read comments.