[Daren Carpenter]

I’ve spent a fair amount of time with both the Wolverine ($300) and the Reflecta Super 8 Scanner ($1300.) Here are my findings using Vegas 14….

For the money, the Wolverine is a clever machine, being that it can scan both 8 and Super8. It’s autonomous approach requires no drivers, and doesn’t even connect to the PC. The drawbacks are that it cannot use reels larger than 5 inches, and more important, produces an encoded MP4 file that has too much compression (artifacting.) I’ve talked with their support and there “might” be a firmware update which uses less compression, but it will NEVER, I repeat NEVER have an option to produce frame-by-frame JPG images that you can assemble on your own. For what it’s worth, if you can live with the artifacting, you will have to re-encode the MP4’s in Vegas, and simply set the clip Properties/Playback Rate to .6 to get the framerate correct. Leave the framerate at 29.970, which is the rate of the original Wolverine MP4. (yes, stupid of them)

The Reflecta looks and operates just like a projector. For the price you pay, it is unbelievably flimsy (the arms in particular) and you always feel like you’re going to break the thing, but with a little caution and care, it should hold up. It requires your PC and a driver installation to operate. Once you update to the most recent firmware, the film rarely jams unless it’s just plain messed up to begin with. If it does jam or start skipping, you have to fiddle with it by advancing back and forth, usually foward, to get to good film again. The scanner will pick up where it left off. Fundamentally, it produces frame-by-frame JPGs and stores them in a project directory. At the end of the reel, it will offer to assemble the movie for you, but simply skip that part and use Vegas to take advantage of image tuning, etc.

This is where Vegas has been SPECTACULAR. You can File/Import the images into a project set up with the desired frame rate (18 fps) and resolution. You end up with a Project Media clip that behaves exactly like a regular video file. You can perform all the normal enhancements, clipping, transitions, etc. I have done this with over 30,000 individual JPG images at-a-time and it has worked flawlessly.

The drawbacks to the Reflecta are that it is slow, 2 frames every 5 seconds, so a 7 inch reel takes about 20 hours. If you decide to stop in the middle of a reel because of a jam or whatnot, there is no way to remove it from the projector without simply holding down the FF button and letting it advance to the end. I have opted to just cut the reel, re-thread, and move on. This will likely be the last time you ever need the original anyway!

In a nutshell, the Wolverine is a little faster scanning, but does not produce acceptable results (but they are better than nothing!) The Reflecta results are as good as the source film, and the ability to freely edit the video makes it the clear winner. And finally, neither of these machines is meant for “commercial” use. Meaning that they are slow, not particularly durable, and the effort (yours) is high. Also, the Reflecta has a 2 year warranty or 400,000 images, whichever comes first. And yes, the firmware does have an image counter that you cannot reset!

I hope my late night ramblings are helpful!