A new firmware modification for Chinese 8mm film scanners

[IrregularJoe]

Hello everybody

I managed to get my Somikon HD-XL 8mm film scanner producing high quality output during 2024 by making some modifications to the firmware . The modifications should work for Reflecta and Wolverine scanners as well. I've published a short post with downloads on my blog here.

I hope you find these useful.

Happy Christmas & New Year!

Joe

[dellsam34]

I don't have a film scanner but thanks for the effort, anything helps the video community is very much appreciated, keep up the good work.

[IrregularJoe]

Hi dellsam34, thanks very much for your kind words and encouragement! I'll keep an eye on the forum to find out if there are software tools that other folks need as I'd like to start writing those or maintaining old ones if the source code is available.

[Hunk91]

Hello everybody

I managed to get my Somikon HD-XL 8mm film scanner producing high quality output during 2024 by making some modifications to the firmware . The modifications should work for Reflecta and Wolverine scanners as well. I've published a short post with downloads on my blog here.

I hope you find these useful.

Happy Christmas & New Year!

Joe

Thank you Joe for the new firmware. I would like to test it on my Somikon 8mm / Super 8mm reel Scanner but my model is NX-4294-675 with firmare : 20221202C-PL03P-DE.

My first question is do tou you if this model is compatible with your modiied frimware?

My second question is do you no how I can copy the actual firmware to the sd card in order to reflash it if things go wrong with the new firwmare?

Best regards

[IrregularJoe]

Hi Hunk91

Your model number is exactly the same as mine so you shouldn't have any problems with the Somikon/Reflecta firmware. I'm not sure what firmware version my scanner had to begin with. It is possible to dump the current firmware to the SD card, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet. I'm looking into that and a way to disable auto exposure.

Best,
Joe

[dellsam34]

Hi dellsam34, thanks very much for your kind words and encouragement! I'll keep an eye on the forum to find out if there are software tools that other folks need as I'd like to start writing those or maintaining old ones if the source code is available.

Sure we'll keep in touch if needed, thanks.

[IrregularJoe]

Thank you Joe for the new firmware. I would like to test it on my Somikon 8mm / Super 8mm reel Scanner but my model is NX-4294-675 with firmare : 20221202C-PL03P-DE.

My first question is do tou you if this model is compatible with your modiied frimware?

My second question is do you no how I can copy the actual firmware to the sd card in order to reflash it if things go wrong with the new firwmare?

Best regards

Hi Hunk91

I did further investigation into dumping the firmware to the SD card. The code for dumping memory and firmware is present in the firmware. However, it doesn't appear to be possible to trigger it by placing a file with a special name on the SD card like we do when flashing firmware. So, connecting to the serial console seems to be the only way to get the scanner to dump the firmware to the SD card and that involves opening the machine and attaching cables to one of the circuit boards. Sorry to disappoint you.

Best,
Joe

[Hunk91]

Thank you Joe for the new firmware. I would like to test it on my Somikon 8mm / Super 8mm reel Scanner but my model is NX-4294-675 with firmare : 20221202C-PL03P-DE.

My first question is do tou you if this model is compatible with your modiied frimware?

My second question is do you no how I can copy the actual firmware to the sd card in order to reflash it if things go wrong with the new firwmare?

Best regards

Hi Hunk91

I did further investigation into dumping the firmware to the SD card. The code for dumping memory and firmware is present in the firmware. However, it doesn't appear to be possible to trigger it by placing a file with a special name on the SD card like we do when flashing firmware. So, connecting to the serial console seems to be the only way to get the scanner to dump the firmware to the SD card and that involves opening the machine and attaching cables to one of the circuit boards. Sorry to disappoint you.

Best,
Joe

Thank you Joe for your research. I Will try to contact the maker of the distributor of this scanner to know if it is possible to have this stock firmware.

Without this I wont' take the risk of flashing a custom firmware even if I'm sure there won't be any problems.

Best regards

Edit : After contacting Somikon France and the French distributor ( http://www.Pearl.fr ), there is no new firmware and they do not share publicly the original firmware.
I also contacted Somikon Deutchland and the German distributor with the same request but haven't received a reply from them yet.
I doubt that it would be possible to get anything from them beside the documentation of the scanner (I have the French, German, Spanich and Italian instruction manuals available for those who would be interested)

[oc-DK]

Hi @IrregularJoe and Hunk91 and others ,

I downloaded FWDV180N.bin from "Joseph Hansom's Blog" and adother file fwdv180n.bin
it turn out that
firmware "FWDV180N.bin" and "fwdv180n.bin" both are version 20190529B-ZS02

I had version 20191121C -PL02P-DE on my SOMIKON Model NX4294-675 before changing Firmware and I suppose Higher number is later version
so Hunk91 or other, do you have a copy of firmware 20221202C-PL03P-DE, or 20191121C -PL02P-DE at hand I'd be happy to get a copy .
Br OC-DK

[Hunk91]

Hi @IrregularJoe and Hunk91 and others ,

I downloaded FWDV180N.bin from "Joseph Hansom's Blog" and adother file fwdv180n.bin
it turn out that
firmware "FWDV180N.bin" and "fwdv180n.bin" both are version 20190529B-ZS02

I had version 20191121C -PL02P-DE on my SOMIKON Model NX4294-675 before changing Firmware and I suppose Higher number is later version
so Hunk91 or other, do you have a copy of firmware 20221202C-PL03P-DE, or 20191121C -PL02P-DE at hand I'd be happy to get a copy .
Br OC-DK

Hi OC-DK, unfortunatly Pearl (the european reseller) and Somikon didn't reply positively to my request and didn't send me the firmware.

I would be happy to help but I don't know ho to dump the firmware. I read a post about how to dump the firmware on one of the version of this scanner, but you would need some special equipement.

[Ergos]

Hello,
I am also looking for the firmware for the SOMIKON scanner. Have you been able to find anything in the meantime?

[oc-DK]

Hi Ergos ,
no I have not been able to find any new FW

[Ergos]

Hi oc-DK,

Have you tried this one:

https://retromania.pandelground.com/wolverine-reels2digital-moviemaker/

[Ergos]

Hello,
I would like to try out the hack firmware. Unfortunately, the link no longer works. Does anyone have the hack firmware and can send it to me?

Thanks!

[Hunk91]

Hello,
I am also looking for the firmware for the SOMIKON scanner. Have you been able to find anything in the meantime?

Hi

I read your pivate message.

Here is the firmware that as available on https://blog.hansom.dev/posts/wolverine-firmware/ :

File : https://www.mediafire.com/file/gp4e7xjh2o2w098/FWDV180N.bin/file

Unfortunatly I received a no go from Somikon or Pearl regarding the last version of the original firmware and I never applied the firmware modified by IrregularJoe (too risky and no way to get back to the original firmware)

[Ergos]

Hi Hunk91,

thanks for your answer. Is the second link the modified firmware? Do you know how to install these? On the SD card?

[Hunk91]

Hi Hunk91,

thanks for your answer. Is the second link the modified firmware? Do you know how to install these? On the SD card?

Yes it is.

You have to put it on a formated sd card and then insert it on the scanner and finaly turning on the scanner. It should flash the new firmware but be Very carefull there is a risk to brick your scanner.

I didn't took that risk.

[Ergos]

Ok. Thanks a lot. Do you know which file format to use when formatting the SD card?

[Hunk91]

Ok. Thanks a lot. Do you know which file format to use when formatting the SD card?

It should be FAT32, and the max size of the sd card should be 32GB

[flashandpan007]

I can not read the blog, what features were added or adjusted?

If one has a bigger card, just create a partition with (512 MB) ... 32768 MB in FAT32. Works for other devices that want a specific update stick/card.

[Hunk91]

I can not read the blog, what features were added or adjusted?

If one has a bigger card, just create a partition with (512 MB) ... 32768 MB in FAT32. Works for other devices that want a specific update stick/card.

Unfortunatly the blog is not available any more, and it seems there aren't any Google cache or Web archive for this blog.

When fo you check in Google here is what it says about the blog :

Joseph Hansom's Blog
Introduction. I recently came up with a firmware modification for these scanners which causes them to produce video of a significantly higher quality than ...

[mazinz]

Just wanted to give a heads up that I was working with Joe testing a number of firmware behind the scenes, since I have 2 Hammacher schlemmer Scanners (one untouched and the other for testing).

The more concerning issue is that the last time I heard from Joe was back on May 19th of this year. I have tried numerous times to reach him since, but never received a reply. I then see now that his blog is down and he hasn't logged in here for a very long time. I am beginning to worry that something may have happened to him, but I have no way of knowing.

He also mentioned working/posting on tinkerdifferent, but the last time he logged into there was back in March
here is a post. Here he goes by Joe90
https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/modding-the-kodak-reels-8mm-film-digitizer-firmwar...ck.2897/page-9

I still have all of the firmware and he even made it able to shut off the auto exposure and auto white balance on these units. Last time we spoke he was tinkering with getting the contrast correct since the autos were now shut off. We were also trying to get the units to start a new file after hitting 4 gigs which most of the time would either stop recording or crash the machine.

One caveat with my Hammacher machines is the firmware (I used the wolverine mod) would screw the display on my unit (letters way too large). We couldn't get a fix for this, but when using the tv out wire, the menu displayed perfectly on my tv screen which is the fix I used for further testing with everything else

However, again I am really more concerned for his well being and I am hoping nothing bad happened to him

[Brandonaz]

Hello. New member here. I have come into the possession of a Wolverine MovieMaker Pro digitizer. I found this discussion, Joe Hansom's page, and the TinkerDifferent discussions, while looking at ways of improving this unit's capabilities. It looks like perhaps a very useful firmware hack was made that could improve capture quality. The last message I saw here looked very promising that AWB/auto-exposure may have been successfully adjusted alongside the resolution, fps, and bit-rate settings. Where did this leave off and is that newest firmware tested and posted somewhere? Thanks

[nicost]

Hello, new here. I have one of these scanners (I think the brand was Sharper Image, but it uses the same firmware as the Wolverine Pro), and I scanned a lot of home movies during Covid. Now my cousin wants to scan his stuff. So, revisiting the scanner, I remember talking to a Russian guy on a forum back in 2020, and he did some things to the firmware to improve it a little bit. I think it was also something about the white balance and the exposure. Nevertheless, I remember both of us trying to capture individual pictures of each frame and then use computer software to join the pictures into a movie at the desired frame rate. We couldn't do it. We thought this could be possible because when we scanned the SD card we found some deleted pictures of some frames, so something was going on. This Russian guy knew a lot about the chip used in these telecine scanners, but we couldn't edit the firmware to somehow fix it. What we saw was that the quality of these few pictures was much better than the final film. The problem was that these pictures were only of a few frames every now and then, not the 18 frames per second that you would expect from a film. It looked as if they were samples. I remember talking to this guy, and he said that these chips had several modes: picture mode, video mode, and time-lapse mode. He made all these hacks assuming we were in video mode. But years later, I think I've realized what is going on. I think these scanners are in time-lapse mode. They are taking some pictures, and the chip is making a time-lapse on the fly. The scanner is at my parents' house, but I think I will try to revisit the firmware. I have no idea how to code, and I don't even remember the name of this Russian guy or which forum I was talking to him on (I arrived at this post while trying to hunt down the original). I only remember that the forum thread was named after the chipset used in these scanners. But what I do have now is a clear idea of what is going on, and the aim is to force the chip to switch from time-lapse mode to picture mode, so that I can capture each frame individually and then join them together into a video. And even though I don't know how to code, I believe that an AI like Claude Fable can pull this one off. I'll let you know how this goes. But I wanted to post this because if someone else wants to give fixing it a try, you are more than welcome. I would only ask that you please share your progress.

[Brandonaz]

Hello nicost,

Irregular Joe has been the primary contributor to a firmware modification recently. He sent me a copy which I haven't been allowed to tey yet since I'm still borrowing someone else's Wolverine MMPro. It should deal with some of the issues you mentioned and roughly double the bit rate of capture, if you want to try it. Thanks

[flashandpan007]

Related?
https://blog.hansom.dev/posts/wolverine-firmware/ -> https://blog.hansom.dev/posts/updated-firmware/

[Brandonaz]

Yes, same Joe. If anyone has a chance to test the firmware mod, please reply here. Several models appear to be related to the Somikon/Wolverine hardware. There hasn't been a big test sampling to report results.

[nicost]

Hi all - following up on my post above.

I want to be upfront about two things before anything else. I am not a programmer. I did this by working with an AI (Claude Code, the Fable model) across one very long session, having it read the firmware and check every single change against the actual bytes. And the build I'm attaching has never run on a real machine. My scanner is at my parents' place and I won't get there for about ten days, so everything below is verified on a PC only. Please treat it accordingly.

First, the good news: I was right about the time-lapse, and now there's proof. (I also found my original post in the Goprawn forum - it looks like I posted this same theory back in 2020, but I didn't have AI back then...)

The scanner records video on a free-running internal timer that has nothing to do with the film transport. The transport is a proper closed loop - the machine drives the motor and counts sensor pulses to know a frame has arrived, and then stops - but the encoder never asks. It just samples on its own clock. That's exactly why the MP4 has duplicated and missing frames, and why nobody could ever change the frame rate: the frame-rate field was never what controlled the timing.

But the plan I described in my post - switch it to picture mode - turns out to be a dead end, and for an interesting reason. On the Kodak version of this machine, someone did manage to reach photo mode, and the lamp and the motor didn't run. The film transport is wired to the scanning app, not to the mode. Switch modes and you get a camera with no light and no film moving.

The real discovery is much better, and it explains those deleted pictures too.

The scanner already saves a full still image to the SD card when you press the Right arrow button during a scan. That capture path is complete and working in the stock firmware. It runs with the lamp on and the film moving.

Those "samples" we found in 2020 were not samples. They were our own button presses.

And here's why they never appeared as files: the firmware writes the JPEG correctly, closes it, and then never tells the card's index that it exists. The picture data lands on the card, but the directory entry is only ever kept in a memory cache that never gets written out. That's why the only way to get them was an undelete scan - the data was always there, the file name never was. The firmware has a "flush" call that forces the index out, it uses it for the MP4, and it simply never calls it for stills.

So the fix is two parts: make that existing capture fire automatically on every film frame instead of on a button press, and add the missing flush so the pictures actually show up on the card.

A separate finding that I think matters to everyone here, whether or not you care about stills.

The reason bitrate mods never seemed to help: the encoder has its quality setting pinned at a fixed, quite coarse value. When quality is pinned, raising the bitrate ceiling does nothing, because the encoder never wanted to spend more bits in the first place. That's a decade of people turning the wrong knob, and it matches the reports in the old threads that higher bitrate "didn't lessen the artefacts". The build I'm attaching changes that quality setting, which is what actually reduces the blockiness.

For scale: the stock firmware spends about 7.5 KB on each frame of a 1440x1080 picture. That is far below anything you'd consider watchable - and film grain is the single most expensive thing you can ask a video encoder to keep, so it's the first thing destroyed.

One honest limitation. The stills come out at 1440x1080, the same as the video. This is not a resolution gain, and I don't think one is available - the optics and the film itself cap the real detail well below that. The gain is that each frame becomes an independent picture with no compression smearing between frames, and you get exactly one per film frame, in order, which you can then assemble at 16 or 18 fps yourself.


WHAT YOU SHOULD FIND ON THE CARD

The MP4 is still recorded, now at 20 fps with the higher bitrate and the corrected quality setting. So playback on the scanner keeps working, and you have a reference to compare the stills against. Alongside it:

A:\FilmScanner\MOVIE\ the MP4, as before
A:\DCIM\100NVTIM\ IMAG0001.JPG, IMAG0002.JPG ... up to IMAG9999.JPG
A:\DCIM\101NVTIM\ continues here if the reel runs past 9,999 frames

Each JPEG should land somewhere between 250 and 500 KB. For scale: at this resolution one bit per pixel is about 190 KB, and a decent photographic JPEG runs 1 to 2.5 bits per pixel. Film grain pushes it toward the upper end, which is exactly what we want, since keeping the grain is the point. Against that, the video currently spends 0.04 bits per pixel on the same frame - roughly 7.5 KB. So the still is not unusually large; it is a perfectly ordinary photo-sized file. It is the video frame that is absurdly small.

I can't give an exact figure because the JPEG quality setting is one of the few things I could not pin down from the firmware, so the first successful scan will tell us.

Why this should actually look better, and not just be bigger: the stills go through a completely different encoder. The sensor image is processed once, and then feeds two separate paths - the H.264 encoder for the video, and the JPEG encoder for the stills. The stills never touch the video encoder at all, so none of the inter-frame smearing applies to them. Each one is a standalone picture.

Rough storage at 18 fps, using that 250-500 KB range:

50 ft reel (3.3 min) ~3,600 frames 0.9 - 1.7 GB
200 ft reel (13 min) ~14,000 frames 3.3 - 6.7 GB
400 ft reel (27 min) ~29,000 frames 7 - 14 GB

The MP4 adds very little on top of that. Worth remembering the scanner only takes cards up to 32 GB, so a long reel is roughly one card. It also has USB mass storage, so you can pull the files off without taking the card out.

Then assemble on the PC at whatever rate the film actually was - 18 fps for Super 8, 16 for Regular 8:

ffmpeg -framerate 18 -i IMAG%04d.JPG -c:v libx264 -crf 16 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

The real point is that this second encode is yours to control. You can use a good encoder at a sensible bitrate, or keep the stills as they are and never encode at all.


HOW TO CHECK WHETHER THIS BUILD MATCHES YOUR SCANNER

Two ways. The first tells you what your machine is running; the second identifies any firmware file you already have lying around.

1. Read it off the scanner. Switch it on and go into the Setup / Settings menu. There is a firmware version entry in there - the firmware prints it as "FW Ver:" followed by the version string. I can't give you the exact button sequence because I don't have my scanner in front of me, so just look through the setup pages for it. You're looking for something shaped like 20210508B-ZS15 - a date, a letter, a dash, a short code. Write down exactly what it says.

2. Read it out of a firmware file. Every build carries its version as plain text at offset 0x140 in the .bin, so you can identify old files without flashing anything.

Linux or macOS:
dd if=FWDV180N.bin bs=1 skip=320 count=16 2>/dev/null; echo

Windows PowerShell:
[Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString([IO.File]::ReadAllBytes("FWDV180N.bin")[320..335])

Known versions:
20210508B-ZS15 Wolverine MovieMaker-PRO <- this build's base
20190529B-ZS02 Reflecta / Somikon line
20170511-ZS04 Wolverine MM100 (standard)

If your scanner reports 20210508B-ZS15, this build applies to you. If it reports something else, don't flash this one - but please post what it says. A version we haven't seen is genuinely useful: the same changes can be rebuilt on a different base once the offsets for it are known, and a few people posting their versions would tell us how many variants are actually out there.

(One correction to something that circulates about firmware sources: the archive item usually described as "MM100 and MM100-PRO firmware" actually contains a Reflecta build and a MovieMaker-PRO build. There is no non-Pro image in it.)


@Brandonaz - thank you for the April 2026 files, and one correction offered gently. I compared them byte for byte against the stock firmware: those three builds are identical to the ones published on blog.hansom.dev, and at every setting that controls capture rate they are identical to stock. They change the auto-exposure and white-balance behaviour instead. So the "roughly double the bit rate" description belongs to Joe's earlier 2024 build, not the April 2026 one. Might be worth knowing before someone tests expecting a bitrate change. @flashandpan007 - yes, same Joe, and his builds were genuinely useful here; having his modified files next to the stock ones is how the settings got located in the first place.


ABOUT THE ATTACHMENT

It contains the modified build and a clean rebuild of the stock firmware to keep on a second card as a rescue.

On risk, measured rather than alarmist: the firmware update runs automatically on power-on and does not use the display, so even a flash that leaves the screen blank can be re-flashed from the rescue card. The display driver is byte-for-byte identical between the 2019 and 2021 builds (same internal build date), so panel handling did not change across that range. And a malformed image is rejected by the loader, which then writes nothing. Two independent code reviews put the chance of this image starting up normally at 97-99%, and most failures to start are recoverable from the rescue card, so unrecoverable damage looks well under 1%. That is an estimate, not a measurement, and it is not zero. The Kodak Reels machines use a different chip entirely - never cross-flash those in either direction.

It passes every check that can be done on a PC, including running the scanner's own firmware validation routine in an emulator. That is not the same as having worked.

I'll report back in about ten days once I've actually run it. If anyone tests it sooner, please post the result either way - a failure report is just as useful, and a lot more useful than silence.