Wolverine vs Magnasonic film scanner

[jtech1]

I had an original Wolverine 720 film scanner from a few years ago. I never got to do more than a few films back then... I want to finish them all now, so I looked to see if anything better existed. It seemed the Magnasonic FS81 matched the Wolverine and Kodak specs of 3.5MP sensor, and 1080 output. I picked one up and fully expected to see at least a slightly a better image than I has before on the 720 Wolverine... but, instead, it looks worse. The Wolverine had 3 sharpness settings. I always use LOW since I want as little as possible (would use OFF if that was available). There was a big difference in image degradation as you go to med and high sharpening on that unit. With the Magnasonic, even low sharpening produces a very noisy image. And there does not appear to be much difference between low, med and high, almost as if the setting is being ignored by the firmware. The best quality I can get on the FS81 seems worse than the Wolverine 720.

I am just curious if anyone else has used the FS81 or possibly both units, and has had the same or different experience with the quality. The image on the small screen of the unit looks pretty good... I know it is far fewer pixels, but still, it does not appear to have the noise that the final mp4 has. I believe the image degradation is coming from the sharpening and x.264 compression level they are using.

I would appreciate anyone else's feedback who has experience with either or both of these units.

Thanks!

[jtech1]

I am also trying to find any information on how this device maps the 3.5MP sensor to the 1080 image frame. I want no digital scaling if possible... so my assumption is that when I set the position W value to 0 that it will crop an exact 1444x1080 pixels form the sensor direct to file with no digital scaling... but I may be wrong, and it is not documented. The problem with the W=0 zoom level is that it captures the full sprocket holes which are bright white and then cause the auto exposure to darken the rest of the image, requiring an exposure adjustment...

Man, would it have been so hard for manufacturer to add a Sharpen=OFF setting, and allow control of x.264 compression level? Or even write individual jpg or png images per frame? Like an advanced mode... enabled with a secret button press sequence.. these machines would be so much more useful.

[dellsam34]

To me all these devices are crap, True telecine machines cost 1000's of dollars, These knockoffs are okay for a home sloppy transfer job but if films are important to you use that money to get them transfered at a reputable facility that uses proffesional 4k scanners. and by that I don't mean LegacyBox.

[jtech1]

I am planning on sending all of the film out to Cinepost for high quality 2K scans to ProRes. This machine is only to make a copy of them first in case they somehow get lost by UPS/FedEx. I can resell the machine and only be out $100 or so... well worth it to have a safety copy of everything. I'd still like to get the best backup copy I can.

[lordsmurf]

I am planning on sending all of the film out to Cinepost for high quality 2K scans to ProRes. This machine is only to make a copy of them first in case they somehow get lost by UPS/FedEx. I can resell the machine and only be out $100 or so... well worth it to have a safety copy of everything. I'd still like to get the best backup copy I can.

This is a good plan. Just be wary that a home pass can degrade if not handled properly.

The trick with UPS/Fedex is to not use ground. At least 2-day, and sturdy double boxing. Use padding in the interior box, and between the boxes. Do not overstuff the boxes, that negates the padding.