8mm & Super 8 Reels to Digital Film Scanner Converter

Someone else wrote to put the instruction manual under the front of the device - and I agree that helps when pushing the buttons. Some other tips I have for Novice 8mm Home Movie Converters: * SD card - tape down the locking tab on the SD card. my first time trying to record I got the message that the SD Card was not available. I formatted and tried again. I ejected the SD card - and realized the SD card tab was in the "locked" position. Flipped to unlocked, reinserted and tried again - Same message. Ejected the card to replace with another I had - and noticed the tab was in the lock position again. So I applied a piece of cellophane tape over the notch tightly so that the tab could not move - reinserted the card, and was able to start recording. * Clean the foot the film runs through after running each reel. Dust and particles will need to be cleaned off the foot that holds the film in place as it passes to capture the images. A cloth and a "puff brush" are provided and are helpful, but I also used cotton buds (make sure they are the tight, hard tip type, so as not to introduce loose fibers) to wipe the path clean. They also come in handy to help feed the film under the clips in the foot mechanism. * Use the mechanism to open AND close the foot over the film - don't just click closed. It's only plastic, you'll wear out the clip. * If you have a shorter reel - use that one first - I ran my first reel a few times to get the hang of positioning * This takes long. It's taking a individual image of each frame. A three minute reel will take 30 minutes to complete. I included a video clip to show how s-l-o-w this runs. It is taking a shot of each frame - and these films in a projector would run at 15 frames per second. * You will need to babysit and stay with the device during the process. You can't walk away for a while and expect to come back when it's near done. I had a leader (the white part that feeds through before the film starts) break off as it was going into the foot, and had spliced film get stuck a few times because it was not spliced well. Plus just checking on your home movies while running thru gives you a chance to figure out how you want to edit once you have it in it's digital format, jot notes of what music would be great in the background. These YOUR family memories, and the advantage of doing yourself is putting correct period music (or sound effects) to your family stories. Something that would not happen if you send off to get processed. After Processing Once I had the reel processed - I left the SD Card in and opted to use the USB transfer cable to copy over to my Windows laptop. Once on my laptop, I was going to use the highly recommended OSB Studio (free) - but found it a little too much of a learning curve for my use. I was able to get great results using Microsoft's ClipChamp (free version) that has an easy and pretty intuitive interface to drag and drop my clips and then add titles, transitions, sound, and other effects. Exporting to 720p was plenty of resolution to enjoy up on my 50" TV at home. I was fortunate that my old movies were stored in a cool (and dry) back corner of a garage. My 8mm reels were in pretty good condition and the film itself did not show cracks, splits or broken sprocket holes. If your film has issues - the conversion may not go as smoothly as mine did. Hope this info is helpful to someone who wants to convert those old home movies!

I have given this product a one star because it never worked as promised right out of the box and I expect more for the price I paid. I am familiar with the "sister" Converter "Wolverine" which worked most of the time. But too often I had to digitize the same footage several time to get a good picture. I say "sister" machine, although the first one was called "Wolverine" and this digitizer goes by "Eyesen" the two machines are identical in design! Then the Eyesen 8MM to digital came out and I eventually bought that in hope it would be a better machine. By better I mean this digitizer allowed larger reels and bosted a 1080p picture quality. I have only used SD cards on both machines so I cannot comment on the other functions. I set up the "Eyesen" digitizer, plugged it in, adjusted the frame and started to copy a Super 8MM movie! After running the machine for about 10 minutes it stopped! The light went off. The machine was dead! The first thing I did was to change the power supply , That did not do anything! So I let the machine sit over night, thinking that a good night rest would do the machine good! But the following morning the machine was still dead. I had read the Amazon Help page and the manual is useless. So I changed the power supply out with the power supply from my first machine. Not believing my eyes, the machine lit up. But now it would not accept the SD card that came with the machine. I tried to format it in the machine, But that never happened, so I formatted the SD card in my computer and now it worked. In conclusion. I have a hard time recommending this product. A power supply that last for 10 minutes that is just beyond what you expect for $259.-. I have power supply for external hard drives that have lasted for 20 years working 24 hours a day! Make sure if you buy this product you put it through all the set up functions to make sure they work properly and if not you can return it.

I had a box of '60s 8mm home movies and a projector, but the bulb burned out and the replacement was over $200 if available. I decided to give this digitizer a try before contracting with one of the many commercial ventures that digitize. Given that these were amateur-shot, quality was not that good to begin with, so a low cost alternative was inviting. I have to say that this machine did a fairly decent job digitizing them. If you are in a hurry, this is not the choice for you. I never officially timed it, but I estimate it takes at least 30 minutes for a single 3-4 minute film. That said, the scanning output quality is adequate for what my movies are. I left most settings at default. I did try the higher quality scan, but I actually thought it looked grainier than the standard. I did have to make adjustments to the framing a few times, but that is expected. Cons as I see them: Loading film through the scan path is challenging as there are 3 tabs the film must be slid under. There are pricier ones on the market that appear to have a better loading path. Take-up side sometimes wouldn't hold the reel tightly, sometimes coming loose. Supply reel has no braking so my film would unravel if I didn't set a piece of cardboard against it to brake slightly. Rewind function is slow and suffers from the loose reels. In my case, I just used my old projector to rewind and I could scan another reel while rewinding. The supplied air duster was nearly useless. Fortunately, I had my own. It is rather noisy. Not a problem for me as I worked in a separate room. All in all, I am glad I bought it. I'll digitize all my film then resell to someone who wants to do the same and recoup some of my investment.

Good product. Works perfectly. Definitely time consuming. You need to babysit in case a splice gets caught. My grandpa took good care of his films. Easy to use. I only have a basic program so besides croping and trimming I can't change the look much. I recommend highly. EDIT 12/21/25 THE MACHINE STOPPED WORKING. Stuck on Wolverine logo screen. I emailed company and I am waiting for reply. I'm 2 9inch reels away from completing my project. Update 12/23/25: Company contacted and I was told they are going replace faulty machine. Back to five stars. Update 12/28/25 recieved replacement and it's quieter and works great.

I had some old 8 mm films that I needed to digitize. Have been looking at this model and a few others recently. Prices have stayed up for years. So decided to get this one to get the film transferred. I could mail off to a service, but prefer to do things myself, and not risk losing films in the mail. Follow the simple directions, easy to thread through the slots. Records the video directly to the included SD memory card. Great device, worked well. Is made of plastic, so be gentle. It is not metal like the old fashioned models of many years ago, or the old projectors. But if taken care of, you will have no issues. One of my reel adapters was cracker from shipping, but did not need it. Motor is gentle, not a lot of torque so a modified taped adapter will work just as well. I can tape or glue it if I need it. No big deal, but was disappointed in that one part. Records, and when done, you rewind all in one process. My film was in good shape, so if your film is cracked and broken, it could struggle to jog to each frame. This device captures each frame, one at a time, and creates the MPG video file for you. Overall nice product.

Nice unit, easy to use but very very slow. I found the best way for me to load the film is take the end of the film, with the scanner box opened slide it under the black left hold-down clip, then slide it under the white middle clip and finally under the right black hold-down clip. The film has to go under all the clips or it won't work. I use a q-tip to help hold the film down as it tends to curl up. If being very slow is not an issue, It's a good unit.

I bought the W******* brand 8MM film scanner first. We liked the unit well enough to get a second for a relative. This particular no-name was a little cheaper, but looked pretty much identical (and came with an SD memory card), so I bought one. What did I learn? The unit did come with a 32GB SD memory card, though the card was completely without any label. Similarly, the scanner unit has no actual branding. The memory card worked just fine, though I can't vouch to the actual speed of the card. The scanner was in fact nearly identical (except for color) to the W******* brand unit. We were able to scan a film and the results were perfectly fine. However... This no-name unit has no "feet" under the front of the control/scan protrusion. That means if you press a control button without bracing the unit, you tip it over. The spindle size adapters are much thinner plastic. They don't fit the shafts very well. The adapters can be hard (to the point of concern they might break) to get on and off. The poor fit of the adapters means that "wide hole" reels wobble back and forth as they spin. The Control Panel has "Left" and "Right" arrow buttons (which are "Up" and "Down" on the W******* unit). That doesn't make much sense since all the menu items require moving up or down. Also, some of the messages on the screen were poorly translated to English and can be confusing. The 3 tiny tabs that hold the film as it moves over the scan area are hard to see because 2 are black, like the the surrounding area, and only one is white. The W******** brand unit has all three painted white. Most importantly, the tiny sprocket that drives the film forward is not mounted quite high enough. The protruding "tooth" that engages the holes in the film barely does so. Several times I had a test film fail to advance because the sprocket didn't engage the film properly. Neither my initial W******** unit, or the second I bought to replace this no-name unit, had this problem. If you absolutely need to save a few dollars, this no-name scanner will work for many films and it does seem to produce reasonable results. However, it is frustrating to use. It may fail to feed bent or stiff films. The spindle adapters seem likely to break (and I have no idea if replacements can be acquired).

If you are like me, you either have or have inherited a number of old 8mm and/or Super 8 film reels. It can be expensive to send these reels out to a company to have them converted to digital video and I know because I have done this before. I came across a bag full of 50 foot reels and I am sure that I only really want to keep about a quarter of them, so I saw this item and decided to buy it. I figured I could preview a reel and decide whether I wanted it or not. If it was a keeper, I would process the reel and save it to my computer. So here are a few things you might want to know if you are considering this item for purchase. This is not a high speed video transfer device! It captures video by taking a picture one frame at a time so the process is slow, taking about 30 minutes to process 50' (small reel) of film. I pass the time by doing other work on my computer or browsing websites, occasionally looking over to see that things are still moving along. The film capture unit comes with a 32gb SD card for saving your captured video. If you want to save your video to a computer, you will need to remove the card from the capture unit and put it in a card reader attached to your computer. Note the 32gb is also the largest SD card you can use. There is a very small video screen that you can use to see video being captured and it can be used for playback. It comes with a video cable you can run to a TV for playback. I am not sure if you can see the video as it is being captured, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could. This unit does not capture sound. Some film records were able to capture sound to Super 8 video back in the day, but this unit will only capture the video from the film. Any splicing in your original film reel must be tight with no cell overlap. If the splice is floppy/loose, or if it is slightly overlapped, it will likely not feed through the sprocket. I found that my dad was apparently not very good at splicing. This item fulfills its purpose and can pay for itself after capturing a couple dozen videos.