8mm & Super 8 Film to Digital Converter, Film Scanner with 2.4" Screen,Converts Frame by MP4 Files, Viewing Saving on 32GB SD Card(Included) for 3”5”7”9” Reels

It took me a few weeks to find and purchase 8mm splicing equipment and in a way, that helps my review. With an 8mm movie film in decent shape, this converter is great and trouble-free. 8mm movies are 16 frames per sec, this converter scans at 2 fps, so a normal 4 minute movie takes 32 minutes. You can just about set your timer and walk away. Where it has trouble is that some old splicing kits overlap the ends of the film and use cement, so the edge and step that is created gets caught on the edge of the feed table. Stop, move it over the table and restart. Splicing tape works fine. It's a little brain teaser to swap the reels end to end for rewinding, but that's part of being a less expensive converter. The 32GB SD card can hold ~100 4min movies, so don't go buy more like I did. I'm doing the 6th movie this afternoon and like it more and more.

If your movies are in good shape this is a joy to use, but if your movies have worn feeder holes, splices, or are bent, those situations will jam this unit and you have to resolve the jam before you can go on. I thought I would be able to start a capture and go do other things while this chugs away frame by frame, but my movies are not in good shape which causes jams I have to resolve, so I must keep an eye on the process and make sure the film is still advancing the whole time. If you stop capturing to resolve a jam, that's one file, and when you start capturing again after clearing the jam, that's an other file. It would be great if you could pause the capture, clear the jam, and resume without making multiple video files. Another issue is framing. To adjust the scanner to get the framing right, which you may have to do for every movie, it wastes a few frames that it feeds through. You cannot go back and capture those frames, so they are lost. I would like to be able to make the framing adjustments and then back the film up to the very beginning so nothing is missed, but you can't do that. Any splices in your film may throw the framing off mid-capture (if it doesn't jam), which has been a problem for me. Sometimes it kind of recovers by itself and other times it doesn't. Another very minor issue is that the aspect ratio of the captured image does not exactly match the film, so in order to get exactly one frame's worth of vertical image, you need to zoom (increase the "W" adjustment) to cut off some from the sides. I don't like not being able to capture everything that is on the original film, even if it's just a little bit from the sides that's missing. I have listed some problems I had and improvements that could be made, but overall I'm thrilled with this movie digitizer. The image quality of the saved video looks very good to me - sharp and bright. It is so wonderful being able to watch these old family movies (on my computer, my phone, and share them with others), and I'm very happy I bought this. It's a very useful product with a few issues that could be improved to make it even better.

Brand new out of the box. Set it up properly because I RTFM'ed. Motor doesn't run. Screen says "Please connect power supply". Obviously, the power supply is connected. Otherwise the screen wouldn't light up. Waste of time and money.

Getting started with this device was more difficult than I expected. I had to consult several Youtube videos to troubleshoot the machine before I could begin digitizing the film. There were issues with the SD card causing the film to be jittery. Also, some film would not feed correctly. I learned from Youtube that the press plate needs to be adjusted to allow the film to flow smoothly. But because of the angle of the press plate, and the lack of the tiniest Phillip's head screwdriver, it cannot be adjusted. Thus, I had to jerry-rig the machine with a piece of paper, and still, not all the film passed through. Customer service, available via email, took a day for a response and was not that helpful. The manual that comes with the machine is bare bones and there is nothing in it about trouble-shooting the machine. That would have been nice. You will also need to buy a 7-inch reel if you have films that large.

Bought this to scan the old family reels since my projectors were done for and I couldn't use my other method of capturing them without those, and this had the options I both wanted and needed. First, since none of my reels had any audio, the fact that it does not capture the audio does not affect me in the slightest, however, if you have super 8 reels with audio you want captured, this is not for you. That being said, this device has plenty of options in framing your capture how you want it from brightness adjustments to over scanning the film to get the whole film frame. Everything captures in 1080 and the quality is amazing. Another thing to point out is that it only comes with a 5" take up reel, unless you have extra take up reels lying around like me, you will need to pick up a new one for your larger reels, which this supports up to 9". It takes me around four to four and a half hours to scan a 7" reel uninterrupted. All in all, the price was right, the device works amazing on my 8mm and s8mm reels. It was worth the purchase!