Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Bob Russell
Let's say we want to be able to do it with hardware/software combos in the $100-$600 range (not including the PC, of course) . And let's say that we don't want to spend more than 3-4 "attended" man hours on the whole operation... prepping, scanning, OCR and creating the text file for a 500 page book.
|
Doing 500 pages by hand means either 500 pages or 250 page spreads at flatbed scanner speed. (With a old and sluggish scanner, I do 3 spreads per minute, 300 dpi, b/w, so perhaps 2 hours, spread over four sessions: after about 30 minutes, fumbling tends to increase. That means that some pages either get scanned twice or not at all.) Cutting up may not be required, if the scanner is large enough.
Cutting up would mean about 10-15 minutes cutting up the book (Fiskars roller knife & an iron straightedge), and then it's up to the scanner speed for the rest. (Putting the pages in press for a day or two makes feeding easier. My fi-4120 - sheetfed - would do it with about 5 misfeeds in 30-40 minutes, but it's out of range for the proposed budget.)
For creating a document, I'd use ABBYY FineReader Pro. Can do both OCR, or just repackage image files as a image PDF. (I'm told Omnipage can do the job, but I've never had much success with that program myself. YMMV, as always). As long as there's not going to be any serious proofreading, FineReader will do around one page / second on a modern system, and as long as image resolution is 600 dpi it won't do uncomfortably many misreads. (THis would count as 95% unattended, I think.)
I think it's possible ... perhaps not at $100, but around $200, 250 or so.
Price and market for scanners is difficult, and I have very little idea of the situation in the US (as you mentioned $, I assume US). For the money, I believe I would have a better chance getting a good flatbed than an equally good sheetfed scanner (more exposed mechanics). I'd check the compatibility list for FineReader to ensure I can scan straight into the program, preferrably through WIA drivers (Twain often seems to be dumbed-down, I find), and start reading reviews.