Quote:
Originally Posted by mblack3
I actually use Kurzweil 3000, a text to speech software that is very effective at correctly reading scans. I'm mostly worried about getting the text clearly onto the computer--is a flatbed scanners sufficiently fast/accurate for that?
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I think you misunderstand what I was saying. ABBY Finereader is the software that will use the scanner to scan and create your searchable PDF. You can use whatever text-to-speach (tts) software you are comfortable with. But you must have good clean OCR of the scans for your tts software to read.
When you create a PDF it is done in layers. The top layer is a picture of the book...this is what you see...it always looks like it's a good scan! The layer below that is the OCR text. You don't see that - and if it's wrong you don't know about it until your tts software makes some garbled attempt at reading it. ABBYY does a VERY good job at OCR and allows you to check the scans before you save as a PDF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterT
I wonder if you could find someone who would assemble for you one of these? DIY Book Scanner? |
Been there, done that. I use it for lots of stuff...including scanning my wife's textbooks into PDF so she doesn't have to carry around those 10 lb monsters.
But if it is just for scanning the occasional (4-5 textbooks per term) it is a much better use of time to buy the flatbed scanner....unless you just really like building stuff...then I HIGHLY recommend the DIY scanners!
