Have you EVER wanted to scan that old book? - Page 5

HarryT · 02-21-2010, 03:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

You must have been hard at work. 39 books that's quite a lot. I wonder if the lamp in the scanner has a certain life span or if it will go on until something else breaks down.

I find that with cheap scanners, it's the mechanical bits that break. I've had a couple in which the plastic gears have stripped their teeth, and hence the scanning head has stopped moving. The LED lights that modern scanners use should last pretty much indefinitely.

Blackguard · 02-21-2010, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

You must have been hard at work. 39 books that's quite a lot. I wonder if the lamp in the scanner has a certain life span or if it will go on until something else breaks down.

The lamp went dull and then burnt out at approximately 75-80 hours of use for me. I'll certainly never buy an Opticbook product again. Especially since it is far faster and at similar cost to build a dual-camera based scanning system.

thinkpad · 02-22-2010, 03:07 AM

Has anyone heard of or tried Snapter. A software for turning a picture taken with a digital camera to look more like the output from a flatbed scanner.

http://snapter.atiz.com/

Blackguard · 02-22-2010, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

Has anyone heard of or tried Snapter. A software for turning a picture taken with a digital camera to look more like the output from a flatbed scanner.

http://snapter.atiz.com/

If you are interested in going that route, you should look at what the open-source and diy community over at DIY Book Scanner Forums is up to. I'm currently scanning at about 400 pages in 20 minutes using a setup based on most of the builds at that forum. When I was using an OpticBook, I that would take me about an hour, if not more. Of course, scanning and OCR is the easy part of the operation. Proof-reading is the real rate-limiting step.

Argel · 02-22-2010, 09:52 AM

Best cheap solution: a sharp knife and a Fujitsu Scansnap.

Used together with a decent OCR program, it's about 45 minutes to the first (and pretty good) draft of your ebook. Hands on time about 30 minutes.

My bookshelves are becoming thinner by the day.

thinkpad · 02-22-2010, 02:35 PM

I was just about to go ahead with my scanned book pages saved as .bmp and load them into Abby Finereader for OCR conversion.

It turns out that Finereader can only open 1 image at a time. Luckily I found that you can go back into Book Pilot (software for opticbook 3600) and start a "Batch Processing" that will send all the pictures you choose to Finereader and then on to word. The whole process with under 400 pages took 10-15 minutes.

Elfwreck · 02-22-2010, 05:50 PM

Finereader should allow selection/opening of multiple images at a time, and it allows click-and-drag from a Windows folder to the images panel.

chainring · 02-22-2010, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Argel

Best cheap solution: a sharp knife and a Fujitsu Scansnap.

Used together with a decent OCR program, it's about 45 minutes to the first (and pretty good) draft of your ebook. Hands on time about 30 minutes.

My bookshelves are becoming thinner by the day.

Agreed. Except, in my case I have a Canon DR-2050C, which is equivalent. Duplex scanning at the hardware, supported by ABBYY FineReader, and it's fast, real fast.

Elfwreck · 02-22-2010, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chainring

Agreed. Except, in my case I have a Canon DR-2050C, which is equivalent. Duplex scanning at the hardware, supported by ABBYY FineReader, and it's fast, real fast.

That's the one I was thinking of getting; how well does it work for book scanning? Does its default scan software allow for custom page sizes, and does it easily scan to multipage tiff?

thinkpad · 02-23-2010, 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Finereader should allow selection/opening of multiple images at a time, and it allows click-and-drag from a Windows folder to the images panel.

This must be in the Pro version. I found no such option in the Sprint edition, I was only allowed to open one file at a time.

From Sprints FAQ:
http://www.abbyy.com/finereader_sprint/faqs/

Quote:

To be able to scan/open multiple pages, your scanner driver must support this feature. Most of the scanner drivers support multiple page scanning/opening, but some may not support this feature.

All I wanted was to open multiple image files from disk and load them into Finereader, but for this I had to go through "Book Pilot". No biggy when I found I could do it from "Book Pilot" but not so good for people not having this or a similar program.

Spirity · 02-23-2010, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

Has anyone heard of or tried Snapter. A software for turning a picture taken with a digital camera to look more like the output from a flatbed scanner.

http://snapter.atiz.com/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackguard

If you are interested in going that route, you should look at what the open-source and diy community over at DIY Book Scanner Forums is up to.

Thanks to both of you for sharing these links, really interesting info-

thinkpad · 02-23-2010, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spirity

Thanks to both of you for sharing these links, really interesting info-

If you're interested in building your own scanner solution there's plenty of options out there. Here's two:

New & Improved Portable, Paperless, Digital Copy Machine
http://www.instructables.com/id/New-...igital-Copy-M/

Book Scanner From A Cardboard Box
http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/....php?f=1&t=239

thinkpad · 02-23-2010, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Argel

Best cheap solution: a sharp knife and a Fujitsu Scansnap.

How do you deal with bleed-through when the pages are feeded one by one by the document feeder doesn't this become a problem?

chainring · 02-23-2010, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

That's the one I was thinking of getting; how well does it work for book scanning? Does its default scan software allow for custom page sizes, and does it easily scan to multipage tiff?

I have mainly used it for scanning documents (that's all a book is, right?) and as long as you don't have crinkled pages or other things that could make pages stick together, it feeds 'em right on through and does it at a rate of about one page in 5 or so seconds. The official spec is 20ppm @ 200dpi. ABBYY FineReader default is 300dpi or 600dpi. The thing I like about the 2050C is the almost straight paper path, which is somewhat rare. Scanning heavy paper stock is much easier with this unit than those that make the paper bend around, almost in a U shape.

As for the software, I haven't used it since I have ABBYY FineReader 10, which kills just about everything else for OCR duties. It's astounding how accurate FR can be with a good scan. I do have the bundled software, which is OmniPage Pro, I believe, and can try that out.

chainring · 02-23-2010, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

How do you deal with bleed-through when the pages are feeded one by one by the document feeder doesn't this become a problem?

Brightness or contrast adjustment, if the software has it?

02-22-2010, 02:35 PM	#66
thinkpad David Posts: 1,808 Karma: 8916183 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Norway Device: Kindle, E.Edge (sold), Irex Iliad (retired)	Abby Finereader not able to open multiple images I was just about to go ahead with my scanned book pages saved as .bmp and load them into Abby Finereader for OCR conversion. It turns out that Finereader can only open 1 image at a time. Luckily I found that you can go back into Book Pilot (software for opticbook 3600) and start a "Batch Processing" that will send all the pictures you choose to Finereader and then on to word. The whole process with under 400 pages took 10-15 minutes.

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02-22-2010, 03:07 AM	#63
thinkpad David Posts: 1,808 Karma: 8916183 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Norway Device: Kindle, E.Edge (sold), Irex Iliad (retired)	Has anyone heard of or tried Snapter. A software for turning a picture taken with a digital camera to look more like the output from a flatbed scanner. http://snapter.atiz.com/

02-22-2010, 09:52 AM	#65
Argel Opinionated [but right] Posts: 276 Karma: 1412 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: UK Device: Cybook Gen3, PRS 505, Kindle International, HTC Desire	Best cheap solution: a sharp knife and a Fujitsu Scansnap. Used together with a decent OCR program, it's about 45 minutes to the first (and pretty good) draft of your ebook. Hands on time about 30 minutes. My bookshelves are becoming thinner by the day.

02-22-2010, 05:50 PM	#67
Elfwreck Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,185 Karma: 25133758 Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)	Finereader should allow selection/opening of multiple images at a time, and it allows click-and-drag from a Windows folder to the images panel.

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