Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
24-40 HOURS??!
Not if the person has lots of experience with it.
Quick-and-dirty scan-OCR (with correction)-format: 1-4 hours, depending on book. That'll get a me a readable ebook version in Word-formatted PDF. It'll have some OCR errors, and the formatting won't be great, but it'll be fine for a novel I'm going to read once, or for first reading of a novel I want to format more carefully, but don't want to have the ending spoiled while I'm doing the formatting.
Extra-careful: ~6-10 hours (higher end only for image-heavy books where OCR zoning is critical) lets me fix the OCR errors, and format with line breaks between paragraphs & chapters tagged as H2 for Calibre conversion.
However, for that I'm assuming a high-speed scanner, good OCR software (Finereader Pro), and enough practice to make all the steps go smoothly.
Another dozen hours would let me produce nifty customized BookDesigner ebooks in several formats.
|
I'm talking about a fully proofed (zero OCR artifacts, against the paper copy) copy. The scanning takes very little time, it's the final proofing that takes all the time. If you depend on only a single read, you'll still find OCR errors the next read. The human minds fills in gaps too well.....
(Think of the weeks Harry T has put into some of the Dickens volumes.)