Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Built a scanner? Started to build a scanner? Record your progress here. Doesn't need to be a whole scanner - triggers and other parts are fine. Commercial scanners are fine too.

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dtic
Posts: 464
Joined: 06 Mar 2010, 18:03

Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by dtic »

I stumbled on a post on r/datahoarder documenting an Archivist scanner build and a subsequent scan project. Make sure to click through to the Imgur gallery for lots of photos and text. Not sure what that person's username here is, but nice work!
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... d_all_the/
camwow13
Posts: 10
Joined: 09 Feb 2019, 00:32
E-book readers owned: Kindle
Number of books owned: 2
Country: United States

Re: Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by camwow13 »

Hey that was me! Sorry I don't lurk here as much as I used to. Thanks for sharing! Here's a direct link to the imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/RKerbJI
the.traveller
Posts: 82
Joined: 22 Sep 2010, 03:58
E-book readers owned: Samsung Tab S
Number of books owned: 800
Country: Netherlands
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Re: Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by the.traveller »

My I suggest to adjust colour in your yearbooks. In photoshop and Lightroom you can tell that the background (the page itself) is white. Especially in Lightroom you can do the complete book in 1 time so the whole book has white pages instead of the faded yellow. Also adjusting sharpness will make a better picture.
Congratulations to a job well done so far.
You can preserve your efford by burning 100Gb M disc's to keep your RAW data longer than the regular BluRay disc's. Look here:
https://www.amazon.nl/LG-BH16NS55-AU10B ... 0770&psc=1
At the bottom of the page you find the 100Gb Mdisc's needed.

And I just remembered Hauppage also has the Colossus v.2 video capture card.
https://hauppauge.com/pages/products/da ... ssus2.html
It can convert to H.264 from your S Video JVC player. Making the files a bit smaller.
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
Contact:

Re: Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by daniel_reetz »

camwow13, I just want to congratulate you on an awesome build. Great work.
camwow13
Posts: 10
Joined: 09 Feb 2019, 00:32
E-book readers owned: Kindle
Number of books owned: 2
Country: United States

Re: Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by camwow13 »

the.traveller wrote: 07 Jun 2020, 11:08 My I suggest to adjust colour in your yearbooks. In photoshop and Lightroom you can tell that the background (the page itself) is white. Especially in Lightroom you can do the complete book in 1 time so the whole book has white pages instead of the faded yellow. Also adjusting sharpness will make a better picture.
Congratulations to a job well done so far.
You can preserve your efford by burning 100Gb M disc's to keep your RAW data longer than the regular BluRay disc's. Look here:
https://www.amazon.nl/LG-BH16NS55-AU10B ... 0770&psc=1
At the bottom of the page you find the 100Gb Mdisc's needed.

And I just remembered Hauppage also has the Colossus v.2 video capture card.
https://hauppauge.com/pages/products/da ... ssus2.html
It can convert to H.264 from your S Video JVC player. Making the files a bit smaller.
I didn't adjust the color in the yearbooks because that's how they look in real life. I white balanced the cameras to the light being shown on the books and then left it alone. Some of the books actually had beige or brown or yellow paper inside. Often it wasn't even because of age, I remember one book literally used a very brown mixed type paper as an aesthetic choice. I decided to re-create exactly what I was seeing in real life. With my yearbooks, what you see online is very similar to what you'd see if you pulled one off the shelf. I did sharpen the image though! In a few of the books I actually used the Lightroom Enhance Details option too. I stopped though after I determined the algorithm was messing up some of the fine repeating details in the printed dot matrix of book's ink though.

I've thought about getting some 100gb (or 128gb since Sony makes those from the first generation of their optical disc archive project) and burning the project files for posterity. I could do everything with around five discs. It's a good idea.

That's a nice capture card. I capture to a lossless codec first though. Then I re-compress with software based encoders for optimal quality and size. In this case with the VHS aspect of my project I used Avisynth with the QTGMC plugin to de-interlace and lightly upscale the image. This resulted in a very high quality image with few interlacing artifacts and a video that was compatible with YouTube at 60fps.

daniel_reetz wrote: 09 Jun 2020, 21:05 camwow13, I just want to congratulate you on an awesome build. Great work.

Yay! I'm glad you liked it! Literally would never have done a project like this without the designs and guide you made. Thanks so much!
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
Contact:

Re: Nice Archivist build post at the r/datahoarder subreddit

Post by daniel_reetz »

I personally do the same as camwow - I try to match the camera to what I see with my eyes. There are many different ways to capture books - many different intentions - but for me a copy of the book as-i-found-it, or as-i-marked-it-up - that's the digital book I want.
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