Tulon wrote:Scan Tailor never used more than one core for processing tasks. It does use additional threads and therefore additional cores for auxiliary tasks, like loading thumbnails.
Hi Tulon and others. Here are some more thoughts on the processing speed and multiple cores. By using two, four or more CPU cores (if available) ScanTailor would be much faster. Here is a manual process to speed up processing using two cores:
1. Add 5 sample photos of book spreads to ScanTailor
2. Work through all steps like usual, except the last step (output)
3. file > save project as > test.ScanTailor
4. make two copies of all the images: from "folder\" to "folder\1\" and "folder\2\"
5. select half of the pages in the right hand pane (page 6-10 in my example), right click > remove from project
6. file > save project as > test1.ScanTailor
7. file > open > test.ScanTailor
8. select the other half of the pages in the right hand pane (page 1-5 in my example), right click > remove from project
9. file > save project as > test2.ScanTailor
10. open test1.ScanTailor in a text editor and add "1\" to the variable for outputDirectory and "1/" for directory path , then save the file
example before: outputDirectory="C:\out"
example after: outputDirectory="C:\1\out"
11. open test1.ScanTailor in a text editor and add "2\" to the variable for outputDirectory and "2/" for directory path , then save the file
12. open test1.ScanTailor in Scantailor and run the output process
13. start a second instance of ScanTailor, open test2.ScanTailor and run the output process
14. Once both ScanTailor instances are done processing, put all files from each of the out folders in one folder. Then generate a pdf or djvu like usual.
Steps 1-3 are of course manual. But many of 4-14 can be automated through scripting. However, steps 5 and 8 are currently hard to script. But I think they'd be scriptable if only the ScanTailor UI had these features:
A. put information on the total number of pages in the project in the ScanTailor window title
(note: it is not reliable to only multiply the number of input images by two because the user might remove some pages manually in step 2 and some or all inputs might be images of single pages)
B. add keyboard control for extending selection in the right pane: let shift+down extend the selection with one downwards in the list. (That's how selection works in Windows Explorer)
C. add keyboard control for the "remove from project" command. For example delete or shift+delete. C isn't strictly necessary since a script simulating mouse clicks can work, but scripting keyboard commands is easier and more reliable.
I know that Tulon's ScanTailor development is currently in pause mode. But even a comment on how complex it might be to add A and B might be of use. My thinking is that A and B seem less complex than for example changes to the core text processing ScanTailor does so maybe some other dev reading this who can't work on the core stuff might still be able to look into adding A and B. I can't. But I can script a bit so if A and B was added then I'd take a stab at making a Windows script that automates 4-14, with an ini setting for what number of CPU cores to use.
edit: Oh wait! I forgot to look more into the .ScanTailor files. They're all plaintext. So a script might process them directly for the other steps too, using regexp or some other method. So as an alternative route, does anyone have hints on the easiest way to "split" a .ScanTailor file to get the same results as in step 5 and 8 above?