High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Discussions, questions, comments, ideas, and your projects having to do with DIY Book Scanner software. This includes the Stereo Data Maker software for the cameras, post-processing software, utilities, OCR packages, and so on.

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erj
Posts: 4
Joined: 10 Nov 2011, 09:59
Number of books owned: 0

High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Post by erj »

Hello,
I have a publishing company in Brasil for more than 15 years and one of my customers wants me to capture 40.000 pages from old books.
As this customers wants the biggest quality possible (for the lowest price, as usual) and in the future I will have to capture newspapers I decided to use two Cannon T3i cameras.
The final output will be PDFs.
About the hardware, i already choose my option among the several showed in this forum.
My main concern is about the software. Cannon has the software that control the cameras, but is it able to control 2 of them?
Can it make the 2 shots with some amount of time between them?
Another option I am considering is DSLR Remote Pro Multi-Camera, from Breeze (http://www.breezesys.com/MultiCamera/index.htm)
I want it to be the most automated as possible, I will have a short time to do the job.
Could one of the members give me any idea which way to follow? I don´t want to invest in this equipment before I am sure it will be able to do what I need.
These cameras costs more than US$ 1.000 each in Brasil.
Thanks for any idea.
Regards
Edison
Anonymous2
Posts: 97
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 16:05

Re: High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Post by Anonymous2 »

I use the Canon T2i for my scanning, and a single T2i has the resolution to adequately scan two pages at once.

If the T2i is cheaper than the T3i in Brazil, get the T2i. They have identical hardware (except for the rotating screen, but I would never pay $200.00 more for just a screen).

Here's a sample word from a book I processed:
Sample Text
Sample Text
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As for triggering, the T3i/T2i has a 2.5 mm port near the USB and microphone port. That port is used for triggering the camera via hardware, which I strongly recommend. You won't need a computer to trigger the camera and hardware-based triggering is much easier to hook up to more complex systems (like adding a trigger at the bottom of the platen with a button, a foot pedal, light sensors, anything).

I made my own trigger using a button and an audio cable (like the one you find in a phone headset) and just attached the button to the scanner base itself (the total price was $6.00), so if you'd like to try that, just look here for a basic tutorial on how to wire it: http://picsbylance.com/?p=1443. I didn't follow the tutorial, but instead I just tried touching the wires together. There are only three (red, black, and ground), so you can't really go wrong.

Here's another guide, this one for making a foot pedal trigger. It's the exact same procedure as above, just hooked up to another triggering source: http://www.instructables.com/id/5-Minut ... ot-Switch/

For triggering two cameras at once, you can just connect two 2.5 mm audio cables together to a single button. It's really simple to do.

But if you want to soup your camera up a bit more, get Magic Lantern. It is CHDK partially ported to the Canon EOS models and it is amazing.

It supports audio triggering and motion detection (and tons more features), so you could actually hook up a bell or just yell and the camera will trigger ;) You can also setup motion triggering with a 1 second delay, if I'm not mistaken, so you can just turn pages and the book will basically scan itself.
erj
Posts: 4
Joined: 10 Nov 2011, 09:59
Number of books owned: 0

Re: High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Post by erj »

Thanks for your help mate,
The reason I need to automate the most possible this process is that the operator will not have too much knowledge about copying, renaming, moving files.
If there is any software that could do the following:

Shoot the cameras.
Rotate the images to upright position.
Save the files with the following namming scheme:
left camera: FILE0001
right camera: FILE0002
:
:
left camera: FILEnnnn
right camera: FILEnnnn+1

I would appreciate any help
Anonymous2
Posts: 97
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 16:05

Re: High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Post by Anonymous2 »

No free software does this, as far as I can tell.

But if you can train your operator to just copy folders onto the desktop, things will go quite smoothly from there.

There is Book Scan Wizard, a program that postprocesses pages. It accepts separate folders for left and right images.

Scan Tailor is another option (I find it easier to use and more powerful than Book Scan Wizard). It supports dewarping of images and batch processing via click and drag (and most of it is automated). It sadly doesn't accept separate page folders.

Both of those programs are available for free. Just Google them and try them out.

What OS you are trying to work with?
erj
Posts: 4
Joined: 10 Nov 2011, 09:59
Number of books owned: 0

Re: High Production and High Quality project How-to-do

Post by erj »

I will use a PC with Windows Vista.
Which software is the more indicated to shoot the cameras?
Tks
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