Archival Grade Flatbed Book Scanner - Avision FB6080E

[@CantankerousDave]

There's a channel here called Book Scanning that shows a DIY v-shaped scanning rig with twin plexiglass platens. That's pretty much what library archivists use.

[@casev799]

Just looked it up, and will watch after this, but I definitely can see some similarities with ones in videos posted by Internet Archive. Definitely interested 👍

[@fsmoura]

Awesome, thanks for the tip 👍

[@JackieBright]

I suspect that's what he meant by "getting creative" with two modified cannon flatbeds

[@Catheidan]

yeah, Archival and Flatbed scanner is an oxymoron. an Archival scanner opens the book as little as possible.

[@redheadsg1]

I work in library on archive scanners and i never used v shaped glass plates. Why ? Because they are heavy and it can take a toll on your hands and wrists when you scanning 4-8 hours per day. Also the other problem (al least with our v shaped glass plate) is that it leaves black lines where the spine is and it is really really annoying to look at it. Also when you are using v shape mode on scanner, book tends to slide of the sides and you can get crooked scanned pages. And you need to support the book to get pages flat on the glass. If you are interested, we are using ImageAccess Bookeye 4 (with v shaped glass) and 5 (archive versions) and Zeutschel OS 12002.

[@ssjaken]

Ex commercial printer here. Photos that going accross two pages are known as "gutter jumps". Can be pretty difficult when doing a lot of books

[@teh_supar_hackr]

Those Gutter Jumps can be super annoying to get around without cutting the pages out of the book which I really don't like doing.

[@paulmurgatroyd6372]

It also depends on the makeup of the folios of the book... if large sections are used, such as 64pp or higher, the multiple folding can cause a large variance in the size of the trim on the binder, going from the outside to the inside of the section.

[@Matlockization]

Yeah, but you'll finish the book in half the time !

[@computer_toucher]

"It's only 600 dpi" and I immediately thought the same as you: That's *true, honest* DPI. Which worked for the most picky print houses for ages and ages.

[@paulwomack5866]

A lot of coffee-table books were printed from images at a mere 300 DPI. (life long professional pre-press software guy here...)

[@trevoro.9731]

Many scanners had 1200 and more true DPI. This one is a trash, as it has an old USB2.0.

[@patrickweggler]

From my time at the university library, the colleagues, doing this kind of work for a living there, are using, for the highest quality, a quartz glass sheet and a SLR camera

[@FredrikOstrozanszky]

Yeah, I visited the national library of my country and they use pretty much the same. A DIY setup with a V-shaped cradle, with two special glasssheets, two dslr cameras with lenses and a foot pedal trigger. They claimed it was better and cheaper than commercially available products. Depends on the object of course. Some documents are too fragile even for this type setup.

[@pausmth]

I just wanted to thank you for doing things like scanning old documents and putting them on archive. I know lots do, but I'm appreciative of everyone that does, and the tips you have for it yourself. Thanks for everything!

[@nickwallette6201]

I once thought, "why don't more people do this?" This series of videos has been a pretty comprehensive answer.

[@alangfp]

the black background to eliminate what's showing on the back BLEW MY MIND!!!! Wow! Never thought of it. I'll always learn something new, no matter what... Thanks!

[@jdrissel]

Many years ago I did some work to make a Fuji scanner work with an odd flavor of UNIX (Trusted Solaris). The software the customer wanted to use not only did OCR, it also did font recognition. It produced a PDF output that was searchable and almost perfect. You were also just a hotkey from seeing the scan. The one we had for development did double sided sheet feed. It worked so well that someone brought in a bandsaw to cut spines off. The thing went so fast that we had to build a sheet catcher because the pages would fly all over the room.

[@toshihitsu1989]

Had used to use one of those Fuji flat top with a feeder where I used to work and they were really great Scanner. Very expensive but got the job done The scanner was back from 2012 or 2013 I don't exactly remember the model number but I know it was a Fuji

[@Consequator]

the edge is from ye olden days to prevent outside light from coming in. But scanners work differently than they used to due to optical sensors becoming better and more affordable. Also it is often the bundled software, that only works with the 'specialized' scanner, that makes it worth wile for book scanning / archives.

[@Avelanche]

I love you Shelb. You are a gift to humanity. I always like to think about the person that is extremely interested in specific things that nobody else would spare 2 seconds of thought towards, and here i am enthralled by a story of a man that went to a library to document and rate their public scanner. I watch your videos with as much wonder and joy as i would the Lord of the Rings movies. Thank you for existing!

[@joshuaanhalt3180]

There is another technology for scanning books, using a prism and a mild vacuum or static cling, you can scan both pages simultaneously, and essentially the entire crease. ScanRobot is the patented commercial option, but there have been numerous DIY/Maker versions. (Two CCD or line scanners are placed ontop of the prism, each sees out one of the other edges of the prism. This assembly is moved into the crease, and pulled straight up. A vacuum or static holds the pages against the prism. The book does not need to be opened very much.)

[@mavluke3633]

can you provide links/details on the DIY maker versions? I would love to build one for myself.

[@nightmare5927]

Dude I could not give less of a shit about scanners but the enthusiasm you have for the stuff you cover is so contagious and makes everything you talk about interesting. Helps that as a gamer I love the idea of preservation(like with Roms and emulators) so there is some relatability there but still! You should teach.

[@ThisisTechie]

I’m so glad KZbin recommended this to me. Screw those big corporations that are basically reselling used parts for 5x what it’s supposed to be valued, honestly thinking to start an independent company because of this.

[@adamz4596]

Was happy to hear you endorse the Canon scanners. I have a CanoScan LiDE 70 that has always done a great job. Love Tech Tangents the depths you go to and your genuine enthusiasm about these tech projects is wonderful. Thank you.

[@Shiunbird]

My grandfather owns one of the thin Canon bus-powered scanners and they are EXCELLENT. Of course, Canon doesn't support them anymore - Mac support ended at 10.7 I think, but they work perfectly out-of-box in Linux and it's just beauty. When you are done, they go into a deeper drawer and disappear until you need them next time. Light, reasonably fast, image is OK, no power bricks to deal with.

[@garfieldepicmoments]

Note that those use CIS sensors, which don't go above 300 DPI (the scanner will fake higher resolutions with interpolation) and anything that isn't completely flat against the page will be out of focus. They're still good for scanning completely flat (never been folded) pages if that's all you need to do.

[@Shiunbird]

@@garfieldepicmoments thanks for the info! Yes - it is mostly used to scan invoices, letters, etc..

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

usually when you're buying something like that as a library, where it's going to be under constant use and abuse, most of what you're paying for is warranty and servicing. the price is several times the hardware cost because customers will often be receiving several units before all's said and done.

[@corkbulb2895]

I absolutely love how so many people have the need to copy, backup, archive and upload to the interwebs every single document ever written known to man and every piece of random software ever written.

[@Fir3Chi3f]

The best part of this video was seeing the documents and your process for getting things on the internet archive. I'm excited to see your experiment!

[@astral16]

We use a canon dr-6030c at work and there’s a reason it cost over $10,000. Its fast, doesn’t jam, and is completely serviceable still to this day.

[@Blackadder75]

its available for around $4000 since 2013, not 10k

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

How does a scanner jam?

[@tezcanaslan2877]

@@AttilaTheHun333333by installing paper wrong, i assume?

[@krzbrew]

Autofeeder may (and will) jam.

[@Capturing-Memories]

I like the black color of the underside of the lid, It avoids having reflection or bleeding of the opposite side of single documents with white underside covers scanners, Very smart.

[@paulwomack5866]

And real easy to retrofit to an existing scanner :-)

[@Capturing-Memories]

@@paulwomack5866 Yes, but I like it when I don't have to modify stuff.

[@dancingwiththedogsdj]

Sir, your videos are outstanding! I love the detail and all you put into them with information and many different aspects of whatever you are discussing at the time. I love the setups you show and just everything that goes along with it. The longer videos are definitely my favorite, but I love 'em all! Have a wonderful day!! 😁

[@danielmilligan3298]

Thanks so much for doing your part and scanning manuals in! I'm scanning a collection of thousands of AV and electronics service manuals I got from a Hifi service and repair shop that closed recently and I've had to teach myself a *ton*

[@K-o-R]

Personally I'm in the debind camp. Getting the best scan including the bits in the book curve is the most important thing. Depending on the book I might even lay-flat comb-rebind it afterwards to make it easier to use in future (very good for textbooks; obviously many of these are not really in short supply).

[@MorbidEel]

Have you compared that to systems that project a grid/lines on the pages to help correct for the curves?

[@K-o-R]

@MorbidEel Fortunately it's no longer my problem, but I only ever had access to a big standard photocopier/scanner. One booklet that was A4 pages as A3 sheets with normal staples was an interesting task for the ADF, but the result was excellent (once I flipped half the pages...).

[@JORGETECHJorge]

XSane is actually the only scanning software I use, even though it has an archaic interface I love the amount of options it has and it doesn't try to hide them from the user like more "simple" scanning software, I actually prefer it to most scanning software on Windows, specially the garbage ones that manufacturers provide. I really want to see the ideas you have on modding Canoscan scanners, those are so common you can actually find working ones in the garbage. BTW, decent film scanners also have insane prices as the document archival ones, they also don't seem to be much different from "normal" scanners. This has led me to photograph negatives instead of buying one of those, slower for sure but much cheaper if you have a decent DSLR or mirrorless.

[@lachlanlau]

good film scanners have infrared dust removal e.g. Digital ICE

[@gorak9000]

I wish xsane was a little smarter about auto adjustments though - at least with some scanners, it always auto adjusts too dark and I have to muck with the brightness and contrast sliders (or the "whitelevel / blacklevel color picker above the preview) to get things better.

[@jnharton]

@@gorak9000It's probably that there are differences between the hardware units that xsane doesn't know about and can't easily compensate for.

[@sryx]

It's exactly for content like this that I happily joined your Patreon :)

[@Jesselovespinball]

I really enjoy the deep dives you do into these different electronics . You do your research and not only that you are able to share it in an eloquent and informative way that keeps me engaged. Well done sir ! And that compaq hat is awesome!

[@markgreco1962]

When you grabbed the album cover first thing I thought was Pantera , maybe even Queensryche. Love the greatness of your videos.

[@Cybernetic_Systems]

Please don’t replace the light source with LED’s, high end professional scanners still use Cold Cathode Lamps because the CRI is consistent across the width of the light strip and there’s no PWM flicker to counter with image processing. LED’s are used in less expensive units for cost reasons only.

[@lexisnep525]

I have an HP M29W MFP laser printer device, and it seems to have a very, very slim edge just like this. It's also an HP product, so it's definitely Linux compatible! It does 600dpi, and is flatbed only. Plus, it's a monochrome wireless laser printer compatible with Apple AirPrint, so it basically covers every possible need I have. Thanks for educating all of us on the usefulness of a zero-edge scanner.

[@lachlanlau]

as a vintage hifi enthusiast, thank you for archiving service manuals

[@Ni5ei]

2:57 I don't like having to cut up a book for scanning either but it's 20 times faster and you can just drop in a 100 page book, press the button and walk away. That's worth it if you have to scan many books.

[@MannyDer]

I have an Epson ET-8550 and it has an amazing scanner. Has to be the best I've used

[@kinggamer19]

as the owner of a plustek It's a really, really good zero-edge scanner, Though it's sad to see how they mostly died out after 2010 in favor of those really bad quality top camera scanners (so if you need to scan books without ripping them apart, it's always best to find one used or like in the video the library is another good place to have zero-edge) also im all for the DIY route, seeing a video on it from you would be legendary since theres not a whole lot and the ones that exist are not very helpful and quite old.. like almost a decade old

[@PowerElectronic]

Dude, you've got a knack for this.

[@AegisPupus]

0:15 OMG I worked on making an asynchronous interface for that scanner because the TWAIN interface was not Windows friendly. 1993... good times...

[@arjovenzia]

I'm not sure why scanner software is so abysmal, but that just seems to be the case. Never a fun time. This somewhat series does make me appreciate so much more the fact we can nowadays just Google a manual for about anything. Somebody once had to sit down n digitise that, didn't realise how much of a chore it could be. I shall be much more forgiving in the future, whilst pixel peeping on a schematic from the 70's. Is that a zero, eight, perhaps a bee. That it exists on the intertubes is awesome. Go hard my dude, this level of dedication to nerdery gives me some hope.

[@chaos.corner]

Twain was supposed to fix that. A standard interface so that you could have competition and the pick of quality scanning software. Instead, we still end up using the buggy bundled stuff (My Epson software doesn't preserve when you change the scan directory. It always reverts to Pictures).

[@secondarycontainment4727]

I watched the Last Star Fighter with my son. Been watching the movies of my childhood aligning them when he's at that same age that I was when they came out... He figured out that the Beta, the Simuloid, was in his words a "clone" even before Beta took the form of Alex. These kids man...

[@t94xr]

Windows Support is continued using VueScan.

[@ratman7f3]

Finally, a way to give back to my friends in continuing education in I.T

[@WedgeStratos]

This feels similar to my instance. I was lucky and scored an Epson Expression 10000XL Photo scanner. The 10K line of scanners are just as expensive, moreso for models like the Photo one I have, since it has an upside-down scanbed for negatives or x-rays. At the very least, they're from Epson and work without issue for me using Skanlite. It might just be the driver implementation if the Avision's having an issue. Or that I'm using the Flatpak. Either way's possible.

[@Setupthemabomb]

My office got few Avision A3 flatbed/ADF scanner, those things cost around $4000 back in 2009, it still works and produce scan like it was brand new, on the other hand, i used $600 A3 Brother all in one printer-flatbed/ADF scanner-copier from yesteryear, those thing prints sucks, scans like 90s photocopier machine, and such an ink-guzzler it never allowed to used as a copying machine.

[@tnaxpw]

I'm really looking forward the Canon reviews. I have like a million books that are not in print for probably a over a decade now and was looking forward to start archiving them, but the price on overhead ones was just killing me.

[@gregrich91]

got my dad a Epson perfection v600 to scan ancient family pictures, and WHOOOWEEE it both scans slow AF but also if you pick the wrong settings the files are like 4GB each

[@ffamii]

Love scanner videos! I have a Plustek A4 one and it's my favorite but there a really big deadzone at the edge :( and the software sucks. It seems like there is always someting with these things.

[@DoRC]

This reminds me of when I used to do IT for our municipality. I was in charge of the scanning and archiving software and hardware. I can't even remember what the scanners were some sort of very expensive Fujitsu thing but we a document management program called hummingbird which was absolutely awful and was basically always broken.

[@gorak9000]

The solution is to use the Fujitsu scaner with xsane in linux - I have a fi-5750C and it's an amazing scanner - crazy fast! It scans at 600dpi faster than most scanners preview scan at low resolution, and the full duplex sheet feeder (with built in page heater to eliminate wrinkles) is stupid fast!

[@j.joseph5353]

Plustek Optibook A300. Excellent scanner and I'd buy another in a second. Costs about a grand, but is an absolute workhorse. The lid seems like it should open more than it does, though. Combine that with questionable hinges, and that's the one weak spot/complaint I have with it.

[@robertlock5501]

Good man - glad you included a link to the intel catalog - looks great B)

[@herrpez]

PlusTek owner checking in. Definitely not compatible, and likely never will be. I'm tempted to get an iVina now just for that reason... That being said, keeping an old WIndows XP virtual machine around isn't the worst thing in the world. Edit: Strike that. Watched the rest of the video now. I no longer feel compelled to side-grade my setup with an iVina (or any other rebadged version); seems like my WinXP VM solution with my second-hand PlusTek is just fine in the grand scheme of things. Definitely interested in the cheapo flatbed hack though. 😄

[@Capturing-Memories]

Looking forward to that homebrew scanner project.

[@djbongwater]

600 dpi?!?!?! for a service manual? you, sir, are doing the lords work. I scan hundreds of album covers into discogs for defacto 'archival' purposes, and 600 dpi is suitable for those, seems like crazy overkill for a technical manual but boy do i love zooming in on each individual printed dot :)

[@TheRetroBristolian]

I've had 3 of those Canon Lide scanners over the years and they're a fantastic little scanner, I removed the back edge/lid on my newest one to start experimenting as well. on my particular model it looks like the plastic edges hold the glass in position and would need to be replaced with something else to hold the glass. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[@RowanHawkins]

You are also running over usb2.0 on this device. That will affect its speed. There is no onboad buffer which is part of the reason for the stepper speed. However scanning at 600 DPI is just overkill on paper. Heck when Kodak only used 300dpi for photo scanning. Otherwise you get film grain noise.

[@paul_owen]

God bless you

[@jfbeam]

I was going to mention those CanoScan things. They can be a little slow at higher resolutions, but the lowres "preview" scans are lightning fast. I've not scanned many books, but magazines never gave me any problems - line the page up at the (0,0) corner and the binding gets cropped out. It does mean a lot of editing, but you'll be doing that anyway. (unless you can be meticulous in placing the page, then the cut is the same on every page, and that can be programmed.) For pictures, I have this HP thing; no drivers required as it presents as a standard storage device containing a jpg. (the "driver" just watches that drive for new files and copies them.)

[@random240dc]

I used to work in medical IT devices, and when you see rebadged "turnkey" implementations like the scanner in the library, they are probably a company built around, and are priced exactly at, to fill a grant the org had accesse to. Smartboard in classrooms were notorious for this.

[@johntorres1517]

Oh! I have very extensive experience in scanning an insane amount of documents, quickly, and in decent quality. What you want is a duplex, feeder, SCSI (scuzzy) scanner with OCR. Or a modern equivalent for scanning speed. At around 2005-2011 I worked for a medical billing company that had to keep 10 years of records. We had a literal warehouse indexed of boxes and boxes of mail correspondence, bills, checks etc. All of which we digitized. I'm talking cartoonishly large piles of paper on my desk, Of which I could scan thousands in a day. The ideal method is to remove staples, and prepare the pages in order, even cutting where necessary. Then you place it on the feeder and it would scan insanely fast, while also applying OCR (Optical Character Recognition). We could end up with high (or low) quality pages with tech search available on all of them. It worked wonderfully and allowed us to take decades worth of documents and store them digitally. The entire warehouse was eventually completely scanned and closed. A successful venture. An entire geographic region of very specific type of medical billing for most hospitals in the area digitized.

[@kanalnamn]

VueScan is not free, but it's available for Linux and handles more or less every scanner there is. I haven't yet found a scanner that it couldn't handle without drivers, and that includes A3 and negative scanners. I've only used the Windows-version, and it's worth every penny.

[@voltare2amstereo]

Yep, have a licence for vuescan.

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

Not paying from $40AUS to $179AUS for a scanner program.

[@egbront1506]

@@geofftottenperthcoys9944 I understand that but it is also available for Mac and the options and tweaks it has are way more than come with the clunky software bundled with scanners.

[@JonBarker-Crimsonleech-]

Just checked vuescan drivers for that avision and it should work straight out of the box with linux

[@JonBarker-Crimsonleech-]

Get a lifetime license, worth it

[@nihonam]

I purchased Epson 3200 in 2008 for ~$100 on web auction. Pretty happy with it. Scanned numerous pages and films on it with decent quality.

[@paul_boddie]

I have an Epson Perfection 2400 Photo from new and it is a pretty solid scanner. I got it because it does negatives and slides with an adapter, although that can be fiddly and I found that negatives didn't always sit flat in the adapter, but then dedicated film scanners like those from Nikon were way beyond what I could justify spending. For a document scanner, though, it is pretty fast. The other reason I chose Epson over Canon or other brands was that SANE had solid support for Epson models at the time (over twenty years ago), which will be a consideration for anyone picking up a used model even now.

[@nihonam]

@@paul_boddie For me worst problem with film scanning on flatbed was contact film with glass producing non retouchable Newton circles. I tweaked adapters by adding steel wires in places between frames to support film and prevent glass touch.

[@spokehedz]

I cannot wait for Tech Tangent's Frankenstein Dual Scanner

[@johnnyeskimo]

Vuescan is supposed to support a lot of abandoned scanners too.

[@petekrz]

VueScan is great! I've used on MacOS and Windows for years. Supports tons of scanners. Available for Linux, but I've never used that version.

[@phille8176]

Didn't thought scanners could be so interesting😅 Great video sir👍

[@artofnoise5013]

I remember using a scanner like this in college around 2006-07 to scan books. Pretty sure it was a Plustek.

[@mikefromwa]

I have an ancient Canon Canoscan LIDE 210 scanner that's been working for over 20 years, might even be more like 30. It only needs one USB connection for both data and power, no separate power block needed and it doesn't plug into the wall, just powered by the USB plug. It's been a great scanner and works perfectly on Linux Mint. I fear the day when it breaks and I have to get a different scanner.

[@Parakinese]

Super fing valuable stuff bro. Keep preserveing things! Awesome ❤️👍🥸

[@pinfarmer]

I remember cruse scanners being the best for scanning things like fine art etc.

[@tootalldan5702]

Cool and honest review. I looked up avision fb25 which was incredible fast scan times at 1200dpi looked promising but like you said "you can't find them"

[@JeanTheron-cf8zl]

As a representative of the African distributor of Avision, I find that pretty sad, because the FB25 is an amazing unit to watch in action. Where are you based?

[@tootalldan5702]

@@JeanTheron-cf8zl US

[@JeanTheron-cf8zl]

Did a bit of digging. Xerox used to sell rebranded Avision units in the USA (and possibly Canada?). Xerox currently rebrands Visioneer devices, which are themselves rebranded Avision products. The model number for the FB25 equivalent is the Visioneer 7900. Can't vouch for its compatibility with SANE or Mac OS, though. If you have your heart set on an original FB25, your best option would be to import it from one of Avision's other markets, like Europe or Africa.

[@TexasExotic]

I’m looking forward to your project! Thanks for taking the time to make these awesome videos too! 😊

[@TastyBusiness]

I could stand to get a good scanner and start archiving some documents.

[@nucflashevent]

Speaking of Linux in general, it's great for making use of older scanners long since forgotten by Mac/Windows. I keep a Linux install on all my Mac and Windows boxes in a virtual machine just for such occasions (so long as the scanner is USB, you should have no problems using it with a VM)

[@Frog-ko6uu]

Have you tried NAPS2 as your scanning software? It’s my go-to on macOS, and it has Linux builds available.

[@AugustusTitus]

The Canon LIDE is great. The ImageRunner sucked because they didn't implement a grayscale mode but you could use the ADF.. I'm in the debinding camp, but what I do is clamp the book between two two-by-fours and feed it into the belt sander until the binding is gone. Then I feed the pages into an ADF. A little trick on ADF scanning is to fan the paper first, as it can be humidity dependent.

[@chupathingy5862]

I just had a flashback to all the times we read books in school, and we didn't have enough books to go around. The xeroxed copies we had were... difficult, to say the least.

[@RynoDBones]

CZUR makes some nice stuff. They also made me re-record a video for them a while back because they wanted me to say “Sizer’ not “Caesar"

[@ayanned]

May the data hoard lourds may bless you on your archival adventures. You're doing the lords work man!

[@simmo1024]

I've got one of those canon LIDE scanners knocking about somewhere, looking forward to that vid.

[@systemchris]

I have some usb li scanner, i always found the borders to be annoying so looking forward to seeing what you do

[@clrei8478]

The scan artifacts at 13:15 are probably due to reflection of the golden / shiny lettering. At least from what I can judge by watching it on video (as opposed to IRL). You could try to scan a mirror to verify. You can also buy configurable foot pedals to execute keybinds somewhat cheap.

[@doublehappiness9889]

When I was at uni. I used to photocopy entire several-hundred-page books because it was cheaper than buying them! 🤣

[@zexuanqiao2441]

Many thanks for the video this is exactly what I need! A linux compatible great CCD flatbed scanner!

[@olik136]

I have to scan architectural drawings sometimes that are bigger than DIN A3- which is the biggest size for a normal flatbed scanner I can get here. So I have to fold the old plan into smaller shapes that fit into the scanner, which has an edge all around the scanning area.. and then put everything together in software.. which also sucks since the rotation never matches... the scanner in the video would make all of that a bit better.. I have worked with big format scanners- but they are completely unaffordable even for most print shops and they also tend to distort the image quiet a lot.. which is a problem with technical drawings.

[@paulwomack5866]

Depending on how often you need to do this, you might consider a camera on a tripod with a panoramic head, and open source panorama software (e.g. Hugin). This would allow easy capture up to around 40" x 30", 600 DPI.

[@nomadhgnis9425]

fujitsu fi-5750 series makes the best adf scanners. They are extremely fast at 600dpi. These scanners are also strong and last years. They also have service kits.

[@monchiabbad]

The hp 4c can be connected to a scsi controller making scans with it multiple times faster then when using a parallel port or the usb port.

[@TwentyEightySeven]

Wish my local library was so well equipped, loads of stuff I’d love to digitalise with a decent commercial scanner or document feeder. My old consumer grade A4 scanner at home just won’t cut it.

[@RetroShare2]

I wonder, if VueScan would work with that.

[@TMS5100]

Destructive scanning is the way to go if the book isn't irreplaceable. And those czur scanners are awful.

[@ryborg123456]

Document cameras have made scanning obsolete. And even back then, libraries quickly switched to cameras. I worked in the field years ago and we ended up investing in automated book scanning machines using page turners and cameras.

[@jfbeam]

It takes an insane resolution camera to do what scanners can do. By many measures, we have that today, but even a cheap scanner can do better than your iPhone 27 and it's 9 cameras.

[@JGnLAU8OAWF6]

@@jfbeam Do you *need* that insane resolution?

[@ryborg123456]

@@jfbeam we are talking about digitizing text. And, for that matter, a 45 megapixel digital photo of a properly backlit 35mm slide taken on a mirrorless camera is superior to a scan from even a coveted Nikon LS-8000 or LS-9000 scanner - which costs as much today as it did 15-20 years ago. A cheap flatbed will give you a nice flat image though. There's almost no other reason to use one.

[@ryborg123456]

@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 not for book scanning. They don't know what they are talking about. "Insane" is not a measurement. I have scanned and digitized hundreds of thousands of archival quality images, by hand, on both scanners and with cameras.

[@felixbohmann]

i have a 24mpix czur, and i love working with it. i only use my brother mfc all-in-one scanner when its stacks of (duplex-)documents, like archiving a full year of old paper stuff. great video though, good to know whats out there!

[@Subgunman]

Personally I own a Canon flatbed scanner that can also scan film in both 35mm and medium format 120 film used in most Hasselblad cameras. It can also do 35mm slides with the adapters that came with it. It is CF lamp based but I wish I knew the kelvin temperature of the lamp just in case it fails. There are sources for the lamps from what I have seen but they only give dimensions and color temperature. Most of these lamps operate at the same voltage so the power supply within the scanner hopefully would be universal.

[@TheHyperrat]

Love your videos! I'm looking forward to check the same posibilty with my old printer/scanner combo (I don´t use the printer anymore)

[@liamharrison3]

What an unexpectedly interesting video.

[@ericstephenson9924]

Ex pro digitizer - use a deconvolver to uncurl the pages near the binding.

[@edgarwalk5637]

To me, the ultimate scanner would use a camera system combined with lidar (or sonar) account for the curvature of the page. The lidar could be used to unwarp the page via software. Note: I'm not saying it's necessarily a viable product.

[@videoviewer2008]

Seems like a longer distant from the camera to the book would solve a lot of problems for the camera based scanner. More distant would mean less parallax that the software has to try to "fix".

[@fsmoura]

5:36 _"So, my hands never have to touch the computer once the process is going."_ sounds like my Friday night plans ( o.o)

[@technoman9000]

Keep it to yourself, coomer

[@IsaacMayMusic]

Great content, you've got a new fan in me! One small suggestion: your audio sync seems to be off by a frame or two. The ol' clap trick is super reliable if you're not already doing that. Audio sounds great though! Cheers.

[@jnharton]

FWIW, it might be possible to do some sort of binary patch on the drivers to work with a different set of USB hardware IDs as long as everything else is the same.

[@hobby30plus]

CathodeRayDude scanner video and I am here now

[@AndrewDasilvaPLT]

Had a canoscan growing up, ut was fantastic.

[@SuperDwango]

I'm surprised someone hasn't cooked up some opensource scanning solution that could be used with any overhead mounted high-resolution camera.

[@paulwomack5866]

You clearly haven't googled, say "diy book scanner"

[@tulsatrash]

Looking forward to Franken-scanner!

[@Cyberdeamon]

Had a pair of old Acer ScanPrisa 640u (one usb and a printer port) back in the day that wouldn't go past Windows XP for driver support but damn it could scan a sh!t ton better than all the 3-in-1's that are out today