Advice on hardware sought

[Johann Casper Ferdinand F]

Recently I scanned some scores at a local copy shop. The scanner there was unreliable and the rates high.

What scanners do you use? Do you have scanners you find to be reliable, that exhibit good compatibility, provide quality results, and facilitate rapid work?

I was getting two pages a minute done at most, which seems to me awfully slow.

[horndude77]

Daphnis's user page: http://imslp.org/wiki/User:Daphnis

A couple scanners are listed there. I've really thought about getting the mustek. Most A3 scanners are way outside of my price range, but this one is very reasonably priced and for scanning mostly black and white you can't go too wrong. I'm not sure how fast it scans though.

[daphnis]

I'm actually in the process of overhauling the scanning page with suggested scanner hardware, but for now some of the higher models of HP and Epson scanners are quite good although be prepared with HP for horrible software solution that is cluttered, complicated, and prone to incident. If you can afford it, that Mustek A3 scanner is really great for most music scores; not so much for full color scanning, but in 1-bit it works well albeit slower than A4 scanners.

[carmar1791]

To do a fast work with aceptable or good results you have to set your scanner to a resolution of 300 dpi,and if you save in tiff be sure to use ccitt group4 compression.Usally no problem of compression if you save in pdf or png.
If you choose more than 300 dpi you scanner will be very slow , only professional or high price scanner are fast up to 300 dpi.
But don't choose less than 300 dpi because the quality will not be very good.
If you use *nix there are good enought software (xsane gscan2pdf etc.),in windows you have software you buy with your scanner.(hp it's not so much terrible like they say... )
Ciao

Carmar

[daphnis]

300dpi should be the absolute minimum at which you scan. For anything printed in miniature format (pocket scores, study orchestral/opera scores, etc.) they need to be scanned at 600dpi. There really is no practical reason to go above that unless you're scanning something almost microscopic or microformats (fiche, film, etc.).

[Lyle Neff]

300dpi should be the absolute minimum at which you scan. For anything printed in miniature format (pocket scores, study orchestral/opera scores, etc.) they need to be scanned at 600dpi. [...]

I assume you mean any scores that are octavo size or smaller. (Some opera vocal scores are mercifully in regular "full" size, although octavo is the standard for those, I guess.)

[daphnis]

Generally, yes, although depending on the quality of your scanner and your threshold levels, that level may vary.

[Carolus]

I've noticed a number of scans over at the Internet Archive that are in grayscale JPEG 2000 format. I know next to nothing about this file format, but one aspect I notice is that the file size appears to be comparable to that of monochrome TIFFs. The PDFs created from these will not be viewable in the older versions of Acrobat (5 and below) however.

[carmar1791]

More or less I have scaned scores or parts of B4 or A4 paper size.
Usually Scanners set at 600 dpi need 40-50 seconds for each page.
I'm speaking about commercial scanners (not professional).
If you scan a little score it's better 600 dpi or more (ok you are rigth),but you set the run of cursor for small score size (1/4 more or less of the screen).So you need less time than to scan all screen.More or less the time for a page of little score at 6oodpi is like an A4 at 300dpi that is ca.10-15 seconds.
50 seconds for page (A4 size) at 600dpi I think it's too much for a common human patience......specially if you have to do thousands of scans........
Greetings
Carmar

[imslp]

I just visited the local Best Buy, and apparently you can get all-in-ones with 30 page document autofeeders for less than $80, or $200 (laser printer). I'd say investing in one of those might be interesting, provided you don't mind having to cut off the score bindings. It could be a big time saver.

[Vivaldi]

That's why I would prefer to photocopy a score before scanning it. Photocopying does two things. First, it optically reduces the paper size of large sized score (bigger than 12 X 9 inches) to A4 size which can fit into a normal scanner. In the opposite way, it also enlarges miniature sized scores to A4 size. Second, I can just put the photocopies into the autofeeder and let the scanner do the rest while I have lunch. No need to open the book page by page and scan each page one by one.

[daphnis]

I would recommend against either of those two suggestions personally.
1.) All-in-One devices are mechanical spawn of Satan. They rarely do any of their advertised functions well, have many software and driver issues, and produce crappy results on almost every front. On the scanning side, their scanning beds are horribly small and because of where the hinge is mounted is virtually impossible to get certain books in there. They also often lie about the sampling method by using software interpolation from the get go instead of pure optical.

2.) Photocopying then scanning also introduces problems such as increased artifacts in the final scan, sometimes bad up-sampling methods that cause miniature scores to look dithered and soft, and the excessive use of paper and toner.

If you REALLY are interested in producing archival results, which is what we are doing on this site, then there really is no substitute for investing in a good flatbed scanner, possibly an A3 if you manage it. The Mustek A3 USB scanner is the cheapest on the market, has terrible TWAIN drivers (but most do) but works surprisingly well in 1-bit scanning and isn't extremely slow at 300dpi.

[Vivaldi]

Hi daphnis,
In your opinion, if I were to purchase an A3 scanner, what is the scanning speed I should expect when scanning at 600dpi black and white?

[daphnis]

Depends on the size of the canvas you wish to scan. I can tell you that regardless of the area, it'll be quite slow.

What did you have in mind scanning at 600 dpi that wouldn't fit on a standard scanner?

[Vivaldi]

I'd like to scan 9 3/8 by 12 1/4 inch scores published by Dover and Boosey and Hawkes that obviously will not fit into an A4 scanner. Same thing goes for the Kalmus conductor scores at 10 by 13 inches.