[Coco] Re: Feedback on Quality Requested

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 27 April 2006 19:25, Michael Wayne Harwood wrote:
>Richard,
>
>> One really can't make any comparisons between the djvu and jpg
>> images as they are not of the same pages. With that caveat, both
>> seem adequate for the job although the moire patterns on p3 of the
>> djvu are very bad. It would be nice to know if they were introduced
>> by the scanner or djvu process.
>
>I agree with you - I will create a sample of page 3 in .jpg format for
> a side by side comparison.  Aside from the moire there are things to
> point out such as the camera's images have bleed through from the
> page behind it, the text of the .djvu files is not as clear due to
> the cleaning process I put the pages through.  I should have done a
> better job with apples to apples comparisons in all respects.  I will
> correct that as soon as I can.
>
>> Since the project will be sold at about $60-$70 dollars, seems to me
>> the main issue should be what will be the quality of the magazines
>> to be scanned. Based on the djvu demo, the quality of the magazines
>> will be more important than the processes used to acquire and store
>> the images. Paying $60 for images of damaged magazines is food for
>> thought.
>
>I agree with you here as well - I have been scanning the magazines I
> have and if there are magazines in better shape I would welcome them,
> or scan from them.  Bear in mind that the costs will be for licensing
> ($36) and materials ($??) plus shipping only - i will not be adding
> in any profit for myself or the project.
>
>> DJVU offers the ability to search for information within documents
>> and for that alone would be superior to jpg for this project. Given
>> that DVD disks could be used to store the project, compression
>> ability does not seem much of an issue. There are other formats that
>> might be as good or better than djvu.
>
>.jpg is not under consideration as a format for the re-publishing of
> the project - I am sorry I did not communicate that clearly. One of
> the things that I have found is that when comparing .pdf and .djvu
> files is that the .djvu files are almost always of better quality at
> smaller sizes.  Both .pdf and .djvu have text searching ability, and
> are supported for everything the project has as a goal.  I decided to
> primarily pursue .djvu and would be ecstatic for a volunteer to
> create .pdfs of the images for inclusion as an option.
>
>Bear in mind the number of pages is close to 25,000 so for a single
> 4.7gb DVD to include everything the average size per image will need
> to be around 150kb to 170kb depending on how much space will be
> needed by the "Rainbow on Tape/Disk" data files and the searchable
> index.
>
>I don't think that a double-layer DVD is going to be compatible with
>everyone's system who may buy the product, so that leaves us with a
> few options:
>
>  1. One single-layer DVD (lesser image quality)
>  2. Two single-layer DVD's (better image quality, more cost and the
> index would be broken up)
>  3. Choice to purchase either 1 or 2 depending on your desires.
>
By the time this project is ready to burn to disk, I'd suspect that 
dbl-layer dvd's will be rather common, so I don't know as I'd make a 
carved in stone decision re the format till that time comes.

My own opinion is that shooting for a sub 200k size per page is probably 
going to sacrifice quality in many ways that would come back to haunt 
us later.  So I would, for the src archives at least, tend to want 
pages of at least 10 megs so that they could be downconverted the 
minimum amount to fit the media, which by then might be HD or blue-ray, 
with 30-50GB of capacity per disk.

How much storage area do you have available for this project?  And can 
you do OCR on the pure text pages, then output a 10k .ps file for those 
pages only.  I've found that reliable OCR that doesn't need a lot of 
hand editing, tends to need 600dpi and up scanned image to work with, 
and those will be 20+ megs a page until converted.

I'd get involved in the scanning but I'm out of pocket for the next 2 
months plus, working on a dark tv station in UP MI.

>If choice #3 was determined we add a layer of complexity insofar as
> having to re-publish the magazines at least twice, possible four
> times if we included the .pdf version as an option.  This also means
> that either more DVD's would need to be burned up front to cover what
> someone may order, or that DVD's would need to be burned on the fly
> according to consumer request.  Although we could certainly take
> pre-orders towards the end of the publishing work, the problem would
> still exist for future orders.
>
>My opinions is that we should have at most two options to make it
>reasonable to be able to create and ship the product.  My personal
> opinion is that both .pdfs and .djvu versions should be offered if
> possible, and that both versions should be comparable in quality.  I
> also think that having an end product spread over more than one DVD
> to ensure better end product quality is a sacrifice that is very much
> worth doing.
>
>Regards,
>Michael Harwood

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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