Hallo Irene and Eric,
Delighted to see a little enthusiasm re the ScanBox. This may not be the
ultimate solution for us, but, until something even better comes along, 'tis
certainly a solution of sorts. I note that the price has gone up and is now 35
dollars. This is a shame because, should you choose to purchase one, you will
certainly feel it is a bit overpriced for what it is, but, I repeat, if it
works then it is worth it! I see from their website that they have been
inundated with orders and, as this is aimed at the mainstream market, this is a
good indicator IMHO. Also, just now, I tried it with the RedLaser app, and it
works really well. It enabled me to roll, say, a tin or a bottle of wine slowly
within the box and the app enabled its own light and took the shot as soon as
it saw the barcode. Very useful when you don't know where the code is. Plus, it
wasn't necessary to use the built in light. I really want to stress that I am
using a prototype and haven't seen the finished article, so cannot speak for
the usefulness of the LED that comes with it. Also, the way the battery
attaches to the box is very iffy. You have to unplug the battery to turn the
light off. Thus, this is something that the designers should have dealt with
before putting the price up (a mistake, in my opinion, as, if they are getting
a lot of orders, they would do better to put the price down and improve the
details. However...) I am always loath to actually suggest that people spend
money on my recommendation, but do think it will help, greatly, your success
with some of the OCR apps.
http://thescanbox.com/products/scanbox-plus
That was the link for their website, I think I would suggest getting the
ScanBox Plus, because it comes with the light, but be prepared for it not being
enough and needing, as I do with this prototype, to add lights of your own.
Also, I was under the impression that the final version would be made of
plastic, however, from what I have read, it is still made of cardboard. Well,
this is not a refined product, that is for sure, but I am having real success
with it nevertheless.
As for the iPhone in a case: I take mine out before using it with the SB.
However, I have used it while still in the case, but because my case had a pres
stud fastener on the under side, it affects the way the phone sits, so I get
better results without it. I know that some people have cases that are tricky
to remove and replace, I cannot say how these cases might affect the
positioning of the phone, but, if you don't have a fastenrer like mine, I think
it shouldn't be too detrimental.
I shall keep testing this box out and will report back on any new findings.
Good luck,
Sandy.
Sent from my iPhone
On 28 Jan 2013, at 19:25, "Eileen Misrahi" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi sandy,
>
> First of all, I have always valued your posts in regards to OCR scanning with
> the phone. It's interesting that I usually get the best scan results with
> "Say Text." May be this solution will allow me to revisit "Prizmo." I have a
> couple or few questions.
>
> 1. Who is the developer or vendor that will be producing this device?
> 2. The phone case that I have has a nice rectangular cut out for the camera.
> Will this be sufficient to line the camera up with the hole, or will I need
> to remove it and place the tactile place markers for alignment?
> 3. Do you know when this will be available for the consumer to purchase?
>
> I know this is a lot of questions, but I am excited if there can be a better
> method in capturing printed materials when I am out-and-about. Thanks for all
> of your hard work in the area of making the OCR more accessible for the
> visually impaired.
>
> Best,
> Eileen
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Sandratomkins
> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 6:05 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: ScanBox.
>
> OK, for those of you interested in a more user friendly interface when using
> the OCR Apps available to us, may I introduce the ScanBox!
>
> 1. What is it? ScanBox is, as you might guess, a box designed to enable
> scanning. It is a box which collapses flat, to the size of a sheet of
> foolscap/A4 size (the tuypical size of a printed letter) It is the work of
> seconds to assemble it and it weighs a couple of ounces. It costs somewhere
> in the region of 25 Euros/Dollars (a very loose conversion there!) It comes
> equipped with a LED light, but you have to connect a battery to this.
> Once assembled, the foot print is A4 sized and the height is about 16 inches.
> I have only had a chance to play with a prototype which is made of cardboard,
> but understand that the finished product is plastic.
>
> 2. What does ScanBox do for us? On the top of the box there is a hole, over
> which you must position the camera of the phone. With the help of my partner,
> I have placed four tactile markers corresponding with the corners of the
> iPhone when in the exact position. The box is open on one side, so it is
> simplicity itself to slide a sheet of text into the box. In this way, the
> phone is perfectly placed for the shot, the paper is perfectly aligned and
> the distance is perfect for prizmo to do its stuff! I mention Prizmo because
> I have only tried SayText and Prizmo with this box and have to report that
> Saytext will not work with it for reasons I could explain, but will leave for
> now in the interest of brevity. Probably other OCR packages will work with
> the ScanBox, but Prizmo has its advantages for us, so I will stick with it
> for now.
>
> As you can imagine, 2 of the variables which make the use of the camera
> difficult for us VIPs have been dealt with, I.E. the perfect positioning of
> the phone in relation to the text, involving no skill at all, especially,
> once these corner markers have been attached. So, totally hands-free I can
> tell Prizmo to "take picture" and it is done! The only other variable which
> causes difficulty for us is good lighting. Because the ScanBox comes with a
> LED light set into the top, there should be no problem re ambient lighting,
> shadows etc. However, with this prototype version, I have to admit that the
> light is woefully inadequate and I have stuck, onto the underside of the lid
> of the box, 2 LED lights of my own. I should say that a friend of mine in
> Australia (the home of the ScanBox) has the final version and reports that
> the lights that come with the box work well for her. So, fingers crossed on
> that one!
>
> In the past, on this list, I have described my own experimentation using a
> cardboard box with a hole cut into the top and have reported reasonable
> results with same, but who wants to live with a big, ugly, box in their
> lovely home environment? Plus, who wants to carry something like that in the
> off chance that they might need to OCR a restaurant menu? So, ScanBox does
> the same thing while being very portable, foldable and light! It costs more
> than your cardboard box and when you first see it, you do think "Hmmm, seems
> like a lot for a flat-pack box" but if it does the business well...
>
> I have found it to be excellent using prizmo on single sheets of text, but
> below please find an example taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (a huge,
> hard-back book, which is very difficult to flatten!) The page in question
> contains 2 columns of text, no pictures, I think, and it does go a little
> awry toward the very bottom, but I didn't hold the page flat, merely holding
> the other side of the book virtically to allow the page I was scanning to lay
> as flat as possible. The iPhone 4s was sitting happily by itself on the top
> of the box comfortably between the four corner markers, my LED ;ogjts were on
> and I only had to say "Take Picture!"
>
> So, here is is! Sorry if it is a bit long, but I wanted to demonstrate a
> scan which would have taxed me, using my Prizmo skills and which I could not
> have achieved without using this ScanBox because scanning from the
> Encyclopaedia Britannica ahs always been my yardstick when practising with
> the various OCR Apps.
>
> Finally, I must say that not everyone who has tried this box has been
> immediately enchanted, but as I now have it set up, I can only say that
> because I use it totally hands-free and I apply no skill of judgement at all,
> it must be possible for all of us to work it to an acceptable degree of
> success.
>
> Here's the scan, Enjoy,
> Sandy.
>
> kitchen of a lonely farmhouse; as the doomed man's head is held in an oven,
> and his hands (the only thing in the picture) convulsively twitch, the sound
> of hissing gas dominates the scene. The introduction of sound also made it
> possible to use silence with a dramatic effect that is more telling than
> either words or music.
> Like images, sounds can be used to represent subjective thoughts, indicating
> not what the character is saying but what is in his mind. For example, in
> Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), the first English sound film, the words "knife,
> knife, knife" are repeated in the thoughts of a frightened gift who thinks
> that she has committed a murder.
> In terms of montage, sound, dialogue, and music are used in combination not
> only with one another but also with the visual image. They can overlap and
> vary in intensity in a flexible and €omplex pattern. The finished sound track
> may involve mixing together tracks of dialogue, background noises, and music
> recorded at different times; the tracks must be matched to one another and to
> the visual film. Though the audience may hear it simply as an accompaniment
> to what they see, the sound may be the most expensive and difficult part of a
> motion picture.
> Music. The live music that accompanied silent films varied from a full
> orchestra to a honky-tonk piano, according to the size of the cinema. Music
> was effectively used on the film set to improve an actor's performance.
> With sound, music became an integral part of the picture on the screen. Early
> mood music was so expressive that often it now seems overblown. Conscientious
> filmmakcrs soon learned the virtue of restraint, using music less frequently
> but with more effect. Since the 1960s, electronic music, as in Close
> Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), has come to be commonly used.
> Music often has an important function in emotional climaxes of motion
> pictures. It can be used effectively to relieve or sublimate intolerable
> intensity--of grief, pain, or ecstasy. The Gospel According to St. Matthew
> (1964) by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini reveals how expressive
> periods of silence can be, and how great music can ennoble scenes like those
> of Christ's persecution and agony on the cross. Music may also be used
> symbolically.
> In Lton Morin, pr~tre (Leon Morin, Priest, 1961), for example, a sequence of
> harsh chords represents the German occupation forces, and a dancing bugle
> motif represents the Italian troops. Organ music is used in scenes showing
> the heroine with the priest in church, and piano music when they are in his
> flat. Hurdy-gurdy music represents two gossiping spinsters, and in a
> climactic scene louder and louder electronic music represents the heroine's
> obsessive sexual feeling for the priest, until she reaches out to take his
> hand.
> Sound engineering. It is the function of the sound engineer to select and
> modify sound as the cameraman selects visual images. Since the noise of
> crockery, cutlery, or paper or the chirping of crickets would be intolerable
> transferred in full volume to the screen, the sound engineer must tone them
> down. Treble and bass must be balanced. In other cases, in order to get the
> effect needed, sound has to be built up and orchestrated as if it were music.
> Again, sound need not correspond exactly with the visual images. Artistic use
> can be made of asynchronism; that is, contrasting the sound to the visual
> image. Motionpicture sound is capable of remarkable delicacy, richness, and
> variety. Sound libraries put most conceivable sounds readily at the disposal
> of filmmakers. Instruments and voices can be modified, overlapped, echoed, or
> given a resonance and volume that transform them. Dialogue can be crystal
> clear, bringing the audience far closer to an actor than in the theatre, or
> it may deliberately reproduce the careless enunciation of everyday speech.
> The script. Although conventions vary from one coun.
> try to another, the script usually develops over a number of distinct stages,
> from a synopsis of the original idea, through a "treatment" that contains an
> outline and considerably more detail, to a shooting script. Although the
> terms are used ambiguously, script, or screenplay, usually refers to the
> dialogue and the annotations necessary to understand the action; a script
> reads much like other printed forms of more OIt~ll z,t~ .... .
> extensive technical details regarding the setnng, me camera work, and other
> factors. Moreover, a shooting script may have the scenes arranged in the
> order in which they will be shot, a radically different arrangement from that
> of the film itself since, for economy, ,all of the scenes involving the same
> actors and sets are ordinarily shot at the same time. Some scripts are
> subsequently modified into novels and distributed in book form, such as the
> U.S. best-seller Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal, and, in the instance of
> Dylan Thomas' The Doctor and the Devils (1953), a script became a literary
> work without ever having been made into a motion picture. Generally, more
> elaborate productions require more elaborate shooting scripts, while more
> personal films may be made without any form of written script. The script's
> importance can vary greatly, however, depending on the director. Griflith and
> other early directors, for example, often worked virtually without a script,
> while directors such as Hitchcock planned the script thoroughly and designed
> pictorial outlines, or storyboards, depicting specific scenes or shots before
> shooting any film.
> Adaptation from other art forms must take into account Fi differences of
> complexity and scale in film. A film often must omit characters and incidents
> in the novel from of which it is adapted, for example, and the pace usually w
> must be accelerated. Ordinarily, only a fraction of a novel's dialogue can be
> included. In an adaptation of a play, the curtailment is less severe, but
> much dialogue still must be cut or expressed visually.
> Well over half of all fiction films made since 1920 have been adapted from
> plays or novels, and it is understandable that certain formulas have been
> tacitly accepted to facilitate the remaking of literature into moving
> pictures.
> Adaptation has been thought of as an aesthetically inferior exercise, because
> most such films merely illustrate the classics or reshape a literary text
> until it conforms to stanchard cinematic practice. The particular qualities
> that made the original interesting are often lost in such a process.
> Certain films and filmmakers, however, have achieved an aesthetic premium by
> accepting the literariness of the original and then confronting this with the
> technology and methods of the cinema. Since the 1970s numerous directors have
> explored literature in an almost documentary manner. The artifice of the
> French director Eric Rohmer's Die Marquise yon O. (1976), for example, aptly
> expresses the literary sensibility of Heinrich yon Kleist's romantic, ironic
> work. On the other hand, less adventurous, big.
> budget adaptations continue to reshape the literary works they are based on
> into conventional "Hollywood" movies, as some critics complained about Sidney
> Pollack's Out of Africa (1985). The delicate and changing sensibility of the
> main character, evident in the prose of the original, was not reflected in
> the film's traditional, albeit grand, presentation.
> Although many eminent literary authors, including F.
> Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, have worked on film scripts, the
> ability to write a good original script, especially under strict studio
> conditions, frequently belongs to lesser-known scenarists with a strong
> visual sense. Some writers, particularly in France, have tried to narrow the
> gap between the written and cinematic modes of expression.
> Marguerite Duras and Aiain Robbe-Grillet became leaders of a new kind of
> author who is able and willing to "write" directly on film. Both have
> directed their own films, which they see as equivalent to their novels and
> plays.
> M°tion'l~icture acting, Of all the artists involved in films, the actors and
> actresses are closest to the audience.
> The public more often goes to see a motion picture for its stars than for any
> Other single reason. The divergent techniques of stage and film "
> tl~ed there are man,. ! ....
> acting are well understood, cauing prayers who excel in both. Bat greatest
> film stars have a talent Peculiar to the screen alone. This talent often
> seems to be related not to how well they act, but to the so
> Film actim, r,,-,,;--- rt of Person they appear to be.
> the advice ,~,~..~,,-es restraint "Don't at1 -tl~ink" was I]eingf ~-rue
> emin~,,. ,-- " . .............. one,At ~,,, merman director F.W. Murnau.
> dramatic literature, while "shooting script" or "scenario" .While stage
> actors may be praised for a performance that ~ahmghllYerr°~ugh', film stars
> usualN m,~ be • . ~-lose-u,.- a .........
> t appear to • "~ ~:centuate the more intimate rel
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
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