OCR software

[ericjames]

Mod... please feel free to move this topic to a more appropriate location or merge it if you know of a similiar topic that I missed.

I have been using the OCR software that game with my scanner for years now to scan scripts and make e-scripts.  However, it is an old Epson flatbed scanner, and it is time consuming to go through each page individually.   I am curious what software and/or scanners that other people use for the E-scripts.  I know that if you go to a Kinkos or similar, you can scan pages using the sheet feeders and get a pdf.. but is there a way to then run a pdf into an OCR engine?

I would love any suggestions!
Thanks

[kiwitechgirl]

Most photocopiers these days have the ability to scan - ours is networked and you just choose where on the network you want to send the scans, which means you can use the document feeder.  The OCR software I use (Abbyy FineReader) will certainly read a PDF no problems.

[planetmike]

I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap and love it. There are several different model numbers, and there are different models for Mac vs Windows, so be sure to get the model for your operating system. The scansnap allows you to run up to 20 (?) pages at once through the scanner. Double sided, color, creates JPeg or PDF. OCR is an option through the included Acrobat app, but I've never used that. Scanning is very quick, no warm up period, fairly small, about the size of a shoe box. Pages sit upright and come out the front.

[Jerry Dougherty]

I use our copier (a Xerox) set to a special OCR setting. It scans to a pdf. From there, I'm using Adobe Acrobat to force the document into MS Word.  The biggest drawback with this setup is that I have yet to find how to set the scanner to make a multi-page pdf while using the glass top. It only wants to scan a multi-page document (like a script, with an original held in reserve) into a single pdf if it gets fed through the document feeder.   

[gelo141]

I have and use TextBridge 9.0.  It can source from any scanner and will send the recognized data to the program of your choice.  I originally got it with a Xerox MFC and when I replaced it, got an updated version of the program.

[ReyYaySM]

For my latest script, I used FreeOCR v3.0, which was a free download from cnet.  Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with how well it converted the text.  I was provided a .pdf copy of the script from the producer which I then converted.  You do have to convert page by page, but I was able to convert a 70 page script to Word in under 10 minutes.  I really liked that you could select columns of text, so I didn't have to rescan the script to be single pages (the .pdf had two pages of script per page).  Once in Word, the editing process went pretty quickly.  Text was fairly accurate except for sections in italics, and even that was pretty good.  Total editing/formatting time was under 6 hours, which is the fastest I've been able to edit a script (and WAY faster than typing).