[Coco] Scan Test

[Andrew]

> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 22:52:52 -0600 (MDT)
> From: "Michael Wayne Harwood" <michael at musicheadproductions.org>
> Subject: [Coco] Scan Test
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Message-ID:
> 	<36526.192.168.1.1.1118292772.squirrel at www.musicheadproductions.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Hey all - do me a favor and take a look see at the following --> 
> http://www.musicheadproductions.org/coco/softside_test.pdf.  I did some
> quick guess based calculations and came up with the preliminary conclusion
> that if we produced .pdfs of this quality we should be able to fit the
> entire collection of Rainbow on somewhere around 7 or 8 DVD's...  My
> numbers are based on guesses and most likely not conservative, but it's a
> place to start.
> 
> The scans were done at 300ppi with a color depth of 24bits, and then
> converted to a 144ppi pdf.  I think the scan quality is acceptible, though
> there is quite a bit of post scan cleanup that could be done to spiff the
> images up.
> 
> I think OCR might be a separate project considering space requirements. 
> The orginal 300ppi tiff files that were used to generate this pdf were
> almost 250mb for 12 images.  I don't think it's very feasible to consider
> selling the high resolution masters to everyone - the media costs and time
> to burn that many DVDs would be prohibitive.  In my experience OCR works
> much better with 2bit (black and white) images than grayscale or color.

Did you try to convert the TIFF images to PNG, and see what the size 
difference is? IIRC, PNG is (or can be set up as) a lossless codec for 
images, not unlike GIF. I don't think you could (or would want to) 
distribute the high-res masters, either - but I do think that they 
should be distributed to a few people and maybe a copy to the LOC.

First and foremost, we need to keep in mind that this archive is a 
historical document, meant to (let's hope!) outlast us and the 
magazines. As such, we should strive to do the best we can with the 
archive for everyone and posterity.

I don't think we should scan in anything but color - however, 24 bit 
might be a little high - 16 bit would probably be more than acceptable, 
and keep the size down a little more - perhaps even lower bit depths 
could work as well, some more experimentation should be done, to 
determine what the best bit depth ratio to size for best color 
reproduction would work.

We should not "only do the covers" in color - there are many portions 
within the magazine that deserve color - pictures from the Rainbow Fests 
as well as the "CoCo Image Gallery" are two that I can think of - but I 
also remember various drawings and such that were done as "article art" 
to liven up the issue - all of this should be preserved. While it may be 
possible to do this on a case-by-case basis, it would be time consuming 
and require some effort, plus mistakes could be made.

There also may need to be some tests done on appropriate scan settings 
for the magazine in the areas of "initial newsletter format" (probably 
could be done all b&w), vs magazine format, vs newsprint newsletter 
format (may require different settings for newsprint).

Finally - if at all possible (which it may not be, I realize) - we need 
to remember to keep the disc format as well as the document format 
something as open as possible. Users of this disc, both present and 
future, can not be expected to only be running a Windows OS with Adobe 
Acrobat and a Joliet (or whatever) filesystem. Some of us are likely 
using Linux (I know I am), some of us may be using DOS (my emulator box 
does), some of us may be using Macs, and some of us may be using CoCo's 
with CD-ROMs and OS-9! So, whatever formats chosen should reflect this 
reality. An archive for posterity does no one any good if it does have a 
chance of being read in the future because the wrong (or proprietary) 
formats for the media or for the data were chosen.

I have a very strong opinion on this, knowing first hand the issues of 
this with regards to the extreme efforts which were taken to preserve 
and breath life back into the Diecom game of "Gates of Delerium". Let's 
not make that mistake for the future again (I already worry enough for 
the future about DVD movies and the CSS encoding used).

Andrew Ayers
Glendale (Phoenix), Arizona