#233 Timed batch scanning for books

[dronsf]

Scenario: book scanning.

Problem: when you scan a book you do 2 actions: 1. you shift the book on the scanner (left page - right page) and 2. you flip the book pages. Shifting the book and closing the lid takes say 3 seconds, picking the book up, flipping the page, positiong it and closing the lid takes say 10 seconds. So at the moment you must use the longest time and this is inefficient. You can save say 35% of the time. Now scanning a 300 pages book takes say 50 minutes, but this could be done in a little more than 30.

Solution: implement a special batch scanning use case for books with 2 timers: the first one times the shifting action, the second one times the flipping action.

[Ben Olden-Cooligan]

Maybe you could do this using NAPS2.Console? For example, create a windows batch file called scan_book.bat with the following contents to scan 300 pages:

@echo off

for /L %%i in (1,1,150) do (
  "C:\Program Files (x86)\NAPS2\NAPS2.Console" -o "$(n).jpg" -d 10000 -v
  "C:\Program Files (x86)\NAPS2\NAPS2.Console" -o "$(n).jpg" -d 3000 -v
)

pause

Then you can import all those jpg files into NAPS2 and save them as PDF or whatever.

[dronsf]

Just tried it, works like a charm! I didn't even know there was a command line interface! Thank you so much!

[Ben Olden-Cooligan]

I'm glad to hear it.

[dronsf]

I have taken the liberty to expand your suggestion, and I've made a tiny batch script with minimal data validation for interactive usage. Maybe others will find it useful. Here it is:

@echo off
setlocal
rem NAPS2.Console.exe path
set naps="C:\Program Files (x86)\NAPS2\NAPS2.Console.exe"
rem dafault profile
set profile="bn300"
rem dafault shift time
set deftshift=3
rem dafault flip time
set deftflip=8
rem verbosity
set verbose=-v
rem jpeg image quality
set imagequality=85
rem file format
set fileformat=tif

if "%~1%"=="" (
    set "dest=."
    goto askpages
)

if not exist "%~1%" (
    echo The specified destination folder does not exist!
    goto end
)

:setdestinationfolder
set dest=%~1
if %dest:~-1% == \ (
    set dest=%dest:~0,-1%
)

:askpages
set /p pages= "Pages:"
if "%pages%"=="" ( goto askpages )
call :numeric %pages%
if %ret% EQU 0 ( goto askpages )
if %pages% EQU 0 ( goto end )

if %pages% LSS 10 ( set "filename=$(n)" )
if %pages% GEQ 10 if %pages% LSS 100 ( set "filename=$(nn)" )
if %pages% GEQ 100 if %pages% LSS 1000 ( set "filename=$(nnn)" )
if %pages% GEQ 1000 if %pages% LSS 10000 ( set "filename=$(nnnn)" )
if %pages% GTR 10000 ( set "filename=$(n)" )

set /a last=%pages% %% 2
set /a half=%pages% / 2

:asktshift
set /p tshift= "Shift time:"
if "%tshift%"=="" ( set /a tshift=%deftshift% )
call :numeric %tshift%
if %ret% EQU 0 ( goto asktshift )
set /a tshift*=1000

:asktflip
set /p tflip= "Flip time:"
if "%tflip%"=="" ( set /a tflip=%deftflip% )
call :numeric %tflip%
if %ret% EQU 0 ( goto asktflip )
set /a tflip*=1000

for /L %%i in (1,1,%half%) do (
    echo Flip...
    %naps% -o "%dest%\%filename%.%fileformat%" --jpegquality %imagequality% -p %profile% -d %tflip% %verbose%
    echo Shift...
    %naps% -o "%dest%\%filename%.%fileformat%" --jpegquality %imagequality% -p %profile% -d %tshift% %verbose%
)

if %last% EQU 0 (
    goto end
) else (
    echo Flip...
    %naps% -o "%dest%\%filename%.%fileformat%" --jpegquality %imagequality% -p %profile% -d %tflip% %verbose%
)
goto end

:numeric
echo %1%| findstr /xr "^[1-9][0-9]*$ ^00*$" >nul
if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
    set /a ret=1
) else (
    set /a ret=0
)
exit /B 0

:end

pause