How can I speed up my scanning?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RReznikoff
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RReznikoff

I am scanning on a HP 3970 with PaperPort to a PDF format. From start to
finish each document is taking about 2 1/2 min. I have a lot of documents
to scan and at that rate it will take forever. I just installed a USB2
card, and the times I am getting are with the new card. I have been using a
resolution of 200. Is there a way to omit the preview screen and will that
speed it up? If I reduce the resolution, will it still be readable and will
that make a difference in the time to scan?

What do you recommend?
 
RReznikoff said:
I am scanning on a HP 3970 with PaperPort to a PDF format. From start to
finish each document is taking about 2 1/2 min. I have a lot of
documents
to scan and at that rate it will take forever. I just installed a USB2
card, and the times I am getting are with the new card. I have been using
a
resolution of 200. Is there a way to omit the preview screen and will
that
speed it up? If I reduce the resolution, will it still be readable and
will
that make a difference in the time to scan?

What do you recommend?
Click to expand...

The only way I managed this is to reduce the resolution of the scan. Limit
the dpi and limit the actual pixel size to say 800x600. If it's for viewing
on the pc it should be good enough. 3000x3000 pixel images don't make much
sense unless you plan to print them out again. In the end reduction in
resolution is the only only way.

Cookie,
 
RReznikoff said:
I am scanning on a HP 3970 with PaperPort to a PDF format. From start to
finish each document is taking about 2 1/2 min. I have a lot of documents
to scan and at that rate it will take forever. I just installed a USB2
card, and the times I am getting are with the new card. I have been using a
resolution of 200. Is there a way to omit the preview screen and will that
speed it up? If I reduce the resolution, will it still be readable and will
that make a difference in the time to scan?

What do you recommend?
Click to expand...

Well, i don't know anything about paperport or the HP 3970, but
nevertheless I try to give you some hints.
- Try to find the bottlenecks in your system. OS? CPU? Memory?
- Try to scan with the normal HP-software to an tiff-file. How long
does this take? This scanning time is determined by the scanner and
the chosen resolution. Normally it is better to choose a integer
fraktion, i.e. with the resolution of your scanner of 2400 dpi, good
values are 1200, 600 or 300 dpi. This are native values. 200 dpi means
scanning with 300 dpi and downsampling. Downsampling takes cpu-cyles.
- If you know your "native" scanning time, you have to find out, where
the system spends the rest of time. Is it paperport processing? Is it
the converting to pdf? Is your system cpu-bound? Is it memory-bound?
- I don't think the usb is a bottleneck, because the amount of data is
not so high. 8x10 inch at 300 dpi mean 8*300*10*300*3 pixel equals
21Mytes of data. That should not be a problem with usb2.

Winfried
 
Remove the glass and rewind the spring inside the carriage gears. After so
many scans the mechanism weakens and everything moves slower. Your scans
will be faster if you wind the spring up every 100 uses.
;o)
 
That is interesting and good to know. However, in my case, the scanner is
new and I doubt I have done more than 2 dozen scans. It takes a lot of time
before the preview scan and then a good bit of time before the final scan.
Why?
 
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