DVD Profiler – 'Scan Your Own' Procrastinator (1 Viewer)

[Jay Taylor]

I love DVD Profiler & paid the small fee to enable the download of Hi-Res DVD cover images. Like many other HTF members I print out a full-page report of each DVD that I own and place them in document protectors & binders for viewing.

Many of the images from DVD Profiler are unacceptable, partly because Intervocative Software accepts sometimes beautiful scans from users and reduces their file size to make downloads faster. So like many of you I would go to sites like DVD Empire to download better cover images.

Unfortunately DVD Empire has started to place "Copyrighted Material" on the cover image. Amazon only has the front cover image, and sometimes cover images are difficult to find that are of decent quality.

So after downloading the images for over 600 DVDs I finally decided to start scanning my own. I can't believe how much better the images look when I scan my own. I've settled on a file size of about 300K for the total of the front & back covers. The Hi-Res images that Intervocative Software makes available for download have been reduced to about 90K to 160K for both covers.

I love scanning DVD covers now & can't believe I was such an idiot to procrastinate for so long. No more irritation from scans that are sideways, unreadable, still have the wrapper on, have French/English information, etc.

Is anyone else deciding to do it yourself in order to get the quality that you desire?

Jay Taylor

 

[Dmitry]

Jay,

I've scanned a couple of them a while back, however I was unable to get quite the same combination of size/resolution as what DVD Empire has. What scanning settings are you using?

 

[Jay Taylor]

Dmitry,

So far I've settled on 96dpi, but that may change when I learn more about this.

Intervocative Software suggests the following in their Image Contributions Help file:



IVS modifies & compresses the images to be downloaded to a max of 100dpi for Hi-Res customers & less for customers with free registration.

I have a medium priced Epson scanner that uses a Twain Driver to import images into Adobe PhotoShop. Some of the default settings are 96dpi and 150dpi. I tried 150dpi but it revealed too much detail in the image. You could see the cellulose fibers on a snapper!

So I tried 96dpi & it had enough resolution to reveal fairly small print on the back of the DVD. I haven't yet tried to go outside the default settings to achieve 120dpi but will try it later.

I then save the image from Adobe PhotoShop as a JPEG file with a setting of '6' which is 'High' detail. '10' is the highest setting, which doesn't compress the file much. '1' is the lowest setting, which would severely compress the file & lose detail. At a '6' the total file size for 96dpi scanned covers adds up to about a 300K file size.

My main interest is getting decent images on the full-page reports that DVD Profiler generates. I could be mistaken, but I believe that regardless of the dpi setting of your scanner the report will print about the same sized images. However the images may appear greatly different in size on your computer monitor.

So I don't think you have to match DVD Empires settings unless you wanted it to appear the same size on your monitor.

Jay Taylor

 

[Christian Preischl]

Hi,

Is anyone else deciding to do it yourself in order to get the quality that you desire?

I've been doing my own scans for quite a while. I was never a big fan of the scans available online. It's not so much the size, I think that's okay. IVS reduce the size so that the image is 500 pixels/inch wide and at 1024x768 screen size that's more than enough (I don't print reports).
But more often than not the online scans are:
- badly chopped off at the sides (too much or too little) or
- the covers aren't completely horizontal and lean to the left or right a bit or
- are too dark, too bright or have the color timing completely off or
- there are reflections from the Amaray because many people don't take out the cover before scanning
I know I'm pretty much screaming "I have no life!" here (which isn't even true, at least I like to believe that), but when a DVD cover has rounded edges (e.g. Columbia/Tristar) I even use the clone brush to fill out those edges so that I can cut them off nicely in Profiler. And I'm not even gonna start telling you what I did with the Total Recall "baboon's ass" cover. Let's just say, it took over half an hour.
Scared yet? I know I am.
In short (and this is probably all I should have said): Yeah, I do my own scans.
Chris

 

[LukeB]

I've been scanning my own since I got a scanner. It's kind of time-consuming, when you have over 200, even more so for those of you with a thousand or more. But the way I figure it, it takes about two minutes to scan a DVD front and back. For a DVD that I bought and plan to watch several times, that's practically no time.

 

[Dmitry]

Jay, thanks for the info!

 

[Sam Davatchi]

And no body wants to share?

 

[Drew Dockery]

Does anyone know of a good similar prgram for music CDs? I need something along those lines bad.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

DVD Empire's "Copyrighted Material" notice has led me to scan more of my own cover images than I have in the past. I have a decent Canon scanner, and use 150dpi with a pattern removal option enabled. The results are usually very good.