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(Archived) User Guide for Evernote & Fujitsu Scansnap - A Summary


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Hi Guys,

Like many people, i have read rave reviews about Evernote and Fujitsu Scansnap, and since gotten both.

The only problem i have is that i am not sure which format to use for which files, and why. For e.g. a common question i found is if i have many pages of handwritten notes, which format should i use - pdf or jpeg?

I have since done my research and here's what i found out. I still have other questions which i need you guys to chip as well. Hopefully this will be the thread to refer to, in the future for newbies like me.

This summary is based on assumption that you are a Premium Evernote user.

- If my file is purely printed text (no handwritten notes or scribbles or images), use pdf to scan. If you are using Fujitsu Scansnap, check the "Convert to Searchable Pdf" option.

- If my files have mostly printed text and some handwritten notes or scribbles, still use pdf to scan. From what i know, i think Evernote will OCR the pdf if you are a premium user, and your handwritten notes and scribbles will become searchable. Although i must add the time that this will happen varies. Some of my files took about 24 hours.

-If my files are purely handwritten notes or scribbles, then whether you use pdf or jpeg depends on

1) whether you want the files to be grouped as one file or many files

2) how fast you want the files to become searchable.

For 1), its pretty straight forward, if you want have many pages of handwritten notes but you want all of them to be one file, then you would want it to be in pdf format. If you have only one handwritten note, then you can choose either pdf or jpeg.

For 2), from what i know, Jpeg files are made searchable much faster than pdf files. From my own experience, jpeg files are made searchable within 6 hours, while pdf files can take as long as 24 hours. Pls correct me if i am wrong here.

So if i am right about the above, it means that if i have many pages of handwritten notes and 1) i want them to be one file and and 2) i don't mind the file being made searchable only after 24hours or longer, then i will use PDF. Am i right?

Moderators or Dave pls enlighten me,

Henry

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  • 1 month later...
  • Level 5

On March 28, 2010, Dave Engberg said:

  • Our handwriting recognition for JPEG produces a hidden internal search "tree" for the image, which lists a cloud of possibilities for every word-shaped region. This representation isn't very useful for actually extracting the text, it's only good for searching against these clouds within Evernote. However, it's helpful for finding lower-quality images within Evernote.
    Our text processing for PDF is basically using best-of-breed OCR software to produce a second PDF document that we internally index. This PDF is more usable for people that want to (e.g.) copy and paste text out of a cleanly scanned document, but doesn't provide a "cloud" of possibilities for each word, which reduces the results for handwritten text noticeably.
    I.e. these solutions are tuned to be as useful as possible for two slightly different use cases.
    Our R&D team is making continual improvements on the image processing quality and results, and we believe we can do some improvements for handwriting in the future.

I use the ScanSnap and everything goes in as PDF.

To answer your specific question, if you want them in one file, then pdf is the way to go.

Personally, if there is some important handwritten information, I will still go with PDF and type the important stuff into the Evernote note that contains the PDF attachment.

Why? I have no confidence in a computer understanding my handwriting. Sometimes, I can't even understand it.

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  • 3 months later...

I have a Fujitsu Scansnap and it basically works well. However, it takes quite some time after for example a scan of 10 pages (1 minute I guess), before it has finished OCR processing, and is ready for the next job. So the scanner is locked while OCR-processing. Is it somehow possible to change this behaviour, so that it can do the OCR-processing in the background and allow the next scan to be started while OCR-processing is in progress?

I find this waiting time a major nuisance when having to scan large amounts of documents.

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  • Level 5
I have a Fujitsu Scansnap and it basically works well. However, it takes quite some time after for example a scan of 10 pages (1 minute I guess), before it has finished OCR processing, and is ready for the next job. So the scanner is locked while OCR-processing. Is it somehow possible to change this behaviour, so that it can do the OCR-processing in the background and allow the next scan to be started while OCR-processing is in progress?

I find this waiting time a major nuisance when having to scan large amounts of documents.

There are only two OCR options. ScanSnap does not have a buffer-type system to OCR at a later date.

1.) Let ScanSnap do the OCR and wait for it to be completed.

2.) Turn off the OCR in the ScanSnap manager and let Evernote do the OCR.

Option #2 is much faster as you can see in this rather devious Evernote video

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=23420&p=100900&hilit=scansnap#p100900

I stick with option #1. Yes, it takes longer, but I have more confidence in the actual OCR results.

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