When I try scanning pages from my play into my computer, Word, the result is changed format; character names, parentheticals, etc. are all on the left margin. How do you scan script pages into a computer and retain the script formatting?
Scanning to computer
- Thread starter AADIVER
- Start date
Scanning?
I hate to appear dumb, or to make it seem that you are dumb, but are you sure you are talking about scanning?
Or are you talking about copying from a computer file and then pasting into Word?
With scanning, you put a piece of paper with typed text into a scanner, which makes a picture of the page, and then converts the text from an image to text by "optical character recognition" (OCR). If you are talking about this process, you simply have to know how to use the particular kind of scanning software that works with the scanner. It would be very difficult for someone to explain to you how to use a scanner without some more information, like the software that you are using for OCR, and then the person answering would have to know that particular software. I use OmniPage, and I have always found that it is confusing and cumbersome to convert a typed page to a Word file. I have done it and had pretty good (but not perfect) results. The formatting was always off a bit, but not gone entirely.
The reason I am not sure what you are talking about is that with scanning you normally get some kind of format. It could be, though, that your OCR software is set to convert to unformatted text. That is why I said that you have to know how to use your particular software, if in fact you are talking about scanning. (When you paste formatted text into Word, you often lose the formatting. If the original is in Rich Text Format, you may get something close to the original when you paste into Word, or you may not.)
Back to scanning ... My own limited experience with scanning pages of text is that I felt glad just to have text of any kind to work with instead of having to retype something. My software has an option to convert (through OCR) the image into Rich Text Format or Word. That seems to work haphazardly. I always have stuff to clean up, and each paragraph is in some kind of text box that I have to get rid of. I do not even remember the details (I try never to scan with OCR).
So, if you are really talking about scanning (which I think you are, now that I have reread your question several times), you might feel glad that you at least have editable text, even if it is all flush left. Reformatting is not that big a task. You do, however, need to know about paragraph styles in Word to make the reformatting painless.
For the record, though, scanning is great for making images for storage in a digital medium. You can scan photos or other documents and store them as images in computer files. It is great for keeping up with certain types of documents. However, the OCR feature (converting a page into text that you can edit) is a pain, and I rarely use it.
I hate to appear dumb, or to make it seem that you are dumb, but are you sure you are talking about scanning?
Or are you talking about copying from a computer file and then pasting into Word?
With scanning, you put a piece of paper with typed text into a scanner, which makes a picture of the page, and then converts the text from an image to text by "optical character recognition" (OCR). If you are talking about this process, you simply have to know how to use the particular kind of scanning software that works with the scanner. It would be very difficult for someone to explain to you how to use a scanner without some more information, like the software that you are using for OCR, and then the person answering would have to know that particular software. I use OmniPage, and I have always found that it is confusing and cumbersome to convert a typed page to a Word file. I have done it and had pretty good (but not perfect) results. The formatting was always off a bit, but not gone entirely.
The reason I am not sure what you are talking about is that with scanning you normally get some kind of format. It could be, though, that your OCR software is set to convert to unformatted text. That is why I said that you have to know how to use your particular software, if in fact you are talking about scanning. (When you paste formatted text into Word, you often lose the formatting. If the original is in Rich Text Format, you may get something close to the original when you paste into Word, or you may not.)
Back to scanning ... My own limited experience with scanning pages of text is that I felt glad just to have text of any kind to work with instead of having to retype something. My software has an option to convert (through OCR) the image into Rich Text Format or Word. That seems to work haphazardly. I always have stuff to clean up, and each paragraph is in some kind of text box that I have to get rid of. I do not even remember the details (I try never to scan with OCR).
So, if you are really talking about scanning (which I think you are, now that I have reread your question several times), you might feel glad that you at least have editable text, even if it is all flush left. Reformatting is not that big a task. You do, however, need to know about paragraph styles in Word to make the reformatting painless.
For the record, though, scanning is great for making images for storage in a digital medium. You can scan photos or other documents and store them as images in computer files. It is great for keeping up with certain types of documents. However, the OCR feature (converting a page into text that you can edit) is a pain, and I rarely use it.
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I'm talking about taking a page from a script, formatted correctly, and scanning it into Word on my Mac, editing it, then printing it out and replacing it in my master copy of the script. Now I have to waste time reformatting the page correctly and then do my edit. There must be a way to scan the page into the computer without screwing up the proper format. Por favor...?
Scanning, etc.
I do not think I have ever had a scanned page in which the text converted to editable text without some problems.
Some letters are misread, a word is suddenly in a smaller-size font (or larger), or the format is off somehow. The technology just is not perfect.
So you may be stuck with having to reformat your page.
I do not think I have ever had a scanned page in which the text converted to editable text without some problems.
Some letters are misread, a word is suddenly in a smaller-size font (or larger), or the format is off somehow. The technology just is not perfect.
So you may be stuck with having to reformat your page.
I got a quote from FedEx/Kinko's for scanning: a buck a page! Fortunately, I have a sailing buddy that does scanning for a living, so I'll be able to scan some old scripts into my Mac that I somehow lost in upgrading computers for $.05 per page.
Scan to RTF (Rich Text Format) The file will be huge but it should save all the formatting.
Then you can edit it to remove all the unneeded formatting codes.
Then you can edit it to remove all the unneeded formatting codes.
Scanning a screenplay
My friend who does document scanning for a living says he'll scan my script and it will be a .tiff format on the disk. He doesn't know if it'll download with changed format to a Mac, unless I have the proper software installed. If so, format won't be changed and I'll be able to edit the script as though it was originally written on this computer.
My friend who does document scanning for a living says he'll scan my script and it will be a .tiff format on the disk. He doesn't know if it'll download with changed format to a Mac, unless I have the proper software installed. If so, format won't be changed and I'll be able to edit the script as though it was originally written on this computer.
The problem I've had with TIFF is that it is a graphic scan and I have not been able to go from TIFF to text. Let me know it you can manage it.
Doug
Doug