Looking to Contribute.

[mccorkled]

For the past year or so I’ve been sending game manuals to Kirkland for his awesome archive project. I recently started archiving strategy guides and came across this site. I’m willing to buy manuals and have them sent to any trusted user for scanning and archiving. Please reach out via DM or comment here.  I’m also willing to purchase already uploaded strategy guides in need of better scans. 

I’m also curious why this site has chosen CBZ/CBR as the archiving type over a PDF. 

Thank you, and I look forward to contributing.

[kitsunebi]

I've written extensively about CBR/PDF in the past and honestly don't have the energy to repeat myself or see if I can locate any of those old posts, but I would like to point out that it isn't just "this site" that uses CBR - it's all of them.  All of the major sites creating magazine scans of English-language magazines, at any rate.  Granted, there aren't many sites like that out there, but ever since Oldgamemags (which has 4 times the amount of scans that Retromags does) switched to CBR, no one in the scanning community uses PDF anymore, outside of a few independent individuals throwing stuff up at the Internet Archive.

Suffice it to say, for something like game manuals, a PDF would probably be adequate.  For magazines, it's a very restrictive format.

(Of course - anyone out there using a PDF reader like Sumatra to read a CBR isn't benefiting from the CBR format at all, so hopefully everyone is using CBR readers to read their CBRs, since that's what they're made for...whodathunkit?)

[PixelBoy]

On 2/24/2024 at 3:52 AM, mccorkled said:

I’m also curious why this site has chosen CBZ/CBR as the archiving type over a PDF.

I can't speak for any site, but CBZ/CBR is basically a ZIP file with a weird file extension. You can create it without any additional programs, assuming you have a relatively recent operating system that has some "zipping features" in it. It also works in reverse, you can use those files as if they are just ordinary ZIP files. You can extract images from them, and browse them with an image browser, if that's the most convenient way for you to read them. With PDFs all that would be much more difficult.

Of course, PDFs do have certain advantages that CBZ/CBR files don't have. Especially PDFs with OCR'd text are extremely useful. Back when Starlog Magazines were still available on Archive.org, that was actually my favourite file format. You can read articles from the magazine, and if you see something quotable, just select the part you want and copy-paste it.

But as nice as that is, CBZ/CBR format offers more possibilities for custom-made reading. For instance, if you want to create a special magazine of your own, let's say you want to have all contents pages of some magazine in the same place, you can simply copy those scanned pages and make a new file that has only those pages. It's not impossible to do the same with PDFs, but again, more difficult.

[E-Day]

I always wanted to have copies of our scans in PDF format because having searchable text would make finding things much easier than manually looking through CBZ files of JPEGs. Thankfully the Video Game History Foundation is working on something like this. We don't have the manpower or money to pull off a searchable database like they do. And doing OCR on scanned images after the fact only works on pages with dark text and light backgrounds. It doesn't seem to work the other way around.

[mccorkled]

39 minutes ago, E-Day said:

I always wanted to have copies of our scans in PDF format because having searchable text would make finding things much easier than manually looking through CBZ files of JPEGs. Thankfully the Video Game History Foundation is working on something like this. We don't have the manpower or money to pull off a searchable database like they do. And doing OCR on scanned images after the fact only works on pages with dark text and light backgrounds. It doesn't seem to work the other way around.

That’s why I thought PDFs we’re the superior format for this sort of archiving. 

[E-Day]

It is for research purposes but for quality CBZ is usually better. I discovered that FoxIt PDF will OCR light text on dark backgrounds, which Acrobat won't do, so once I am done scanning everything I may start making OCR PDFs out of all the scans. I may not though since The Video Game History Foundation is already working on an online searchable digital library like I have wanted to do for years.

[kitsunebi]

OCR is so unreliable it works against serious research, in my opinion.  Sure, it's a start, and will turn up some results, but not ALL the results.  So a lazy researcher might do a search of some OCR'ed files and base their work off of the results, which will almost definitely be incomplete, and may indeed be missing vital information.  Without that (partially broken) shortcut, a serious researcher WOULD have to thoroughly check all sources.  Which would take significantly more time, yes, but is the only option that doesn't cut corners.

If/when the VGHF finishes their project, perhaps we'll have the functional shortcut needed to facilitate quick AND thorough research.  But until then OCR isn't the solution in my opinion (unless OCR software improves significantly.) We're a magazine preservation site and the focus should remain creating quality digital versions of print mags.

[JHD]

Personally, I like my files in PDF format. Everything that I download (from here and other sites) in a range of file formats (CBR, EPUB, etc.) gets converted to PDF for my own personal use. This extra step takes only a few minutes. 

[kitsunebi]

27 minutes ago, JHD said:

Personally, I like my files in PDF format. Everything that I download (from here and other sites) in a range of file formats (CBR, EPUB, etc.) gets converted to PDF for my own personal use. This extra step takes only a few minutes. 

You've just described one of the many benefits of releasing our mags as CBRs.  Since they're just folders of jpgs, it makes it a simple matter for anyone who wants to convert them to something else to do so.  If the file began as a PDF, it's much more difficult to convert to other formats and will require the use of software people may not already own.  As you say, it only takes you a few minutes.  The other way around is much more of a hassle.

Although, I have to wonder...unless you're adding some sort of PDF functionality to the files (like annotate chapters, insert hyperlinks, convert to OCR text, etc), is it really necessary?  If it's just because you prefer your PDF reader software to whatever CBR reader software you've tried, I wonder if it might be easier to just find a PDF reader you like that also opens CBR files?  Most PDF readers nowadays can open CBR files, just as CBR readers can open PDFs.

Regardless, for personal use, everyone is free to do whatever they like with our files, and are welcome to convert them to whatever format they prefer.  CBR is the most open format giving people the most freedom to do as they wish with them.  Some scanners (like myself) ask that our files not be converted to a different format and then reuploaded elsewhere in that altered form, but again, for personal use, you're free to turn all the pages into animated gifs if you really want to.

As a scanner/preservationist, I find PDFs problematic since the vast majority of PDF software will resample jpg images when converting them to and from PDF.  So a set of files that are scanned as jpgs, converted to PDF, and then extracted back into jpgs, will (with most popular PDF conversion software) not be identical bit-for-bit to the original files.  Should this process be carried out more than once, each successive generation gets further and further from the original scanned quality.  Even if the change is imperceptible, I still feel more comfortable working in a format where the original files are not altered in any way and don't need to be converted into a different type of file.

That said, I've got no problem with TruePDFs, such as are officially released directly from publishers.  Though the images are usually of a compromised quality depending on the resolution the publisher decides to use, the text, being true-type font, will be perfectly sharp at any zoom size, a benefit that no scan is capable of matching.  So for reading purposes, they can't be beat.  That's beyond the realm of what we can do here, however.

[JHD]

 

I like Adobe and it is already installed on my computer. I have no desire to add yet more software to address different file formats. Also, a PDF file can be smaller than a CBR file (with an admitted loss of resolution). I already have three external hard drives; storage space is a consideration.

 

Note that articles published in academic journals (which constitutes the majority of my digital collection) are invariably in PDF format.  These files are normally just text, with the occasional map or diagram; black and while photographs are sometimes included, but only rarely. Most scanned books (other than Project Gutenberg) are released in PDF format. Again, the text is far more important than the illustrations. 

 

 

[kitsunebi]

19 minutes ago, JHD said:

 

I like Adobe and it is already installed on my computer. I have no desire to add yet more software to address different file formats. Also, a PDF file can be smaller than a CBR file (with an admitted loss of resolution). I already have three external hard drives; storage space is a consideration.

 

Note that articles published in academic journals (which constitutes the majority of my digital collection) are invariably in PDF format.  These files are normally just text, with the occasional map or diagram; black and while photographs are sometimes included, but only rarely. Most scanned books (other than Project Gutenberg) are released in PDF format. Again, the text is far more important than the illustrations. 

 

 

Yes, PDF is certainly a viable format that has its uses.  I imagine almost everyone has some sort of PDF reader software installed, since it's unlikely you'd never need to open a PDF.  That said, most free PDF software including free versions of Adobe are primarily PDF readers, and offer limited editing functionality, so doing things like convert PDFs to other formats is not something they are capable of.  So for people unwilling to pay, it is very user-unfriendly in comparison with a folder of jpgs.  In addition to that, you hit on another one of the reasons we don't use PDF when you say that it isn't the best for images, which is all that magazine scans are.  Releasing a book as a CBR is madness.  For magazines, it's a legit choice (and for comics, I'm sorry, but it's the ONLY sensible choice.)

But again, people who prefer PDF are welcome to convert their mags to whatever they like.  No one here will ever try to force you to do otherwise.  If you like Adobe, by all means, use it.  CBR files won't always display exactly as intended on PDF software depending on how the pages have been edited, but they'll still be perfectly readable, so you may as well use the software you're most comfortable with.

I'd like to point out that the only reason a PDF would be smaller than a CBR of the same original jpgs is if the PDF resamples the jpgs at a higher compression rate, lowering their quality.  This can be done to CBRs as well, you just save the jpgs with a higher compression rate before ZIP/RARing them.  It goes without saying that compressing our scans to save space should only ever be done for personal use and not reuploaded elsewhere, as most scanners don't appreciate low-quality versions of files they worked hard on being released back into the wild.

 

I hear you on storage space.  I haven't really downloaded mags in years, but even so I've got 2 TB of them.  But that's nothing: I've got over 16 TB of comics.  And then there's all the TV and movies.  3 external HDDs?  Ha.  I've currently got 10.