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Issue 10

Hey! I just realized that you can rename files on archive.org even after you've uploaded them, so I renamed Issue 8 and now it's being derived as a CBR file would. Nice and easy. Here's issue 9.

Thanks! I noticed that PC Entertainment, PC Games, PC Accelerator, and Game Developer didn't have their own sections. I can try to find out more about them and how many issues there are in existence, but PDFs of Game Developer (ads removed) can be found here: http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag Also here's Issue 8 of Official Dreamcast (Edit: ugh, forgot to rename it "CBR" again). Only four more to go! Has anyone seen a copy of "Issue 0" anywhere? Is it especially rare or expensive?

Thank you very much for the feedback! I have many issues of Next Generation that are already on the site but eventually I want to scan those too. I think the scans that are already up are great but it can't hurt to have more, right? Issue 7 of Official Dreamcast (US) is up!

Jet Set Radiooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I've been getting better at aligning, cropping, and a little bit of editing. So this one should look pretty good! Issue 5

I can confirm that archive.org is now rendering pages in the proper order now that I've given the filenames leading zeroes. Issue 4 is scanned and uploaded. Just click on Ulala!

Issue 3 is up! Files numbered correctly with leading zeroes.

I also have an issue of Game On! and a few issues of Game Developer Magazine, which is available free online as a PDF but with all the ads removed. I can scan some issues with ads that only developers would have seen. They're pretty interesting, worth saving. Oh! And I forgot I also have several issues of PC Accelerator. I also plan to upload my collection of Next Generation coverdiscs, which include interviews and gameplay videos and other multimedia, as well as PC Accelerator demo discs, to archive.org. And in case anyone missed it, I finished uploading all my issues of Inside Mac Games to archive.org. Most of those discs have not been available to anyone else for auction for over eight years and I don't think they've been available online ever. All magazines I have are from the US.

After I finish with the 12 issues of Official Dreamcast (I do not have issue 0) I'll go to the rest of my collection that includes some PC Entertainment, PC Games, PC Gamer, PLAY magazine, Next Generation, NextGen, GMR, and some MacAddict for OGM. I also have some issues of Tips and Tricks that sold for really cheap at auction. I'll be very busy.

I just noticed the text PDF file that archive.org derived from the CBR has pages that are out of order, probably because I did not number the jpegs with leading zeroes and whatever software they're using needs that. I'll fix that for future scans. Always accepting feedback!

Update 2016: Thank you visiting my WIP page! You can view and download all of my scans from my Internet Archive page and if you'd like to help you can visit my patreon page. Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine (US) Issue 2 November 1999 - Now Available!

All issues of IMG in my collection have now been uploaded and relevant metadata (publication date, tags) have been added. Most of the descriptions are missing but the content of each CD is vast. The cover images are all there and provide key info. Here are the remaining issues, which range from 1997-2000. https://archive.org/details/IMG44Vol51 https://archive.org/details/IMG45Vol52 https://archive.org/details/IMG46Vol53 https://archive.org/details/IMG47Vol54 https://archive.org/details/IMG48Vol55 https://archive.org/details/IMG49Vol56 https://archive.org/details/IMG50Vol57 https://archive.org/details/IMG51Vol58 https://archive.org/details/IMG52Vol61 https://archive.org/details/IMG53Vol62 https://archive.org/details/IMG54Vol63 https://archive.org/details/IMG55Vol64 https://archive.org/details/IMG56Vol65 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol71 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol72 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol73 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol74 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol75 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol77 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol78 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol79 https://archive.org/details/IMGVol710 IMG went through several editorial changes during this period. The number of issues released each year dropped from 10 to 8 and then from 8 to 6, and then returned to 10. The Mac industry itself went through a sharp downturn when Apple faced bankruptcy in 1996 and started to rebound some time after Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. Some interesting historical stuff in there, like the worldwide debut of Halo at MacWorld during a Steve Jobs presentation, plenty of video interviews with game industry leaders talking about their views on the Mac. Believe it or not, the Mac had a greater focus on gaming back then! Microsoft buying out Bungie changed all that…

If I redo that scan, it shouldn't be too hard to knock out on the problem pages in post. I am doing issue 2 right now with a 0 black point and it hasn't yellowed nearly as bad. I haven't noticed it at all. I think it dropped out pretty evenly this time. I'll continue moving on to more issues because I think it's psychologically important to feel like I'm getting something done and not like I'm doing the same thing over and over again!

Some of the pages have definitely yellowed from age and yes the program I'm using now also had the white point adjusted by default to "drop out" light gray blotchiness in the background. I'm learning that it's that setting that also helps eliminate some of the bleed-thru from the other side of the page during duplex scanning. I'm not actually sure how to adjust the white point and the black point independently in either Quickscan or Scandall Pro. I decided to buy a Mac-only program the helps make scanning go faster. I think you should be able to in those programs, though. If you do find the white point setting, try setting it at 231 to see if that helps.

Now that you mention it, the program I'm using now does have a default black point at 16. It's meant to make any faded typing appear more solid, but I should set that back to zero. I have noticed some fading in headline text that that setting fixes, but you have to zoom pretty far in to notice, and that's something that can always be adjusted later. Thanks! My next scan will be for real. And I'll rescan this issue later if it looks like I can improve on it.

Following the advice from E-Day and Kiwi on my first scan, I've made this scan of the US Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine issue 1. https://archive.org/details/OfficialSegaDreamcast1September1999 Although it is uploaded as a test file (meaning it will automatically delete itself in 30 days) I nonetheless made it as if it were final. Already I noticed my first mistake! I compressed it with RAR instead of zip, since E-Day mentioned he had trouble opening the CBZ file I made last time, but this time I forgot to rename the resulting RAR file to CBR. A minor note, but still noteworthy. I've cropped all the pages so that they are flush with their boundaries. I may not have perfectly addressed every page, but it should meet or exceed the standard. In a small number of cases the quality of the page did not permit it, because the glue advanced too close to the content of the page. I'm becoming very aware of how often the source material was misaligned during printing (or composition) and how aligning everything perfectly when archiving scans is often not even close to possible. This is just the nature of the material and I accept that. Every page is sized to 2600 pixels in height at 300 DPI. The RAR file contains 126 jpeg files compressed at level 9. The size comes out to about 240 MB. I originally tried a batch at 2100 pixels tall but the text still looked a bit too pixelated for my taste. I wonder if I should go slightly higher for a magazine of this size. There is some smaller text that still looks a little jaggy. Maybe 2800? Thanks for all your feedback!

So you guys are both agreed that I should trim the edges to make everything straight and flush with the boundaries, even if that means that some content is deleted? I suppose that is just fine for distribution workflow. I can preserve the edges in archive.

I guess I'm missing something. I thought that DPI settings for image files are essentially meaningless when viewed on a screen or device. In other words a 100 x 100 pixel image at 72 DPI should look the same as a 100 x 100 pixel image at 300 DPI on any screen, since the screen will display the same 100 x 100 pixels at its native resolution. I thought the DPI setting was there for when someone wanted to print the image, because then that determines how it will look on the page. I'll gladly save the files at 300 DPI if it helps, though!

Thank you for the feedback! That's great advice. I understand that scanning at 300 DPI is enough to capture all the information for printed images, but printed text is a different beast. Even at 1200 DPI there are noticeable improvements in making text look clean and solid without aliasing when zooming in. So no one should feel they are wasting their time scanning at 300 DPI, but let's not pretend there aren't some archival benefits scanning at higher resolutions either. Right now it's a question of whether those benefits are worth it and that comes down to personal preference, how much space and RAM one has to work with. As for the matter of saving the image files at 300 DPI or 72, I guess that only matters if the files are going to be reprinted, right? But they're not, they're going to be displayed pixel by pixel on screens that each have their own unique number of pixels per pinch. I just got in the habit of saving at 72 because that was the standard for CRT monitors back in the day. There's a scanning-to-archive workflow and then there's an archive-to-dististrubtion workflow, from what I'm learning. I will experiment some more and see if I can't get the TWAIN drivers to work, before cutting the spines off more mags!

Okay, I notice the last several pages are out of order. I put them in the scanner reversed, so I gotta pay attention to that. Easily remedied by changing the order of the pages. All the pages are there. Also the auto-cropping is going a little too far on pages with lots of black empty space near the page edges. I don't even think it looks bad, since all that's cropped out is solid black space, but in the interest of preservation I probably should turn off auto-cropping.

My production scanner finally arrived and after several hours of re-installing and re-downloading drivers and programs in order to get it working, I think I'm finally getting some work done! Here is my first full magazine scan, which I've uploaded to archive.org as a test upload. That means it will automatically delete itself in 30 days. https://archive.org/details/NextGen832001NovTEST NextGen November 2001 Issue #83 A4 sheet-fed pages scanned at 400 DPI Resized to 1920 px wide and 72 DPI JPG level 11 295.5 MB CBZ file, zipped using Mac OS X's Finder and renamed. 126 image files Poster insert not included in this test I'm not sure what to do with that poster. Maybe cut it, scan it, and then reassemble it in an image stitcher? So, what do you think? Too big? Pages not lined up well enough? I wanted to scan at 600 DPI because the text looks so crisp but my VRS software maxes out at 400 and I can't get the TWAIN drivers to work, otherwise I'd like to archive at 600 for future hi-res displays. I chose a magazine that I have a duplicate of in case I screwed it up. Anyways, if you guys think this is satisfactory, I could pump out a thousand pages a day pretty easily, including large format A3 magazines. Let me know!

Thanks for the tips! That's fascinating that they would duplicate information in the inner section for the content but not for the ads.

This is probably old news to most of you, but I'm just learning. Even if you get a clean cut and de-bind a magazine with enough space that you can scan the entire printed page, there is still not enough information to stitch multipage ads or feature images into one clean image. Is that universal? Is there always an empty space built in to the magazine to compensate for the binding? Here's a sample of one of my attempts. http://postimg.org/image/6gyutwxdn/ (ignore the blue line on the left side of the page, I sent my scanner back to be cleaned!)

All of 1995 and 1996 are now uploaded. I just have to edit the metadata. https://archive.org/details/IMG28June1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG29JulyAug1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG30Sep1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG31Oct1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG32Nov1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG33Dec1995 https://archive.org/details/IMG34JanFeb1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG35March1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG36April1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG37MayJune1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG38July1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG39Aug1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG40Sep1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG41Oct1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG42Nov1996 https://archive.org/details/IMG43Dec1996