This was an interesting one to cover, I won't spoil the conclusions in this comment but here's a scan I took with the system this morning to help someone out with an Arcade FPGA core they are making. Some things to notice are very small print in the schematics section and distortion around the finger cot removal process on some pages. drive.google.com/file/d/1MrrGBqs7pbN_7RC3J7pTpe5b9r-C4u3X/view?usp=share_link Thanks for watching, Neil
You should talk to an accountant about forming some sort of non profit entity or a charity or something tax exempt for the cave. It opens up a lot of doors. And find a legal advisor for questions like the one about sharing. I do think the sort of entity you are will make a difference in these cases in what you are able to do and what not. From a personal perspective i would simply share it and see what happens. The first thing that will happen is a simple request to stop sharing if some company has an issue with it. Just comply when that happens and stop sharing said content and you should be fine. Again, seek out some legal advice to be sure though.
@@JimmyCall I generally agree - exporting to PDF will export the scanned image with an OCR'd hidden text layer for searching, but there are times when exporting to an actual text document will be better, for example when you're scanning a simple book and you want to freely re-size and re-flow the text so you can turn it into a usable ebook.
For the lighting i would look at some indirect lights photographers use to light their objects. The inversed umbrella type things are basicly designed to eliminate partly over exposure and light reflections. You get them in those square boxes with matt glass in front of them to scatter the light in a similar way and those are not expensive. Maybe the lights on the device itself can be adapted with something simple like a matt film to difuse the light and avoid reflections. Lots of options.
Neil, would you be interested in dutch magazines? I used to have a lot of dutch magazines from the 90s and they theorethicly should still be in my moms basement lol. If you want them i'll go and see if i can dig them out and send them to you.
The legalities are pretty clear: It's copyright infringement to share scans in most circumstances. The Internet Archive is a library, so the rules are a bit better - if still muddy - for them sharing stuff. But us uploading to them is usually a violation. And we should all still do it.
Copyright also has provisions for fair use, limitations due to how old the publication is and if the company is still in business or not, and also it can vary region to region. Obviously the best bet is to have legal advice sort before sharing. In the case of The Internet Archive, it would fall down to the maintainers of The Internet Archive to only host what is legal. Neil does mention in the video about sharing only if it is legal to share them. Ultimately it is up to the host to hold up the copyright on material on their site.
These companies, many defunct, couldn't reprint the material themselves for the same reasons. They would need permissions, but from sources that no longer exist. It just needs saving.
@@NoobixCube Trouble is the companies might be defunct, but it's likely their IP is still owned by someone, somewhere. Or worse, multiple someones, somewhere.
@@EsotericArctos Most of that doesn't apply in the UK though, for example. The closest we have is "fair dealing", and it's unlikely that would extend to a sharing a whole copy of a magazine, let alone a whole shelf of back issue.
News just in from the manufacturer: ""CZUR" is pronounced as [' si:zə(r)], and this acronym is derived from "Continue Zeal until Real". Which expresses we hope to move forward with passion until our dreams come true:)" May all your scanning dreams come true Neil
I would love to see another video where you interview an expert to discuss the topic of sharing and preserving old magazines. I think defunct companies still have a copyright for 70+ years. But they're not profiting anymore from the issue, and you're not charging for the magazine. I'd say you're doing a public service to prevent these issues from being forgotten.
This is clearly one of those cases where asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission. If you were to have an actual engagement with a lawyer, or study the legality too hard, you'll probably find many times over that this is all strictly forbidden. If you put your blinders on and just do it, you'll probably find that everyone who contributed to those old rags, that is still alive and aware, greatly appreciates the effort, and is absolutely chuffed that it's available online for anyone to see.
Interviews are always terrible, not just here, but in all formats. I can't believe there are dullards that enjoy boring interviews where the person says nothing.
Seeing those amiga magazines and the desktop PC sales advert instantly took me back to 1991, got the adrenaline pumping and for that moment I remembered why I got into IT and my love for all things computer, THANK YOU!
Very interesting. Most 8/16-bit UK magazines are widely available (albeit in various quality). What isn't widely available are the subscription magazines. Those little extra pages or mini-magazines which came only if you had an annual subscription. If the Cave has any of these, their preservation would be a great addition to the world.
I think the hour I spent flicking through magazines at the Cave was probably the highlight of my visit. I'd forgotten how wonderfully varied the art in INPUT was.
Hi from France, Neil, Concerning copyright issues I think you might want to ask the question to another RU-vidr called « Blackbelt Barrister ». As his name suggests, he might be able to answer your question. I’m also a subscriber to his channel which is teaming with really interesting subjects. Hope this helps, Cheers, Thierry -a Commodoroholic since 1982 :-D
Interesting. The advanced system I use is to slice the magazine spine off, then run it through my double sided color (40 page per minute) document scanner in one go, and have it convert to searchable PDF's. Makes perfect searchable copies but does sacrifice the magazine. I think you should scan yours, put barcodes on the magazines and then use some tablet or e-ink e-readers for visitors to read them.
If the magazine is stapled, you can remove the staples. After that, use a duplex scanner, some Python magic to split and re-arrange the pages, and ScanTailor to complete the job and get a near-perfect electronic version of your magazine. Then re-staple the magazine. For an A4-sized magazine, you would need an A3-capable scanner, like the Fujitsu 6670, Fujitsu 6800, etc. You could also use a cheaper, A4-capable duplex scanner, fold the leaves in one direction, scan, fold in the opposite direction, and scan again. You would need to scan twice as many times, though, and your Python script would require some extra work. I used to do this stuff for a living.
I own all the PC Gamer UK magazines from issue 0 from 1993 (yes, a rare test issue) to issue 130 - I think it's a shame these old mags are not made available to the public. They contain so much interesting information - I still read them whenever I can. I recently got hold of a Dutch magazine collection from 1990-1999 which is also a fascinating read. They often contain insider info that leaks from contacts with developers & publishers that you can't find anywhere online. For example, did you know Theme Park used to have a very different view point? I have beta screenshots that I can't find ANYWHERE online!
I think i still have loads of old dutch magazines in my moms basement now i think of it. Power unlimited i think they where called. I'll have a look to see if they are still there. If they are i'll send them to the cave if he wants them. Will make my mom happy as well haha.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 I have a few of those as well but wasn't a big fan - it tried to be a bit too trendy. Hoog Spel is the magazine collection I bought. It focussed on home computers like Commodore, Amiga, PC but also had console reviews.
@@redavatar 13 year old me loved those magazines. Read them every month. Haven't looked back at them though, maybe i'd think differently about it now. I'll read a couple again and see how they hold up 30 years later. Don't know hoog spel. There where a lot of magazines about back then.
I get the feeling archives may not be readily available because copyright law for things like character art, photographs from third parties and screenshots might have expired some time ago and I don't think fair use or fair dealing can really work around that as such.
Back in late 2000 through 2003 I was doing photography work for the Art History department at the University I was attending. I would carefully cut the spine out of course required art textbooks in order to take pictures of the individual images in the textbook to make slides for the professors teaching the classes. When shooting the textbooks I used Tungsten lights setup at 45 degrees to either side of the subject material I was shooting with the overhead florescent lights turned off as they would throw an off color haze on the plate glass over the pages and that haze would be there in the resulting positive slides that were produced from my original film photos. Obviously you are not shooting with a film camera and don't have the plate glass haze to interfere in your scans but the Tungsten lights would give much better light and color to your scans than the ceiling lights.
Why would they be using film cameras in 2000-2003? Also if they were cutting out the spines, why wouldn't they just scan the pages at a super high DPI? That school sounds very very backwards.
We are moving into a more and more less tangible society. I don't see that as inherently bad, but it's way different for us who are at this divide where we grew up with physical media and kids nowadays grow up with media mostly delivered digitally. Like you said - tactile, holding it, feeling it was special. Taking a game manual to school with me and getting through the day with my plans for after school. Magazines coming in the mail were always a special treat.
I'm surprised publishers like Future Publishing aren't more proactive about preservation and sharing. British videogame magazines have early work from some incredibly talented creatives, people like Charlie Brooker, Kieron Gillen, Gary Whitta, Tom Francis and more. It shouldn't be hidden away behind copyright enforcement.
future publishing etc are very corporate. They output such a huge number of magazines and they don’t regard the gaming magazines any higher than say the fishing ones. They’re just a disposable monthly mass production product to corporate. They don’t really care that much about their writers and editors as more than a resource either, that’s part of why there is a fairly high turnover rate. However, I absolutely agree, and we should be preserving all of the output from those amazing authors.
IMO the sad truth is that most companies don't give a damn about preservation and public access. If they can't turn a sizeable profit from it, they don't care. The video game industry is particularly bad for this, and that's why DRM should be a big worry. Just look what happened when Windows started blocking the Safedisc driver: the publishers did absolutely nothing to enable people to keep playing the games that they own.
I visited a site of the Bibliothèque National de France where they archive old books for the Gallica digital library using a similar yet more professional system. One tidbit that might interest you is that the books are placed on a V shaped support to avoid putting stress on the spines when opening them fully. I wonder how the laser system in the CZUR would behave with that.
Nice review of the CZUR ET18. Thanks. But at some stage you should take a look at the VFlat application that turns your Android phone into a first class book/magazine scanner that costs you nothing. A tripod and Bluetooth shutter button are handy additions that will bring your VFlat setup well up to par with the CZUR arrangement.
Nice selection of cheese at the end there Neil! It was almost like the single frame of a jumping frog that appeared in The Young Ones, if anyone else has that burned into their memory...
There's actually an older and somewhat better low tech system that essentially does the same thing called a copy stand. Back in the pre-digital camera days it was a device that looked like a wire frame, flat top pyramid that you placed a film camera, usually an SLR type, in a holder on the flat top facing it down centered on the middle of the open base where you placed the media i.e. book, newspaper, magazine or pictures/photos face up. There are actually newer versions of this setup for DSLR cameras, video cameras and even smart phones - some of them at a much lower price than the scanning device you demonstrated with the only caveats that you have to provide the recording device i.e. camera etc., lighting, and, in most cases, interface software to manage capture and editing/image correction. There is also a DIY set up using a small tripod, selfie stick and a smart phone.
You'd be a hero among Mattel Aquarius fans if you used this scanner to digitize the rare Tim Hartnell book you previewed in your Aquarius series (30 Dynamic Games...) It's one of the rare type-in books for the system that has no digital version yet, and Tim passed away in 1991 :(
I've repeatedly been surprised by how seeing the cover of a specific issue of a specific magazine I read decades ago brings back vague good memories even though I can't actually remember the details of what was inside. The Amiga Shopper issue in the thumbnail was a good example for me!
I've never understood these 'photograph from above' style "scanners", years ago I saw an article on a website (I think it was Hackaday) that had a pyrimid/tolborone shape scanner for magazines that pushed the mag from one end to the other with an opening in it to swap the pages over so that when it pushed it back it was ready to scan the next page. While the automatic page turning system made me nervous for ripped pages when the scanner was not being watched it was generally super cool for not having to worry about dealing with the spine.
I imagine light boxes on each side would be optimal for this. Or perhaps build one around the entire scanner, with lamps shining diagonally down on the light box from left and right. Nice, even light with minimal glare.
An good alternative to scan books and magazines without damaging the spine would be to use a "borderless" scanner like the Plustek 3800/4900 or Microtek XT3300. Those have the glass right at the edge with a very thin margin, so that you don't have to bend the book all the way like you would on a regular flatbed. Plus they have a CCD sensor (so no blur at the slightest bump on the page), and with the added benefit of a very uniform illumination and a flat page. That's what I use for my scan that are on "Amstrad CPC Memoire Ecrite" or archive. A3 models exist but then it's getting pretty expensive. It's a slower process than taking pictures with a sensor like the czur does, but the result is a bit more pleasing to the eye, and no jpeg artifacts either. I assume that scanning glue-bound books like that ZX spectrum one on the table in the video is also a pain with that czur scanner. Another option and especially with a very big pile of stuff to scan would maybe be to build a cradle like the ones they use at archive, operated with a food pedal. Using a good quality camera and with a good lighting it could probably give much better results, without sacrificing too much on the quality and still being as fast. With the added bonus on the flatbeds that it would accept oversized documents as well. Then a time consuming task is the post-processing afterwards, to clean the pages, levels, straighten, unyellow... Can't avoid it to get a good result :p
I've been eyeing those CZURs for a while now. It's good to know they have that rubberized feel. I really hate pulling out older items with that and finding out they're gummy and sticky. Good review!
Ahh, nostalgia...going back to my childhood (80's). I do go to some sites who have those archives and read those magazines. especially number one of the first magazines that introduced me to computers. Before that I never heard of them. Now I am part of it. There should be some law that either allows people to put old copies of those magazines online guilt free or that publishers have to put them online. Because, they are really TIME-MACHINES, we can travel through time, at least in past. And I need that from time to time.
Another channel I follow (and mostly watch live streams of on Twitch) has an older one of these. We were discussing whether building something like a lightbox/studio box around the unit would work better for lighting. Good white fabric with lights behind it would produce a soft light above, to the sides, and behind (have to work around the pillar a bit) - should reduce glare, because there's no point sources.
I so wish I knew that happened to all my Your Sinclair and Your Spectrum magazines. I had Issues 1-4 of your Spectrum given to me by a family friend who worked in the 'media' and then discovered Your Sinclair around 86 / 87. I purchased them religiously, and didn't have many missing issues. Anyhow, seeing you hold the Italia '90 issue got me all nostalgic!
Very useful bit of kit for your use case. As for sharing - perhaps there are copyright issues when it comes to a widely accessible archive, but certainly for use in the Cave itself where you have physical copies of the same content I fail to see an issue. Perhaps set up a reading station in an arcade cab with the scans formatted as digital magazines with something like Flippingbook?
One friend in Chile was owner of a Atari magazine. I talked to him about if have the originals maked in Calumus for the Atari ST, and the response was "not because rewrite the disk with the new issue and send to the print for saving costs".
On a related note. Ive heard back in the day TV networks would send video tapes of shows to their affiliates to be broadcast. After the weeks broadcast he tape would be returned and the next episode copied over the existing one. Done to save on the cost of new video tape. However, I dont know if that true.
To the lighting conundrum, you could use a mid size light tent and some neutral colour temperature lights to even out the lighting. You don’t need expensive kit, light tents aren’t that expensive, you can use carefully chosen LED bulbs and inexpensive lamps for a setup that will be acceptable.
I still have a few old Spectrum type-in books on my shelf, and one of the Usborne ones. Usborne have already made all of the old books available as PDF on their site, easily searched for, and already scanned :)
Very interesting, I can definitely see the advantages of that way of scanning and the OCR seems very usable. It would be good to get a Cave archive that was accessible to researchers/writers.
I imagine it will be useful for your research on the history of old consoles/pc’s/hardware etc. if you stored each magazine/pdf in a database you can use the ocr to find just the information you want for your research saving time.
I have a terrible memory, I barely remember much of my childhood, but put a zzap 64 in my hand that I used to own and I will remember the cover vividly.
instead of using those page holders that may tear the pages, you can use a piece of round metal rod, 2-3 mm thick, and put it in the middle of the magazine between the pages. press it down and it'll spread the pages without obscuring any content. works especially with thinner books and with magazines. for thicker books you'd need something like like a flat metal bar.
Seeing that thicc copy of Amiga Format made me double take at first, but yeah, I guess they originally were that thick, and I'm just remembering the pamphlet-like ones from 1997 where the vast majority of the content was on the CD.
I own an older CZUR Shine scanner and have found much the same issues: Too much glare from lights, curvature data not savable etc. The colour reproduction is also quite poor. The addition of the projected lines is a BIG improvement: The older scanners have to try and recognise the contours of the document from the image alone and usually get it wrong on any document with colour images that go to the very edge of the page, necessitating the manual adjustment of the contours every... single... page! This quickly negates the speed advantage. I've recently been scanning my old AmigActive magazines, and these take almost an hour each in a flatbed scanner (they are 68 pages long, about the same as the "Your Sinclair" scanned in the video), but the quality is amazing compared to my CZUR scanner.
I was thinking of the OCR function on all of the program listings that used to seem to take hours to type out. A quick copy and paste into an emulator and the job is done. 😎
The yellow 'finger cots' are a good idea but as an amateur watch-maker, they were not what I was expecting to see! (Finger cots are usually tiny little 'condoms' for your fingertips 😅)
Tech Tangents was also sent one of these things and between your two reviews I desperately want to buy one now even though I have absolutely no need for it. That's some powerful marketing! :D
I'd really like to scan my rather dog-eared copy of "What to Do After You Hit Return or P.C.C.'s First Book of Computer Games" from 1975, in case anything happens to it. Oh and there's a chapter called "Welcome to the caves" 😀 It seems to be pretty rare judging by a quick search online, but is available to view at Internet Archive. That scanner would be ideal, but is a lot of cash for someone preserving a low number of items. Very thorough video, thanks.
I still have my copies of Page 6, Atari User, and Computing Today. However I did get rid of my Amiga Magazines: CU Amiga, Amiga Format, AUI, Amiga Computing, and Amiga Shopper - but I still have the coverdisks.
That's an impressive scanner! I think sharing should be encouraged instead of being copyright material, especially when applying the principle of preserving old abandonware software.
Interesting piece of kit, seems like you could make a diffused light box around the back/sides for better lighting quality its basically a camera (rather than a scanner) so camera-style soft lighting techniques should give good results; perhaps just using a sheet-diffuser spaced away from the "anti-glare" lights might work well enough & could be attached to the end of the base and top.
Tech Tangents here on YT reviewed the same scanner some months ago. I'm currently working on scans of a book that was scanned with a flatbed and it does take some extra effort.
I believe catalogues would fall under the same kind of copyright as Recipes - They're not copyrightable in themselves as they're just lists of facts (Which is why all those recipe sites have the long and rambling stories about how they found this recipe in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory etc., as the story *is* copyrightable). Magazines however, have reviews and opinions which are copyrightable.
you can already download all the amiga magazines i nearly have them on on my drive i like scanning through them brings back memory's when i was in the shop buying them and using the cover discs such fun computing is so rubbish now hence why i just made a sexy pentium 2 for some dos games lol.
Tech Tangents has done a video of the same (I think) scanner for similar purposes. I believe his conclusion was to eliminate environmental light and just use the in-built ones. Might be worth a skim through for you.
Interesting! Nice to hear it wasn't just me having issues with that, although I did find with glossy magazines just using the built-in lights resulted in problems too.
Very interesting video I have been thinking about scanning my collection for a while. My flatbed scanner does a great job of scanning a hires copy but takes way too long. Even though this scanner is expensive, as you said it comes down to time vs money. for me I can make more money but only have so much time. On a side note can you give us some information about the jackets you have the magazines in on the shelf? I have a bunch of magazines with different sizes US/UK etc. Some of the UK magazines are large format Amiga Format vs my US Amiga World collection for instance. If you haven't already made one it may be a good topic of a video.
The osbourne computer books are available on there site for free download as pdfs. If there no longer there I have them in pdf format if you need a copy.
Hi Neil- Thanks for another great video! Not to add to your plate :) Have you thought about forming a non-profit? That may give you the latitude for projects like this. It may also open you up for grants and donations that could help support The Cave. You could have two entities that work together ; one (standard/taxable) that supports the more sales oriented endeavors like MiSTer and your Kickstarters and another (non-profit) that supports the archival projects like the Cave and software/media.
I miss getting computer magazines... C&VG, Sinclair User, Amstrad Action, various Amiga magazines and Computer Shopper, amongst MANY others. I blame the internet and RU-vid 🙂
Maybe it depends on your accent, but "seizure" would sound more like "C-JhUR" or maybe similar to "sea shore" (or "see sure"?). The Z in seizure is weird because it sounds like the G in beige, which in turn sound like a J. Actually the English language is just weird in general.
@@dafoex Oh of course, I probably should have been more clear. What I meant was that that was my first instinct when deliberately trying to make CZUR into a pronounceable word rather than defaulting to C-Z-U-R. I don't think it lends itself to that particularly well at all, but if I was going to force it that's what I'd go with.
As Next Publishing in Australia were being eaten up by a larger publisher, and again when a bigger fish ate that fish, I begged them to release digital archives of their old magazines to no response. I would literally pay a couple of bucks an issue for old copies of their official and later unofficial Playstation magazines, or for Hyper, or Nintendo Gamer. As it is, there _is_ no legal source for these long out of print magazines. They were never intended to be long-standing periodicals. A gaming magazine in the 90s and 2000s had a shelf life of exactly until the next issue came out, and that was all the care given to their preservation by the publishing companies. If people who religiously collected them and had the stability in their lives over the past twenty to thirty years to actually keep them in good condition want to scan and upload the magazines, I see no problem with that. While this wouldn't stand up in court, because the courts don't care about the intended function of a law, only the letter of it, the framing of copyright infringement as theft is predicated on a pirate downloading an illegal copy of something they would otherwise have bought. Downloading a 1998 issue of the Unofficial Australian Playstation Magazine isn't going to prevent me from buying a current issue (the fact that nobody buys gaming magazines anymore might, because they no longer come with demo discs and the news is old before the ink dries on the pages). The 1998 issue isn't sold anywhere for me to deprive them of a sale, and if it is, I honestly welcome them to show me where I can buy it, because I will. Next's mags are particularly nostalgic to me because they didn't really drink the Kool Aid from the console companies or software publishers. They published the news with all the hype you'd expect, but also a healthy dose of "wait and see" skepticism and some good editorial content. Even their multi-page reviews of bigger games had input from multiple reviewers, differing viewpoints. I remember reading UAPSM's review of Final Fantasy VIII, and while the reviewer (Kevin Cheung, I think?) was waxing rhapsodic about how beautiful it was, and how innovative the combat was, another reviewer's textbox chimed in with a negative opinion both on the game, and on Kevin's objectivity because he loves Final Fantasy so much. At the risk of romanticising a collection of magazines designed to be sold and make money, there was a kind of rebel outlaw spirit to them next to the big giants of Electronic Gaming Monthly and other magazines. As a kid, I also collected both the UK and US PC Gamer magazines (Australia never could decide which was appropriate here), and the difference between Next and the others reminded me of how irreverent the UK PC Gamer was compared to the more professional US one.
Could you just shut off all the lights in the room and only rely on the lights on the scanner? Might be impossible in the cave, but for me it sounds like the best way to capture these.
Could be worth running through every digital page to touch up the Glared out graphics/Text using A I and or a professional drawing program, if you're concerned about the odd color fading.
I have a bunch of old Amiga magazines from the 1980's that I'd love to find a good home for. But I hate to throw them away because it's not clear if they're available online or not.
Sorry, but this is not scanning. This is akin to taking a photo of a photo (which seems to be popular now unfortunately). As someone who has done archival scans of many retro magazines you are not going to be able to beat a scanner with that setup. Also, if you want it done properly the magazine will sadly need to be destroyed (cut from the spine or having the staple removed if it's not glued at the spine). It's a lot of work but in the end it's worth it. I can understand you not wanting to destroy your magazines since you're keeping a library and not necessarily trying to do an archival preservation, but even then I still say a scanner is a much much better solution than that contraption. That thing reminds me of the NewTek DigiView on the Amiga.
