OCR Programs

[HoustonHorn]

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good OCR program. We're looking at Readiris Pro 10 Corporate Edition and Abbyy Fine Reader 7.0 Professional which seem to have gotten some good reviews, but I figured I'd see if there was anything else out there that we should be checking out or if anyone had opinions on either of these.

Thanks

 

[idigTexas]

For what purpose? What are you scanning, and what do you need to be able to do with the documents once you have scanned them?

 

[suttree]

I am still waiting for someone to make an OCR program that will embedd the text file into the tiff file, as opposed to having a separate text file. Microsoft document imaging does this, but you have to OCR one file at a time, and it is too slow.

Scansoft allegedly makes a good product, but I personally hated it.

The key is whether you just want to search the text, or whether you want to actually format the document and work within it.

 

[HoustonHorn]

Suttree:

Readiris will do batch processing and embed the text files into a PDF.

We're looking at OCRing documents and inputting them into a searchable database. We're not as interested in working within the actual document as taking thousands of tiff images and making them searchable.

Does your lawfirm use Summation or Concordance?

 

[pmg]

You can put text info in the "tags" of Tiffs, that's why it's called a Tagged Image Format File.

 

[idigTexas]

If performing searches on legal documents is your need, you want these guys.

www.syngence.com

 

[blacklab]

last summer I wrote code to take a law firms server and get 10 years of scans and faxes, ocr them and then put them into a search engine. We charged them around $5000 and we can do it for you guys too. PM me if you are interested.

 

[suttree]

The problem with the OCR pdf is you can't use windows search feature to search the text. You have to actually open the document, then search it. With an embedded tiff file, you can actually just use the windows search feature.

We have Summation, but we mainly use Access with a heavily customized format.

What I am mainly doing now is getting my cases on internet repositories that have all the documents, pleadings, depositions, and whatnot online in self-contained software. I hate Summation and Concordance, they really are not user friendly.

Sanction II is coming out with a new version soon to take on Summation and Concordance, it should rock. Verdictsystems makes outstanding trial presentation software.