cdpedia isight barcode recognition poor

[countryman]

Very disappointed in this program. The barcode recognition capability is so poor as to render it useless. Delicious Library has far better capability in this respect but their classical database relies on Amazon...which is a joke. Your database searching is much better but because the barcode recognition is so bad, your application is unusable.

[Nora]

I'm sorry to hear you're disappointed in CDpedia. What exactly is the problem with the iSight search? Are the barcodes not scanned at all or does the program record the wrong one? ArkivMusic - the classical music site - unfortunately doesn't support search by barcode so that feature does not work with their site. You have to use a title or keyword search instead.

[countryman]

Many thanks for the quick reply, Nora.

For a start, none of this happens

Once the iSight has read the bar code, the red square turns green, you'll hear a beep, the iSight window closes and the search for the entry starts automatically.

If I wait long enough then I might get a long string of large red numbers across the screen. But they bear no relationship to the actual barcode and so the search fails.

[Nora]

If you're having problems with the accuracy of the iSight, i.e. that the feature is not picking up the correct barcode during the scan, you can try doing the following: from your Applications/Utilities folder run the program "Terminal". In the window that appears when you run the program, copy paste the following line, followed by a return:

defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "BarcodeScannerDisableNewiMac" -bool YES

Then restart CDpedia and try the scanning with the iSight again.

[countryman]

That regrettably has made things even worse. Now I cannot recognise ANY of the ones I tried yesterday.

[Nora]

In that case turn it back off with the same procedure but change the YES for NO.

defaults write com.bruji.cdpedia "BarcodeScannerDisableNewiMac" -bool NO

Which Mac do you have? Have you tried different lighting conditions in the room where you're doing the scanning? The more light there is the better the contrast between the bars and the easier it is for the iSight to pick up the barcode.

[countryman]

Well, it's starting to get dark now and so it is the room lighting. I just messed about shining an LED torch at the barcode but little difference. The thing is I took out ten CDs at random and under the same lighting conditions, CDpedia recognised 3/10 *(and after a lot of fiddling about with angles). Sorry to say but Delicious Library got 10/10 and with minimal fiddling about. Please don;t get me wrong...I'm not trying to say that DL is the best thing since sliced bread...it isn't.

My iMac is a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running 10.6.8.

Can I ask another question Please? In the attached image, out of all the CDs entered just one has put composer in the right slot....mahler. Elgar I entered manually. Should it do this?



I accept that many of these CDs are multiple composers but there are three that are singletons - Bach, Mahler and Elgar

Many thanks

[Conor]

The composer field is filed out depending on the search site, some don't provide that information for the tracks. Our own server Doghouse does try to provide the composer if available. If you do fill out any missing bits of information consider signing up for Doghouse under the Doghouse menu, in order to be able to select "Contribute Selection" and add any missing information to items in the Doghouse, such as composers. CDpedia does leave the composer field empty at the track level if it's the same for the entire album and only then enters the composer at the album level.

Thank you for the feed back on the barcode, I am always fiddling with the code and I'll try to improve it for your machine.