sukitc Posted January 17, 2011 at 03:03 AM Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 03:03 AM Hi, I just installed the Pleco OCR on my Iphone 3GS. After a short period of getting used to, it works great. One question though, if I leave the OCR function on all the time (let's say while I am reading a novel), it seems to run down my battery very quickly. I wonder whether I am just imagining this, or is this really is the case. In any case, thanks Pleco for such a wonderful tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muirm Posted January 17, 2011 at 04:47 AM Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 04:47 AM I'm sure Mike Love will chime in, but poor battery performance when using OCR is expected. I'm pretty sure the CPU is pegged near 100% when the OCR is active in order to give you real-time lookups, so leaving it running will drain the battery quickly. It has to keep the camera on too, which probably also uses more power than usual. I just use the pause button when I'm not currently looking something up to save juice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikelove Posted January 17, 2011 at 06:54 AM Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 06:54 AM Yes, not much we can do about poor battery life for live video OCR unfortunately - there may be some slight improvement in 2.2.2 since we've added an option to only run the recognizer when it detects that the phone / image is actually moving, but the motion detection system uses almost as much power as OCR does so it's more of a jitter-reduction thing than a battery-saving thing. We have, however, hugely improved our still image OCR support for 2.2.2, and that does use a lot less battery power, so while it's not as useful for signs / single-word lookups since you have to frame up the shot / take it / zoom in to the right word / etc, if you're looking up a bunch of words per page then you might see good results taking a picture of the page and running it through that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sukitc Posted January 17, 2011 at 07:05 AM Author Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 07:05 AM Thank you for all the answers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gato Posted January 17, 2011 at 08:06 AM Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 08:06 AM we've added an option to only run the recognizer when it detects that the phone / image is actually moving, but the motion detection system uses almost as much power as OCR does so it's more of a jitter-reduction thing than a battery-saving thing. That's a great idea. Can't you use the motion detection to automatic shut off the OCR after a period of inactivity, but to turn on the OCR again, the user would actively tap on a button? Once the automatic shutoff occurs, all the battery-sucking activities would be turned off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikelove Posted January 17, 2011 at 08:34 AM Report Share Posted January 17, 2011 at 08:34 AM That's a great idea. Can't you use the motion detection to automatic shut off the OCR after a period of inactivity, but to turn on the OCR again, the user would actively tap on a button? Once the automatic shutoff occurs, all the battery-sucking activities would be turned off. We can, and I think that'll be an option - basically just triggering the "pause" function automatically when the device is held still - but in testing we've found that it feels better and more intuitive if it restarts automatically. We could also lower the sampling rate for our motion detection system once it's paused - still tweaking a few things like this which is why 2.2.2 is taking so long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerri Posted January 28, 2011 at 02:40 PM Report Share Posted January 28, 2011 at 02:40 PM Lemme quickly ask here, if I may: is the iPod touch with camera still not recommended for Pleco OCR? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Members bobbybilwani Posted October 4, 2012 at 03:59 AM New Members Report Share Posted October 4, 2012 at 03:59 AM Hi to all , I need a help from experts on this forum.I am living in china and yesterday i downloaded PLECO and bought its quite expensive add-on OCR , i thought it will help me point my camera to Chinese characters and give me a translation, here i would like to mention i have zero knowledge of Chinese characters i can speak Chinese 70% but cannot read so the purpose for me to buy this expensive app was that when i am outside on the road i can at least translate the names of bus stops and road or a notice issued to my kid by his school as they all in Chinese always. But so far i am fail to achieve what i want to do , when i point the camera on Chinese it give me word by word translation , actually its not translation its a definitions or meaning of the word , but what i need is to understand what a sentence or a line means in whole not as word by word , Maybe i am doing wrong on operations etc , So i would like to ask you guys here is there any workaround to achieve what i want from this app or any other app you can suggest. Regards BobbyBilwani Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roddy Posted October 4, 2012 at 09:09 AM Report Share Posted October 4, 2012 at 09:09 AM It's a dictionary, not a translation engine. Sounds like you'd be better off with an OCR app and pasting into Google translate. Well, slightly better off. Given that you speak Chinese, I'd have thought the pinyin for the words would have been more than enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikelove Posted October 4, 2012 at 05:10 PM Report Share Posted October 4, 2012 at 05:10 PM Try using the "Block Recognizer" mode with a still image instead - if you're reading large amounts of text at a time, it's much faster, since you can scroll through a sentence (or paragraph) word-by-word by tapping on an arrow button. If it's not working for you, though, let us know and we're happy to help arrange a refund. (technically, those have to be cleared by Apple first, but they usually don't give us any problems with recently-made purchases) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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