Pleco or Hanping for camera OCR on a Galaxy-4?

[Ruben von Zwack]

Hello all!

I just downloaded Pleco, their free basic bundle, and was all excited to buy the camera OCR add-on, but ran into a little problem. They warned me it might be less than ideal on a Galaxy, and advised to try the demo before purchase. I did, and indeed, it doesn't work well at all. But maybe it's me and I still need to find better camera or Pleco settings.

Before I bore you to death with what worked and what not - is there a Hanping demo anywhere? Or have any of you used the Hanping camera OCR and can compare?

Thanks a lot!

[mikelove]

Could you be more specific about how it doesn't work well? We actually put up that warning message for *every* prospective OCR buyer, since there are enough devices with buggy camera drivers out there (sometimes confined to a specific carrier or ROM version) that we don't think it's a good idea for anybody to buy it without trying it first - of course we're also happy to give you a refund if it turns out not to work out well after you buy it.

I don't believe there's a Hanping OCR demo available, but Mark's a very accommodating fellow and if you have any problems with it I'm sure he'd either help you fix them or give you a refund if he couldn't.

[markcarter]

I'd like to echo what Mike said. There are a few devices that have non-standard-behaving camera drivers. The Galaxy Ace in particular springs to mind. I haven't heard of any particular problems on the S4 though.

 

UPDATE: Here is a video showing Hanping Camera in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9FnacTk9cA

We offer a 30-day refund policy on all purchases and you can request a refund even if there are no technical issues. So please give it a try:

https://play.google.....app.reader.pro

You can also find it on Amazon Appstore (precise link varies according to which country you are in). But for US:

http://www.amazon.co....app.reader.pro

If you are living in China or cannot purchase apps (for any other reason), then please send us an email: hanping@embermitre.com

[Ruben von Zwack]

Hello Mike and Mark,

oh whow, I feel like a VIP with you answering it's not about the price at all, it's just that I will be heading for China (for my first time) in just a few days. And I just got my phone the other day (it's also my first smart phone) so this is new for me.

@Mike, thank you for asking. I should add it works fine in ideal surroundings - like, a book cover lying flat on my desk. But when when I aim the camera at a character on a book cover in my shelf (so the lightning would not be as ideal, and my hand is not as stable, and the font may be red on white), then often a lot of suggestions will flash up, and they keep moving and changing so fast that, even when I think I saw the right one pop up for a split second, it's gone again before I can blink my eye.

[mikelove]

Ah, understood - that usually means that it's having trouble seeing the characters clearly enough to "lock on" to a specific reading.

Have you tried using it in still image mode instead? Take a photo with your phone's camera and "Share" it with Pleco OCR - you can then scroll around the image to look up words in that; bit less spontaneous than using live video but it can be very helpful in these sorts of cases.

One other option you could try for tricky cases like this is Google Translate - it only does still image mode, and it requires an internet connection, but it's free, and it's different enough from our algorithm that often one will succeed when the other fails miserably.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Thank you very much, Mike! I will play around with that option.

And for the live camera mode, is there a way I can tell it to slow down, so I can lock the right character when it pops up?

I imagine, in a spontaneous live situation - me looking at a train timetable or something - before I use Google translate, it might be faster to use the handwriting recogniser and quickly scribble what I see. That function is so incredibly neat anyway!

[mikelove]

Yes, you can set a "max defn update speed" in Settings / Live Video / Recognition to limit how quickly the definitions will change. You might also find the "pulse mode" option there useful - with that enabled, the recognizer only runs while your finger is down, so you can control it a bit more precisely. Another thing you can do is check the history screen (clock icon) since the previous correct character might show up in there.

 

And thanks! Handwriting certainly works in these situations too, yes - personally I find it much better for memorization purposes than OCR, it's hard not to start to build up a picture of a character in memory once you've had to write it out half a dozen times.

[roddy]

Ruben, how's your OCR efforts going?

[Ruben von Zwack]

update:

 

I changed the settings of my phone as suggested by Mike, which makes the world of a difference.

 

Still, it's far from "fool proof" so I would think only someone who is fairly familiar with Chinese characters can use this. Otherwise, in a case like 兔 and 免, a person who doesn't know what they are looking at would probably not realise there is a tiny dot missing and get the wrong character.

 

Why am I saying that/isn't that obvious? Not to everyone! I swear I saw a clip or a blog entry by Benny Lewis when he learnt Mandarin, where he said or wrote that he didn't have to read because he had this amazing phone app. Hence, maybe I had unrealistic expectations.

 

I'm still addicted to the hand writing feature and use it all the time.

[markcarter]

Hi - I finally got around to making a quick demo video of Hanping Chinese Camera for Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9FnacTk9cA