Microfiche scanning techniques, part 2

In the initial stage of a microfiche conversion project, some important details should be outlined.

Let's first start with your fiche cards. There are variations of microfiche types. For example, your microfiche may be a silver original or a diazo duplicate, 16 mm or 35 mm frames may be included. There are other fiche types, like COM fiche, jacketed fiche, step-and-repeat fiche, and rewritable fiche. They all have their purpose. You also need to understand how the fiche was produced so that your newly created digital image can be brought back to the correct magnification and aspect ratio. The price to convert your microfiche may be affected by the type of microfiche cards you going to digitize.

Secondly, let's touch a bit on digital imaging. This is the term used for the document file in its digital format. Images are stored in computer drives and can be manipulated in many different ways with the proper imaging software. Images may be measured in height, width, and also pixels. The size of the images will affect its quality, and can also affect the transfer speed between you and your customer, and how long you need to wait to view the image. Let an experience team from a reputable microfilm scanning company help you through this process. Find the best possible price in the market.

Microfiche scanning

One obstacle that many companies encounter is that they do not feel comfortable or are unable to function without the microfiche cards during the conversion process. A company such as Scanning Depot has resolved this issue for many large and small companies throughout the years. They will first learn and understand the work-flow and the need of the clients so that they minimize distractions or interruptions to the client. They can also set up an uninterrupted flow to give the client access to the documents they need. This may include an Internet connection and an on-demand request process. Whatever the case may be, Scanning Depot assures the client an efficient solution.

There are multiple types of microfiche cards. Your cards may be COM fiche, jackets, step and repeat, and they may contain 16mm or 35mm images. There are even other variations of these types of formats. In addition, the documents were reduced in the process of filming. All this information is important for the conversion process, and a professional with the skills and the equipment is best suited to convert your microfiche.

Types of Microfiche - COM Fiche, 16mm Jackets, 35mm Jackets, and More

Because microfiche is used in a wide variety of industries, many users or sales representatives don't realize that there are so many  types of microfiche. Many times when an organization wants to consider a microfiche scanning conversion, they do not know the exact type of fiche they are working with, and just refer to it as a generic "microfiche" or "fiche card".

Here's a listing of some of the major types of microfiche:

COM fiche (Computer Output Microfiche)- they usually contain accounting reports, payroll records, tax rolls, and most any computer generated report that requires an archival retention period. Standard microfiche are either 42 or 48X - 207 or 269 pages of data respectively, plus an index page located at the last frame, to make it 208 and 270 digital images. (Please note that some columns may not be full).  There are also super dense COM fiche (sometimes called ultra fiche) that can store 400+ images. COM fiche's main characteristic besides its number of frames is that the images are equidistant and line up. Columns and rows that are skewed are due to COM hardware  being improperly set or, more likely, the COM was incorrectly duplicated.

16mm or 35mm Jacketed fiche (jackets) are actually 4x6 inch plastic sleeves designed to hold strips of microfilm- so yes, at one point rolls of film were cut and inserted into the sleeves to make "jackets". This allowed the grouping of related data into one logical record, such as payroll, mortgages, school records, maps, and human resource departments. Many clients or sales representatives get confused when identifying jacketed fiche when there are no visible sleeves. This occurs where the microfiche had been duplicated. Duplicated jacketed fiche that have a purplish or bluish tint to them. Although these duplicates no longer have plastic sleeves, you can still see the horizontal lines where the sleeves were. Jacketed fiche have a wide range of images stored on a card, from 1 to 70, or more.

Step-and-repeat fiche are not manually inserted into plastic sleeves. The images contained on step-and-repeat cards are generally equidistant and straight, except when some frames are orientated differently. These fiche usually contain owner manuals or operational handbooks. The cards have a header at the top, which contains detailed information. These types of fiche can contain hundreds of images. Many motorcycle manuals or car manuals are on step and repeat fiche.

Rewritable microfiche (Microx or AB Dick) contain positive images that can be erased or have a new record added. These cards are utilized in a filing system, usually under a name or social security number. Daily use and exposure to light mean these fiche generally do not have a long lifespan, which means they should be converted to digital images as soon as possible.

All of these type of different types of microfiche (and more) can be converted to digital format by Scanning Depot's microfiche scanners.

Microfiche

There is no doubt that many microfiche definitions online and everyday usage of "fiche" is just wrong. When it comes to microfiche scanning and actually converting the microfiche to digital images (TIFF, JPEG, PDF, etc.) the differences are paramount.

COM fiche

COM fiche uses a grid set up with coordinates, such as A1, A2, B1, B2, and so on. The majority of microfiche scanners, such as Mekel, Sunrise, Wicks & Wilson, and others use the fixed grid overlay, and it is up to the scanner operator to "center" the grid overlay over the microfiche card.

Some scanners boast that there are different methods to scan COM fiche but it should be noted that those methods are still in the testing stages, and require deep post-processing to create a final product, while scanning COM in the traditional grid set-up is still the industry norm, and quite effective.

Jacketed fiche

Jackets are scanned using edge detection, with the same detection algorithms as roll film scanning. That means that the scanner "sees" white and black pixels and analyzes the edge of a white document to see if that is where an image begins and ends. 16mm and 35mm fiche use the same edge detection parameters, the only difference is the reduction ratio and document size.

Step-and-repeat fiche

One might be inclined to scan step-and-repeat fiche using a fixed grid, however, if there are different size documents on a card or improper spacing, edge detection is the way to go.

AB/Dick or Microx fiche

These rewritable fiche may look like positive duplicated jacket fiche, but have fun trying to get them to edge detect. These fiche are usually faded and beat up, with little edge to work on. Thankfully, Scanning Depot has the hardware and technical experience to scan rewritable microfiche using advanced settings.