How slow or fast is it to use barcode scanner to enter cds to OCD?

[laurie@cascadiahomes.com]

I am about to buy a higher priced scanner that will store a couple of thousand upc codes to catalog my large collection on Orange CD.

Before I do that, I need to know whether uploading a large batch, say 500 to a thousand upc codes to Orange CD at one time, is feasible. Will it take them all at once? Will it have to process each one individually and take hours or days to do it? Will it crash if I give it too much data?

I am concerned that using a basic cuecat scanner and waiting for each cd to upload (scan and upload each one, one at a time), will take much longer to obtain the UPC codes from my collection than a scanner that stores a large number of codes.

The scanner I am looking at is from Microvision. I am in a time crunch to get this project done.

thanks much

I did email tech support last night but haven't heard back, and if I am ordering this I'd like to get it shipped today. Thanks for any help you can offer.

[andrei_c]

OrangeCD supports Microvision scanners, but make sure you install the software that comes with scanner. The software should be in keyboard emulation mode.

OrangeCD allows entering CDs efficiently by eliminating any prompts, messages, etc.

Basically, you connect the scanner and use menu Album -> Scan barcode. Then start scanning CDs. After each barcode, OrangeCD will download CD data from Internet and add the album to database. Then you can scan next barcode, and so on.

There's only a couple seconds delay between scanning barcodes, so you can work really fast. You will be entering more than 2/minute, probably more like 6-10/min.

That said, there are two potential problems that can slow you down:

1. Once a while, you will probably encounter a CD not in Amazon database. When it happens, OrangeCD will display a message. I recommend putting such CDs aside so you can later add them using CD-ROM drive scanning or other approach.

2. Your scanner must have permanent connection to PC. So you cannot go into a different room, scan 1000 barcodes, return to PC and handle them all at once. We don't support that. It means basically that you have to scan CDs when you are next to your PC so you can control process, handle any unrecognized CDs (see above), etc.

[kurt74]

the big problem is that, in my experience:
- only 30% of cd/vinyl/cassette have barcone stored on amazon/discogs
- many original old album do not have barcode on it
- all the amazon album will not have the song time imported

(i use a bluetooth barcode scanner)